addie wrote in message <01bd4f9c$229192a0$746046cf@engineering>...

>becca@bc.sympatico.ca wrote in article <350AE850.34A6@bc.sympatico.ca>...
>> Has anyone out there experimented with recording video on a Digital
>> Video Camera and then edited on Premiere? What is the big deal with
>> Digital? Could I actually get it to look cool with film grain plug ins
>> or would the look be too digital?

>I've done more than experiment. I attempted a 90 minute production using a
>VX1000 to shoot, DPS Spark to firewire the video to my PC, edited with
>Premier, and output back to the VX1000. As I've read from other users, if
>you don't try long productions (like I did) this could almost work, if it
>weren't for many, many bugs. It also depends on the complexity and
>precision of your project. Ours was a 90 minute documentary, so there were
>a lot of tight edits to cut around bad footage, lots of burn-overs, titles,
>audio work, and so on. I found the Premier/Spark environment to be the
>ultimate video editor tease. All the features are there, and they mostly,
>sorta, kinda work. But, my computer crashed regularly, rendering time -
>even for the simplest burn-over, or fade to black, was 20 - 30 times real
>time. I never got real time preview edit windows, so scrubbing was
>completely out, picking the correct frame to cut on was quite difficult at
>best.


From what we have discussed in the past, and what I gather you were using
for a computer, I suspect that you ran afoul of two things: a computer that
was too slow for the job (about a 200mHz MMX-equiped chip is probably the
minimum for keeping operations flowing with DV editing with the Spark...);
and the VERY buggy and frustrating early Spark software. I do not currently
experience crashes with my computer when using the Spark card, Spark software,
and Premiere. Transitions are rendered fairly quickly, though filters applied
over long stretches can sure slow rendering a lot. I have had no problems
editing to the exact frame using the preview window and/or enlarged frames
on the time line.

>Then there's the much discussed Premier audio problem. The long and short
>is: VX1000 audio is not compatible with Premier 4.2. Premier re-samples
>ungracefully, adding noise and distortion. Spark handles it fine, it's a
>Premier problem. I had to use a third party sound editor to resample the
>audio with proper anti-aliasing...yet another "rendering" step applied to
>every clip with camera audio.

Thanks again for telling me about both the problem, and the use of Sound
Forge XP 4 for solving it. It does seem to take forever, though, to
process the sound tracks on the 2-gig clips... But I am happy to have a
solution that beats simple filtering for cleaning up the sonic "ickies".

>Then there's the problem of how do you download your computer edited video
>clips onto tape? The Windoze file size limit of 2Gig means a 9:30 minute
>max clip (actually less by a few frames). Premier can use the "secret"
>Adaptec preset for printing to video, but that also screws up your audio.


And it doesn't work on my computer, alas. But the DV-Deck software does
provide a reasonably reliable way to assemble the 9-minute or so pieces
on tape. I add 4 seconds to the beginning of each piece (which must allow
for the edit to occur sometime during the last 1/2 second of that leader).
The edit can be accurately placed to the frame at the end of the last
piece copied to the camcorder. It is usually easy to find a place around
each 9-minute or so limit to place a "loose" edit point.

>My final solution was to dump my 9:30 files to tape one at a time and not
>try to join them (some joins were med scene!). Then I rented a Betacam/DV
>editing system, used that to join the clips and (out of desparation) finish
>the project.


Some of my assemble-edit points are one or two minutes short of the limit,
so as to use a better place for an innaccurate cut...

>The first 16 minutes of the project took me 8 weeks. The balance of the
>90 minute finished project took a weekend with the Betacam editor. Enough
>said on that.


It can be slow - my first hour-long video took almost a month to edit. I
recently made three 5-minute videos in one hard, long week...

>The video quality of the Spark system was outstanding. My (technically)
>3rd generation DV tapes look exactly like camera originals. The audio
>(when not mangled by Premier) is also excellent. The effects in Premier
>work well, but very v e r y s l o w.


Once I got the MMX working on my K6-200, all transitions but Vortex
rendered quickly, and rendering a 9-minute clip with several transitions
and a few short-duration filters generally takes less than twenty minutes.

>I'd give the entire Computer NLE/ DV idea another year or so to shake the
>bugs out.


Hmmm, just about now.... I was lucky, though - the Spark software upgrades,
the cheap-but-fast computer, and the big-but-affordable fast drives
appeared just as I was ready to do this. For you, it must have been a
nasty struggle to make things work at all!

>And, on that note, anyone wanna buy a couple 9GIG hard drives? I'm
>serioius. They're for sale. The Spark card went back for a refund.
>
>If anyone wants more detail on any of this ..including my entire horror
>story, email me.


My sympathies - I hate buggy software and hardware!
--
David Ruether
http://www.fcinet.com/ruether
ruether@fcinet.com