On Sun, 21 Nov 1999 08:12:21 -0500, "Roger Olney" wrote:

>Unfortunately the three cameras for my project were not synced and only one
>of them had a continuous audio track. So I had to capture all the footage
>from the tape with the continuous audio track and put that together with no
>missing or duplicated frames on the timeline.

Not hard in Premiere (or anything else...;-).
BTW, probably not unusual, but my four Mini-DV camcorders
stay in synch. to the frame over long periods. I lay down
the "master" track from the camera with the likely most-used
footage on "Video 1A" in Premiere 5.1a, carefully joining
the 2-gig files on the timeline. The second and third camera
footage goes on "Video 2" and "Video 3", synched near the beginning using the visual cues from the audio tracks. I
check synch. at various points throughout the project to make sure I haven't upset the synch. anywhere (keeping in
mind that audio from close mics can easily be 3-4 frames
out of synch. compared with distant mics when picture is
in synch...). Using the picture "rubber bands" with the
"alt" key, I can see the picture from all three (or more)
cameras for making editing decisions - and I use the
rubber bands for better "shaped" dissolves between tracks
than the simple cross-dissolve transition provides.

>Then I had to overlay the
>video on the timeline with the video I wanted from the other two camcorders.
>Of course, I had to make sure I got lip synch right when doing this.

This is FAR easier if the other two cameras have audio
tracks, even poor ones that are used for nothing but
synching... Why no audio from the other two cameras?

>Adding
>the stills wasn't difficult, nor was adding the transitions and titles.
>What did make it difficult was Premiere's insistence on causing invalid page
>faults and it's dumb insistence on having a DV device connected whenever I
>wanted to open my project.

Hmmm....
I don't experience either of these, though as a matter of
course, I use the Sony D-A/A-D box with Raptor to get the
nice 720x480 full-motion computer preview window (and the
TV out for TV monitoring of rendered video changes). Without
the DV device, you can set up Raptor (and others...) to use
a software codec for preview - it's not quite as smooth, but
good enough with a fast processor. As for the "ipf's", good set-up and a habit of saving with every 1-4 changes has
virtually eliminated this for me... (I see it a couple of
times about every other project - a tolerable level, I
think...). Also, BTW - just try doing a 3-camera edit at
all with MS Pro...! ;-)

>The camcorder with the continuous soundtrack was a Panasonic AG-EZ30. It
>was connected to a wireless mic receiver with a wireless mic and transmitter
>mounted on the podium. The AGC in that camcorder produced a lot of pumping
>and swishing in the audio track.

Hmmm, again...;-)
I've had good sound from my EZ30U except for some rather loud organ recordings, which did produce very audible
compression effects - how about attenuating the receiver
or mic outputs (or you can select a lower recording level
in the EZ30U menu...)?

>Since I'm pretty familiar with editing
>audio using Steinberg's WaveLab, that's the way I chose to go. I don't
>honestly know if I could have cleaned up the audio track in Premiere or not.
>But WaveLab has a really nice UI and is a thoroughly professional audio
>editor. I knew I could do the audio editing I wanted to do using WaveLab.

It risks de-linking sound and video (and the Premiere
sound-modification tools are pretty versatile), but
I also take tracks out to Cool Edit for things
Premiere can't handle, like noise-reduction. I leave
the original tracks in place for synching purposes,
even if I set them at "0" level and put the modified
tracks in additional audio track positions in Premiere.

>When EditDV 2.0 for Windows becomes available, I'm going to get it. It
>doesn't seem to suffer from the problems I've encountered with Premiere
>5.1a. And it will detect whether a DV device is connected when you open a
>project and work using preview to the computer monitor if the DV device
>isn't connected. And it won't cause another invalid page fault when you try
>to start it without a DV device connected.

Hey, just close it, start the DV device, and reopen...! ;-)
Actually, mine just doesn't give me the overlay (or TV out)
when I forget to turn on the Sony box - but no "ipf", so it
is easy to just restart Premiere...
BTW, it appears that practical multi-camera editing may
be a Premiere thing - you may want to check if other
editing software can do it, before switching...;-)
Good luck!