HDV Capture in Premiere CS5

Edit your videos. Upload them to the web. Burn blu-rays and DVDs. Colors look odd maybe? Fix'em in post, then!
Post Reply
jpruitt613
Posts: 2
Joined: 01 Aug 2011 17:55
Location: California

HDV Capture in Premiere CS5

Post by jpruitt613 »

Hi, an FCP user looking to switch to CS5. I have Mac 10.6.5 OS and an AJA Kona LHe card, which I use mainly for graphics acceleration and playback on an external monitor. My raw footage is stored in a variety of formats, including Sony HDV tapes and, more recently, AVCHD files. If I make the switch, I will also likely purchase a Nvidia Quadro 4000 GPU accelerator, which is supposed to work very well with the "Mercury Playback Engine" touted by Adobe.

My question (and please forgive me in advance for my loose use of words such as "capturing" as I consider myself more a videographer than an true editor) pertains to whether or not I will still benefit from the Kona card if I make the switch to the new NLE platform. Although having the Kona card has been nice to have working with FCP in accelerating the encoding of export video, it is an expensive device to have around if not needed by CS5 in combination with a new video card, such as the Nvidia.

In one of the tutorial videos on the Adobe website, it was noted that Adobe Premiere CS5 does not "capture" clips from taped sources (ala HDV?) and I just want to make sure before I put my Kona card up for sale on EBay that I won't regret doing so when I later try to pull HDV footage into a project on CS5.

I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks
acgold7
Global Moderator
Posts: 400
Joined: 14 May 2010 23:03
Location: Woodinville, WA, USA
Contact:

Re: HDV Capture in Premiere CS5

Post by acgold7 »

Can you direct me to that tutorial? Of course Premiere captures from HDV tape. Your Kona card is completely unnecessary... at least in the PC world (unless you are trying to drive a third monitor). I cannot conceive of it being different for Macs.

Best way to be sure is to find their help files online and check. Here's the page I found that seems to talk about it.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/premierepro ... 7fa8a.html

Just to clarify a bit, the Mercury Playback Engine is part of the Premiere software that works all the time regardless of video card. The GPU Hardware Acceleration is enabled with some nVidia cards, including the one you mentioned, when working with Premiere to speed up real-time playback and rendering and offload some of the work normally done by the CPU. Two different things. Also, the Quadro 4000 is a pretty expensive card and way overkill for most people. You can get the same or better performance from a GTX 470 unless you need something special that the Quadro does.

Make sure you take advantage of Adobe's 50% off discount for those switching from FCP.
Adam
jpruitt613
Posts: 2
Joined: 01 Aug 2011 17:55
Location: California

Re: HDV Capture in Premiere CS5

Post by jpruitt613 »

Adam, thank you so much for your helpful reply.

As to the Adobe tutorial I referred to, here is the link:
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/switching-to- ... -project-/
click on "Setting Up A New Project". What I heard with respect to CS5 needing a capture card is in this video, about 8:00min into it. Maybe I misunderstood what he was saying. Possibly he was just referring to analog capture. In any event, he does mention that he has an AJA card in his system - so, I suspect there are some transcoding advantages?

I've been capturing and editing footage (primarily for personal use) for years, using numerous editing softwares, including early versions of Premiere (before it went "Pro"), Conopus, FCP and others. I've also bounced around alot with camcorders (I now have my old Sony HC1 for HDV footage and a Sony NEX-VG10 - which I love - that records 1080 with AVCHD codec). Consequently, I have a multitude of different clip sources and rendered output formats. For the last couple years I've been rendering to ProRes / Quicktime.

My frustration lately has been twofold: 1) not keen on the direction of FCP X, and 2) trying to play my various rendered files to HDTV using a media player, I've experienced all the format/codec issues one could possible run across...finding software online that allows me to transcode to formats accepted by the media player...having to transcode all my new AVCHD footage to ProRes for FiCP to allow editing, etc.. At the end of the day, I'd really like to find a high-quality format, editing tools and hardware that allows me to archive my rendered files in the highest quality and playback (again, in high quality) on a media player. I want a system/format/workflow that will stand the test of time from an archival and playback standpoint.... Well, enough whining. Looks like I need to do some more research.

I appreciate your comments and any further thoughts you may have.

Jay
Post Reply