Importing and capture

Capturing From Tape

If capturing off tape you will generally use Adobe's built-in capture module which has hardly changed between different versions of Premiere Pro.  It will capture DV or HDV or use a device from Black Magic or Matrox. 

When capturing either DV or HDV you can use the scene detection which will split the footage into clips based on the date and time they were recorded - so every time you paused the camera it will create a new clip.  DV scene detection has always been included but it was not until CS5.5 you could do scene detection on HDV footage with Premiere's built-in capture tool.

It will even capture in the background - which means you could start it capturing and then use the computer for something else.  Adobe do not publicise this this as they cannot guarantee that it will work on any given system; to be honest we would probably not recommend it either on principle!

With HDV capture you do not see the picture on the PC screen whilst capturing. This is intentional as capturing HDV takes more effort than DV. Today's modern computers would be able to keep up with the capture but Adobe have not changed this since Premiere Pro 1 and as most people are moving away from tape it is unlikely to change.

In older versions of Premiere if you used a Matrox card (like and RT.X2 or Axio) it would capture HDV into a special Matrox format and show you the picture as it captured.  Matrox no longer do this because the footage as captured by Adobe is more compatible with different systems than the Matrox variation of HDV.  The good news is that if you have old Matrox HDV and a new Matrox device, like an MX02, then Premiere Pro CS5.5 will be able to use the old Matrox HDV footage, but any new captures will be in the more standard MPEG format.

To capture from other sources - analogue, SDI, HDMI, then you need to add an extra device like a Matrox MX02, AJA or Black Magic card.  The main purpose of these cards is to let you capture footage from different sources and monitor the results of your edits as you edit.  The cards have different abilities and inputs.  Black Magic cards are generally the cheapest and will add all the inputs and outputs you need if you choose the right one.  Matrox cards add a few more features, such as some specific Matrox Effects - like colour correction which is generally better than the colour correction found in Premiere Pro, and includes colour matching.  Matrox also have their own format, Matrox I-frame, which is a good format for maintaining your picture quality, whilst not using too much hard drive space.  You can read more about Matrox, Black Magic or AJA cards by clicking on these links:

Black Magic: http://www.dvc.uk.com/acatalog/Black_Magic_capture_cards.html
Matrox: http://www.dvc.uk.com/acatalog/matrox_cards.html

AJA: http://www.dvc.uk.com/acatalog/AJA_Cards.html

These cards will all capture through HDMI and component and many people have asked if they need to buy one in order to edit footage like AVCHD.  The simple answer is no - if using a card based camera, or one with a hard drive, the easiest way to get the footage into Premiere Pro is to copy the files across - either using a card reader or a USB cable.  This means the footage you edit is exactly the same as the footage filmed.  Premiere Pro is very good at editing native footage (footage that is in exactly the same format as it was filmed) so why change it?  Even though HDMI is digital it is not like a FireWire connection - you cannot do scene detection, for example, or control the camera using HDMI.  We use HDMI capture when recording footage for our tutorials - recording from one computer directly into the HDMI port of a Matrox MX02 at 1280x720 50P.  Using the Matrox MPEG I-frame format we can capture in beautiful quality directly onto a normal SATA hard drive.  However, we have not really used the HDMI info anything else.  We do use the composite and SVIDEO input for recording old VHS and Hi8 tapes.

Importing Footage

Adobe Premiere is very good at dealing with just about any footage you want to try using in it.  We cannot promise it will work with every kind of footage but generally if your computer can play the footage then Premiere Pro will import it.  You can mix many different types of footage on the timeline - NTSC, PAL, HD, Flash, can all be mixed on one timeline and you decide how to deal with the difference in size etc.  You can even load DVD VOB files onto the Premiere Pro timeline these day (a long standing feature request).  How well these files will work is variable because there are so many different ways of making DVDs and discs can have different subtitle tracks, extra audio tracks and even different video angles.  Also VOB files are divided up into 1GB sections so you may get a small glitch at the join if you add a long clip to a timeline.  We tend to rip the VOB files off a disc first using a different program which then will strip out unwanted audio and subtitle tracks and make the clip into a single VOB file, which Premiere can then use.

You can import footage in various ways.  The most obvious is file-import, but you can just grab a folder of clips from Windows explorer and drag them into the project window.  Premiere will load anything it can understand and reject everything else.

Media Browser

If you are using card-based or hard drive-based footage then the best way to import this into Premiere Pro is it use the Media Browser.  In CS6 this has been considerably improved so now you can see thumbnails of the video you are importing and use the HOVER SCRUB feature to quickly skim through the clip in the thumbnail.  You can also play the clip in the thumbnail.  When you find the clip you want either drag it to the project window, source or timeline, or right click and choose import.  You can also import an entire folder of clips in the same way.

The Media Browser can be used for any type of footage and its big advantage over using the file-import is that the media browser will only show items which Premiere can import.  Lots of programs add files to clips if loaded (just like Premiere adds audio conform files and pek files) which can sometimes making finding the actually video quite hard - so anything which tidies up a display and just shows things you really can use - is useful.

However, the Media browser really becomes invaluable when using card-based footage.  Cards generally don't just store a video clips as a single file - they have a large number of folders with different information in different folders - sometimes the audio is even stored in a different place to the video.  Cards are generally formatted using a simple, old fashioned, system called FAT32 because just about every type of computer can read it.  However FAT32 has a 4GB file limit so every clip has to be under 4GB - meaning that long clips can be split into several files.  If you import these files separately then you will probably have a small glitch at the join between two clips (normally a small audio drop out). 

The Media Browser sorts all of this out for you.  Just point the browser as the main folder that has all your clips and it shows you the clips, sorts out spanned clips and correctly brings in all the METADATA the clip possesses.

The Media browser does not copy any clips - so if you import a clip into Premiere from a card, Premiere links to the clip on the card.  Ideally copy the entire contents of your card to the computer using Windows explorer and then point the Media Browser at the folder you have copied.

With CS6 Adobe have introduced a new program called ADOBE PRELUDE, which will copy the clips for you and even make backups or convert the footage as it does so.  Prelude is only available as part of the Production Premium.  You can read more about Prelude here: http://www.dvc.uk.com/acatalog/adobe_prelude.html

Interpret footage

With lots of video coming from lots of different sources there are going to be times when Premiere Pro gets the aspect ratio or the field order of the clips wrong.  This is where the interpret footage option comes in very handle.  Simply select the clip in the bin, open this dialogue box and tell Premiere the correct aspect ratio, frame rate and field order for the clip.  most of these changes are realtime using the MERCURY PLAYBACK ENGINE.

Huge metadata support

You can now browse through all the extra data that is saved by the camera with your disc based clips. There is so much that you can save custom layouts for the data to be shown in the project window. You can also add some of your own and this is saved with the clips to be seen in other Adobe programs.

You can add the information in ANY of the Adobe programs in the Production Premium - so, for example - you could have someone on a computer with just Adobe Bridge installed, entering important information to clips held in a central storage area.  This information would then be accessible to anyone with an Adobe program.  Inside a program like Premiere you can search through this "metadata" to help you find clips.

You can view the metadata in the normal project window or in the special metadata window.

Speech transcription

Select a clip and get Premiere to transcribe what is said. You can then search the text for various phrases and it jumps to that part of the clip. The problem with speech transcription is how well will the computer do at recognising the words said.  Adobe provide various dictionaries with just one that covers England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.  As you can imagine with the various accents that are around in these countries the results are not 100% accurate - with the example shown here it is about 40% accurate.   To analyse a clip just send it to the media encoder and let it work on the transcription in the background.

Adobe Story integration

Adobe wanted to improve the transcription and so have included the option to link a pre-written script to the text.  At first glance this may seem not make little sense - if Premiere is supposed to be transcribing the text why should you do it first?  The answer is this feature is not for transcribing text, it is for help editing.  If you can turn what is said into text you can search the text in the project window - looking for when a character said a certain phrase, for example. If you provide the script it can do a better job of matching the words to the script.  You can either provide a simple text file or use and Adobe Story script.

Adobe Story is Adobe's script writing program, and you can use it to embed a script in to the "metadata" of a clip and to help with the speech analysis.  Adobe have enhanced this so you can now see the Adobe Story script related to the clip in the metadata windows (this was added in Premiere Pro CS5.5).

Analyze content

A feature that has been taken from Premiere Elements - in addition to analyzing the speed Premeire will also analyse the picture and then you can use the search function to find faces as well..