Chopping a video using Adobe Premier

[Andy Roberts]

I recently got given to me by a friend Adobe Premiere and I'm having a bit of trouble using it.

I currently have 2 very large DV quality avi files that i ripped from my DV cam off a holiday to Orlando. What I want to do is get these into Adobe and then break the file up into seperate sections so that I can have each theme park as either a seperate file or a seperate chapter.

What I want to do is then burn these to a DVD so that I can view them on a hoem DVD player.

Also as the files themselves are about 5gb each I can't put that much on a DVD so how would it look if I compressed the files to SVCD quality or similar and then put them on the DVD? Would it still look OK?

Any help is much appriciated!

[NooNoo]

Oh boy are you in for a learning curve Andy...

you can get 4 gig on a dvd...

Adobe premerier has a razor blade tool where you can cut them and delete the rest - then you export the file to the format you want... thats the nutshell...

BUT what is it going to be played on at the end of the day? That is what you must have in mind before you open this particular can of worms...

[Andy Roberts]

Yeah sorry I meant to say the files are about 4.9gb in size when its only 4.7gb on a DVD.

I am looking to play it on my home DVD player which will play DVD-R's and -RW's.

What I want to acheive is to get a DVD with a menu on it for each theme park. I know I can do this with Ulead DVD Stuido which I have but I need to split the one huge video file into several smaller ones first in order to add them to the DVD from there.

[NooNoo]

Then the razor tool is what you need... you load the movie, find the bit you want to cut, right click and use the razor...

If you are editing bits out of the middle then use the ripple delete to join the ends again.

I do use premier if I have to... but I prefer pinnacle, much easier to handle because its not so "professional". Ulead I find hard to handle because it insists on splitting everything into scenes first - which can take hours....

[Andy Roberts]

Cheers for your help Noo-Noo.

I have got Pinacle Stuido 7 somewhere as it came with my capture card but I can't find the CD which is why I borrow Adobe from my mate. Agree though its much easier to use!

[ilovetheusers]

Difficult application to use if you're not familiar with it.

OK

Open Premier.

Highlight NTSC 720x480 video for windows and click OK

The "Project" window has a yellow folder and a little folder with "Bin 1" - right click bin 1 and choose "Import" then "File" and browse to your file on your hard drive.

You now have the video in the bin. Click and drag it to the timeline and video 2 and drop it.

Use the razorblade tool to cut it up and remove the pieces with the arrow tool - click the piece to highlight (marching ants) then the delete key on the keyboard. Don't use the ripple delete - why becomes aparent why after you use it a bit.

Play with the timeline. If you click a video or audio track arror and open it you will see the rubber bands. These are the tools to fade or make the volume louder or quieter. You can right click video clips to show some controlls. To apply effects - go to the video effect and click and drag it to the video clip and it will apply itself and will ask you to modify settings.

Now - you finished editing and you need to render your work. Hit the "Enter" key and sit back for a few minutes or hours.

It's tomorrow and it's done rendering. You now need to save it to a form you can view. Click "File, Export Timeline and Adobe MPEG Encoder". The wizard comes up and you click the radio button next to DVD, put a name for the filename, browse to the location you want to save and click "Export".

A couple miuntes/hours later you have an MPG file that should be ready to burn to DVD. Your DVD-R should have burning software that will convert the mpeg to a readable format for DVD players but I can't afford a DVD-R so I haven't worked with one yet and really don't know for sure.The principal should be similar to making VCD's which utilize a single file then turn it into what you normally see on a DVD - tons of folders and nothing windows understand on it's own. The DVD players understand the data but the PC doesn't.

Anyway, that should get you started, good luck.

[Andy Roberts]

Excelent! Thanks for your help! :thumbs2:

[NooNoo]

Thanks for the tutorial!! Might have another crack at it.

Strangely the "help" in premier has no walk throughs and assumes that you already know what premier can do.

[CeeBee]

Just my $.01 worth of oppinion: when exporting the video export it as DV-AVI from Premiere (make sure you have about 20GB space for 1 hour of video). Then use TMPG Encoder to convert to MPEG2 for DVD. If configured correctly (2 pass VBR @ 5000-6000kbps / 9000kbps max, DC Component=10 bit, motion search = highest quality) the results are much better but on my 1.33G Athlon it takes about 20min/1min of video. You'll be able to fit 90 minutes on a DVD at this quality, but there is almost no difference from the original DV video.
Don't even try to make SVCD or VCD, it's not worth losing the quality.

[ilovetheusers]

As above to export to DV-AVI you have to click file, export timeline, movie...
In the export movie window you need to pick a filename for your video. You then need to click the settings button.
In the settings window click the file type drop down menu and change it to microsoft dv avi. Now cllick the drop down menu above where it says general and change it to video. The video should have NTSC selected if you live in north america or europe. Click the menu above to get to audio and make sure the rate is 44100. Click OK and click save.

You should be able to send the DV video back to your camera by using - file, export, export to tape. Change the settings as needed per your camera and connection to it or your connection to a VCR I think. From the camera you can dump to video tape too.

I posted previously about creating the mpeg immediatly - there is a function in 6.5 that 6.0 did not have - that was what I was referring to. 6.5 lets you make a high quality file a little quicker but as I said, I don't know how to convert them after as I don't have a burner. Hope this helps some more.

Noo - premier help file do stink. I was just lucky to have friends in school for the app.

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by ilovetheusers
.... The video should have NTSC selected if you live in north america or europe.....

This bit right ? :confused: (I know nothing about this really !) but surely the video 'standard' here (europe) is PAL (in france its something else completely !?!? Quel surprise ?!) ... not ntsc ??

[Andy Roberts]

yeah it is pal in the UK.

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by Andy Roberts
yeah it is pal in the UK.

:D ... thought I was my name again ! ... as long as you are using the right format I guess all's well ;)

I am however still confus-ed about the thread ! :rolleyes: :D ... are these 'bits' of video 5 gig each or total 5 gig ??? .... if it is 5 each I don't see that any of these answers really helped that much (meant ever so nicely !) ... 'cos I still can't see how without compression we can get all this on one DVD & use 'chapters' for each bit ...? if it's 5 total - then I'm just typing fruitlessly !!! :p :D

[ilovetheusers]

Guess I'm wrong. I thought PAL was only used in Asia. Sorry about that.

[CeeBee]

FYI: PAL (roughly 25fps) is being used in countries with 50Hz AC. NTSC (roughly 30 fps) is being used in countries with 60Hz AC. Exception are few countries with SECAM/MESECAM but that standard has 25fps and is being used in countries with.... 50Hz AC.