Premiere Elements stops capturing video and stops playback on your camcorder, if Device Control is supported. If playback doesn’t stop auto- matically, press Stop on your playback device.
When the capture job is done, click Edit on the Premiere Elements toolbar (or choose Window➪Workspace➪Edit). The editing workspace loads, and you can locate your video clips in the Media window, as shown in Figure 6-6.
Scene detection works by using the clock that is built into your camcorder.
Virtually any modern camcorder has a built-in clock and calendar; the date and time of each recording is recorded onto the videotape along with audio, video, and timecode. There is always a time gap between scenes (that gap may be seconds, minutes, hours, or even days). Premiere Elements can use those gaps to identify the beginning of each new scene.
Figure 6-5:
Premiere Elements captures video from my camcorder.
Dealing with dropped frames
Of all the capture problems you may encounter, by far the most common — as well as the hardest to troubleshoot — is the infamous dropped frame. If you’re capturing NTSC video from a DV camcorder, for example, Premiere Elements captures 29.97 frames per second (fps). If something in the com- puter gets choked up, it may miss, or drop,one or more frames during cap- ture. Dropped frames create unacceptable quality problems for captured clips in Premiere Elements because essential digital data is gone — poof.
But how do you know whether a frame has been dropped? Glad you asked. If you finish capturing a clip and a Properties dialog box appears, that is a bad sign. Review the statistics in this dialog box. If you see a line that says, This movie appears to have DROPPED FRAMES, you almost certainly dropped frames during capture — and that usually means you have to redo the capture.
Determining the cause of dropped frames can be challenging, but there are a few possible causes:
A timecode break: A timecode break on the tape can confuse Premiere Elements into thinking it dropped frames when it really didn’t. Timecode breaks often occur when you reuse tapes by recording new footage over old footage you no longer want. When you reach the end of the Figure 6-6:
Captured clips are organized in the Media window.
new recorded footage, the timecode may change and thus confuse Premiere Elements. If you have been reusing tapes — not something I recommend — you might want to consider this as a possible cause of dropped-frame reports.
A hard disk error: The most common cause of dropped frames is that the hard disk can’t maintain the required data rate during capture.
Usually this isn’t a problem on computers that match even the minimum system requirements for Adobe Premiere Elements, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility either.
If you have captured a clip that has dropped frames, right-click that clip in the Media window and choose Properties. For DV-format video, the Average Data Rate should read about 3.6MB per second. If the Average Data Rate is lower, or if the Date Rate/Sec graph is not a perfectly straight line (like the one in Figure 6-7), your hard drive couldn’t keep up with the data stream. Common causes include
• Programs other than Adobe Premiere Elements were open during capture.
• The hard drive has not been defragmented recently.
• Another computer was trying to access the hard drive over your network (if you have one) during capture.
If your hard disk does appear to be the culprit, you can try to correct the problem by methodically re-preparing your computer for capture as described earlier in this chapter. Close unneeded programs, defragment your hard drive, buy more RAM, or consider upgrading your drives. If your capture card came with its own capture software, you may want to try using that software to capture, and then import the captured clips into Premiere Elements for editing.
A problem with the DV device: If your Date Rate/Sec graph is a straight line but you still dropped frames, the cause is more likely your DV device or the tape.
If you have a separate hard drive used primarily for video capture, and you have a network, make sure that the hard drive is not shared with your network.
To check, right-click the drive in My Computer and choose the Sharing and Security option from the menu that appears. In the dialog box that appears, disable sharing if the drive is shared and click OK.
Capturing analog video
I don’t think there’s much question that Adobe Premiere Elements offers a far, far greater selection of features and movie creation capabilities than any other program in its price range. But this program is built down to a price, and one of the features that didn’t make the transition from Premiere Pro down to Premiere Elements is the ability to capture analog video directly into the program.
You may have analog video that’s stored on an old VHS video tape, or video recorded using a Hi8 or VHS-C camcorder. Chances are you have more than a few analog video tapes lying around, and if you want to use any of that video in your Premiere Elements projects, you have two options:
Use a FireWire video converter. A video converter is an external device that connects to your computer’s FireWire or USB port. The converter has analog video connections so that you can connect it to any VCR or analog camcorder. As you play video from the analog device the video converter converts the video to digital video. Many mass-market video converters today only work with USB ports, but if you can get your hands on a converter that connects to your computer’s FireWire port (such as the Canopus ADVC-55), you will find that it is much easier to use with Adobe Premiere Elements. Premiere Elements can capture video directly from a FireWire video converter, but not from a USB con- verter. FireWire video converters typically cost about $200. One of the nice things about an external video converter is that you don’t have to crack open your computer’s case and install fragile hardware. Just plug in a couple of cables and you’re ready to go!
Use a third-party analog capture system. Many companies offer afford- able analog video capture cards. An analog capture card captures video from analog sources such as a VHS VCR or Hi8 camcorder. You cannot capture video directly from an analog capture card into Premiere Elements, so you should choose an analog capture card or USB video Figure 6-7:
This dialog box helps identify the cause of dropped frames.
converter that comes with its own capture software. A good, affordable system — especially if you have many analog tapes you’d like to edit — is Pinnacle Studio AV/DV. For about $150 this package gives you a cap- ture card that is both a FireWire card and an analog capture card. You can use the FireWire function of the card with Premiere Elements, but to capture analog video you must use the included Pinnacle Studio software, as shown in Figure 6-8. Studio doesn’t offer nearly as much video-editing power as Premiere Elements, but you can use it to capture analog video and then export that video as an MPEG file, which can then be imported into Premiere Elements. For more on using Pinnacle Studio, see my book Digital Video For Dummies, 3rd Edition (Wiley).
The best solution for capturing analog video is to use a FireWire video con- verter. To capture video with a FireWire video converter