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Premiere Capture and export – what is the highest res?
Is it true that upon capturing via firewire from a mini DV, Premiere captures as a DV file, meaning the highest resolution possible? and when exporting, am I better off exporting back to mini DV or there is a file formay that can give me as high a res as the Mini DV? Also, when openning a DV file with ext .mov, will Premiere keep the high res intact and won’t render down?
Thanks
Eyal Gordin -
3 Replies
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You can’t get what isn’t there.
Mini DV is recorded to tape at a set frame size and using 5:1 lossy compression and however much you might regret that, you cannot recover to the full quality seen through the lens. However, the process of transferring from camera to computer via FireWire is, to a first approximation at least, a data transfer process that involves no further loss of quality. At a more-subtle level, the process of recovering data from DV tape involves a degree of automatic error correction which can change the bit-level output from that originally recorded, so it would be very brave to use this medium for data storage.
If you don’t change CODEC and don’t apply any FX or transitions to a particular frame, Premiere will play it out without recompressing. Any change of CODEC or frame causes further lossy recompression except if you use an uncompressed format in intermediate files, although until you’ve done DV recompression a few times to the same footage you probably won’t notice much degradation.
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Thank you David for the extensive answer. It makes sense to me now. I don’t save data on a mini DV, I’m a cameraman and I try to preserve the quality of my work and edit a demo reel from my original to a DVD. The encoder in Premiere is not up to snuff because it has a lot of artifacts, even when using 2 pass VBR. I have to go to a professional post house to get a decent DVD but at least now I know how to give them as good a quality tape as I can.
Thanks
Eyal -
I use Canopus Pro Coder to generate my DVDs from the Premiere timeline. Quality is excellent.
The full version is a bit pricey, but adds a top level of quality above that available from the cheaper Express version.
I haven’t tried the built-in Premiere encoder for serious work because I already had the definitive converter.
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