[Cal Johnson]

Sounds like you are new to Premiere. Remember that while most NLE’s can perform the same tasks, they do it in different ways.
In Premiere Pro 2.0, you create a crossfade by first having two clips on the same video track, one behind the other. Next, select a transition from your “transitions” folder located in your Video Effects panel. Simply drag and drop the transition you want, in this case cross dissolve, and drop it on the cut that wish to create the transition at. You have three options, and the little icon that appears as you drag and drop reflects which option you are being presented with:
Begin at cut: the transition starts at the cut. This means that all of the first clip will be seen in its entirety, and the dissolve will take place over the beginning of the second clip.
Center at cut: the transition will take place equally over both clips (you’ll lose a little of the end of the first clip and a little of the beginning of the second).
End at cut: the transition will take place over the end of the first clip, and the second clip will be seen in its entirety starting from the cut point.

It’s important to remember that you need to have additional head and tail footage for your clip if you don’t want Premiere to repeat frames. If you’re trying to do a dissolve right at the beginning or end of a clip, so the beginning or end CAPTURE point, you will end up having repeated frames as Premiere has to create frames to complete the transition.

You can set any transition as the default just by right hand mouse clicking on a transition and selecting “set as default”.

Intially, you might find the process a little tricky, but once you get used to it and start working with transitions using the Effect Control Panel, you’ll realize that its very flexible and you can easily set your transitions up exactly the way you want. Way better than “plop and drop” software that has limited options for tweeking.

[Cal Johnson]

I just started playing around with trying to modify/create custom templates too (a friend of mine was asking how to do it). Doesn’t seem easy or straight forward. However, what is easy and straight forward is to make your own menus in Encore. Just wanted to say that Encore is really easy to use, its not a heavy, in-depth program that you have to spend months learning. I took a few days to go through it, and found it pretty simple to create great looking menus quickly now, even if I haven’t used the program for a few weeks, its easy to remember. I know this isn’t much help for those out there with only Premiere to work with, but if you’ve got Encore, you’ll find it much easier to make your own menus. I notice that Premiere Pro CS3 is going to include an integrated version of Encore, so that should make the work flow that much easier.

[Cal Johnson]

Are you trying to capture right at the head of the tape? The error message you’re getting usually comes up when you are trying to capture too close to the begining of the tape, or where the time code begins. Premiere needs a certain amount of head room in front of the portion you are trying to capture, so that the tape can get up to speed. I believe it also needs to read the time code as well. So if you’re trying to capture either right at the begining of the tape, or right where the time code starts, you’ll get the error message. You’re pretty much forced to set a “in” point further along in your tape, so that Premiere can get the tape up to speed and capture. Try just resetting your “in” point 1 sec later, and see if you can capture, and keep resetting a second further at a time until Premiere is able to capture the clip.

Not that it helps you now, but the following will ensure you don’t have this problem again:

-record 30 seconds bars & tone at the start of any new tape.
-“stripe” your tape; in other words, record the entire tape just black (with the lens cap on or whatever) so that you now have continous time code throughout the entire tape’s duration.
-record at least 5 seconds of “lead time” before every shot.
-if you are using a camera such as Canon’s XL2, utilize the “end search” feature. This will cause the camera to search for the end of the last shot, and ensure that you record continous time code. Many high end cameras have this feature. Its a button you push and then the camera finds the end of the last shot for you (really helpful feature).

[Cal Johnson]

From the sounds of it, you haven’t lost the edit decisions you made at all. Premiere is just asking you where the missing files are.
So if I understand your situation correctly, this should be the procedure:
-hook up your new hard drive to your computer that has all the copied files, or skip this if you’ve already copied the files to an internal hard drive on your computer.
-open up your Premiere project, and you should get a dialogue box asking “where is …. file?”. Simply navigate to where the missing file is, and find the missing file Premiere is asking for, then hit “OK”.
-Premiere will now look in the same location for all of the other missing files. If you have your files all in one folder, Premiere will find all the missing files the first time round, and the project will open with the new links established. If you have your files in multiple folders, you will have to repeat the procedure for each folder, directing Premiere to the missing file each time, until all the missing files have been located.
-when you’re done, don’t forget to SAVE your project, otherwise when you go to open up the project again, you’ll have to re-establish all the links all over again.
-Premiere does have the ability to produce a basic edit decision list, or “EDL”, that will tell you what clips were used where.

[Cal Johnson]

I don’t know for a fact that upgrading is the only option, its just that I don’t have the 6.5 software any more, so I can’t test things out, but from what I remember using the Alpha Key was how I used to do it. Hey, if at all possible start getting into After Effects. Its a much better way to produce graphics and titles, and far more flexible for compositing. I use it a lot. In fact, one of my past “editing” projects in Premiere was just dropping 9 mov’s into the timeline, and adding some music. The mov’s were all composited in After Effects. Great program.

[Cal Johnson]

Premiere 6 eh? Well, its been a long time since I used that version, but of what I remember you’re stuck with the good ole’ Alpha Key effect or whatever it was. Premiere Pro 2 does recognize alpha channels, maybe time to upgrade?

[Cal Johnson]

Its a good question. I think one of the things you have to consider is how you are going to market the video, and who’s going to be buying it. For example, let’s say you are creating a “beginners” yoga DVD, and you have very specific ideas on what will be demostrated and the narration, all you need is a competent instructor who will perform the excercises you already have laid out. Maybe the instructor isn’t even going to talk, you’ll add a voice over later, so you just need someone to show how the moves are done. You’ll put them in the right order, in post along with little explanations that will help a beginner. Well, for that, I’d think the “flat fee” idea would be the way to go.
However, let’s say you’re hiring someone who is not only an “expert” but is renown as a great instructor, and has an awesome program that they have worked out. They’ll be explaining all of the movements as they go through them, and its basically a DVD of a routine that they have developed and has proven very successful. In this case, you would probably want to have some kind of royalty worked out. This might be a good relationship anyways, as they may help you market and promote your video, maybe selling it at classes, if they are going to share in the profits.

[Cal Johnson]

Ok, I see. I use Camtasia, and edit right there in the ap. I understand the whole transparency thing, I’ve used After Effects for years. I just thought it would be more efficient to edit the recording in Camtasia, which I’ve done and had really good results. I assumed that people were using their screen capture ap to produce the final video, but if they cutting it in another editing application, that’s a different story. Thanks for the insight.

[Cal Johnson]

Marco, could you tell me how? Thanx.

[Cal Johnson]

Could you guys flesh out the issue a little more? I’m really puzzled as to what the problem is… I don’t quite understand as to the how, what or why you would bring a Premiere project into After Effects. Also, if the dynamic link 2 way flow is the only issue holding you back, what other aps are you considering that do allow you to go back and forth?