[Jeanfr]

Premiere should not automatically modify the DV video you capture. If the video appears too dark, it probably only has to do with the way your computer displays it (overlay video). If you were to use an external monitor (or output it back to tape), you would see the video is identical to the original source. You might want to check if your video card lets you adjust the brightness of overlay video.

As for capturing the first 2 seconds of tape footage, have you tried capturing manually instead of batch capture? Batch capture isn’t recommended for the first 5 seconds, so I usually capture those manually. But the best advice is to always let the tape roll for a few seconds at the begining of the tape when you shoot.

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JF Robichaud
Low Budget Productions

[Jeanfr]

Craig and LLoyd already answered your question about inserting a clip, but in your post you also said that when you want to select all the clips from a certain point, you need to zoom out to do so. Instead of zooming out, just use the track selection tool, which selects all clips on the track from the point you click on. Hold shift to select clips from all tracks.

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JF Robichaud
Low Budget Productions

[Jeanfr]

There is an Horizontal Flip effect.

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JF Robichaud
Low Budget Productions

[Jeanfr]

Another way to open a seemingly corrupted project file is to start another project and import the old project into. This method could also have worked in this case.

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JF Robichaud
Low Budget Productions

[Jeanfr]

Indeed, Audio Automation is track-based, so the keyframes aren’t linked to the clips at all. If you want to realign the keyframes with the audio, you might have to choose “Show track keyframes” for that track and then select and move the keyframes manually.