[John Millns]

Thank you. I was aware that Pinnacle Studio didn’t actually ‘split’ the scenes, it just produces marker tabs for Studio to simulate the effect. Otherwise, it may have been possible to import any resultant split output files into Premiere. In contrast AvCutty does split the AVI file into scenes (losslessly), so they can be imported directly into Premiere.

[John Millns]

I have finally found some software called ‘AV Cutty’, that will do this as well as the Pinnacle Studio 15 import/capture facility. In fact it is potentially better, as there is far more control over the scene splitting settings.
The key point is that it is lossless and allows you to produce a separate AVI file for each scene, without messing up the quality.

I ran it on a 20min avi (at the default settings) and then compared it with the Studio 15 scene detection: AVCutty produced 41 scenes, very close to the 39 from Studio 15.
It can also be used while capturing, but I haven’t tried this as yet.

There was no problem importing and using these files with Prem Pro CS5.5. So at long last, I can use CS5.5 to edit long AVI files without spending a very long time splitting scenes manually.

See: https://www.freevideoworkshop.com/freewareavcutty.htm

[John Millns]

Thanks for that suggestion, which I have just finished studying. Unfortunately, I get the impression that this would not be as quick and easy to use as the scene detection systems in consumer editors, which will also deal with imported files.

I was hoping to get away from the need to run two editing systems and upgrade to Premiere Pro CS5.5 for everything and use the Matrox MX02 mini for the interface. I thought the MX02 mini would definitely have optical/content scene detection, as it is designed to include analogue capture. But I cannot find any reference to it in the user manual.

It seems ironic that my old semi-pro Pinnacle DV500/Prem Pro 6 set up, that I still use for analogue capture, had these scene detection facilities in 2002, which are still not standard features on pro editors now.

[John Millns]

Thanks for the info. I confess that I am a little disappointed that Premiere still doesn’t have a facility to optically detect scenes while capturing, or on imported files, particularly as this available on most consumer editors, including the Windows version. A pity, as there is still a great deal of analogue video that needs to be digitised, edited and transferred to to DVD before the tapes deteriorate too far.
I tried Scenalyzer and found it rather over does it, detecting even minor changes as new scenes, even on the least sensitive setting and again, it cannot import avi files and detect scenes.