[Jonathan Shohet]

Before you go along any further, you really should try capturing with HDVSplit.
https://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm
It’s free, reliable, and even has scene detect which CS4 doesn’t.
If the red frames/dropped frames appear also on the HDVSplit captures, then you can start the process of elimination – try capture with a different camera/deck, try capture to a different hard drive/computer, try replacing the firewire cable which may be faulty ect. ect.

[Jonathan Shohet]

This sounds like a firewall issue

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/629718?decorator=print&displayFullThread=true

Try disabling your firewall and see if the problem resolves. If so, check the above thread for the details about what Premiere and After Effects related processes to unblock.

Hope this helps

[Jonathan Shohet]

Since you mention ffdshow I’m assuming you are on windows.
I’ve found MeGUI and StaxRip to be the best x264 open source frontends on windows. FFCoder is another nice free GUI for x264 and FFMpeg.
Some people swear by Handbrake and Avidemux but I admit I’ve never found them particularly stable or efficient when I tried them. In any case, most open source software requires some patience and learning and may have some bugs to work around.
You could also visit VideoHelp.com for a very extensive list of audio/video software, both free and commercial.

[Jonathan Shohet]

CDex is a great open source CD ripper, and also supports connecting to CD Database (CDDB) if you want to tag mp3
https://cdexos.sourceforge.net/?q=features

[Jonathan Shohet]

A good option, which vince already suggested, is to archive the entire/trimmed project.

You can export to QT Photo Jpeg,or QT Motion Jpeg in .mov container.
Both are good options in terms of size and quality and Premiere can handle them on the PC.

If you want .avi you can use “Lagarith”
https://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html
It’s a lossless codec that will reduce file size considerably compared to uncompressed avi without any loss of quality.
Just remember you’ll have to install the codec on any PC machine you want to edit/play the avi on.

Also exporting as avi-dv for archiving is not such a bad idea if your original footage is also dv. Premiere will re-encode only parts of the timeline that have effects, transitions, titles, After effects compositions and so on. It’s an acceptable compromise if you are after simplicity and relatively small filesize.

[Jonathan Shohet]

If indeed the Premiere AVI export is good quality, it’s just a matter of encoding it to mpeg2 right… TMPEGEnc, Mainconcept Reference, and CCE are good options. HC Enc is also a high quality option and is freeware, but you’ll need AviSynth for it, and to encode audio seperately.
Obviously the extra re-encoding step After Effects->Premiere->DV->Mpeg2 will reduce quality, regardless of the 4:3 to 16:9 issues, so the debugmode option is worth a shot. Or you can export as AVI uncompressed/Lagarith Lossless codec instead of AVI DV.

[Jonathan Shohet]

Not a CS4/MPEG Pro HD user, but I’ve just seen the update you were wishing for is out now, so here’s a heads-up

https://www.mainconcept.com/site/prosumer-products-4/mpeg-pro-hd-4-22464/update.html

[Jonathan Shohet]

“pre-compose should really work like a pre-render and because it is not, for what ever bizarre reason, then there should be a pre-render option as well”

I’m not sure I follow you on that one…
You can do that by going to the “Composition” menu and selecting “Pre-render”.
However, pre-rendering is effectively exactly the same as rendering, something you said you did not want to do, to conserve time and disk-space.
The difference between Rendering and Pre-rendering is that in the latter AE automatically applies a post-render action to import the resulting render and replace usage of the rendered composition in the project with it.

[Jonathan Shohet]

Even though the frame blending layer switch is disabled in case of a pre-composed layer, if you the enable frame blending layer switch in the original composition containing footage, it will keep this setting when nested. You need of-course to enable the master frame blending switch for the composition as well.

Also, I would also suggest you use “interpert footage” on the original image sequence in the project panel with a higher frame-rate if you want it to run faster. Frame blending sped-up footage could result in some pretty funky/horrible results…

[Jonathan Shohet]

Make sure you try VOB2MPG as well, if you haven’t already. It converts VOB to MPG without re-encoding the video stream itself, and there is a free version.

https://www.svcd2dvd.com/VOB2MPG/default.aspx

VirtualDubMOD could be a free alternative to TMPGenc if you want to covert to AVI uncompressed. It’s less wizardy friendly gui though.