[Mbelli]

All I can tell you is this, when I leave the deinterlace box unchecked, my WMV files look like garbage. They are soft and poor in quality. When I check the deinterlace box (on the top right hand corner) I get excellent WMV clips. In fact Windows Media video’s look as good as the ones I get using Canopus Procoder.

When it comes to Quicktime, I’ve had problems with PP2 such as super slow encoding times and crashing. So, I don’t do Quicktime with it and leave that up to Procoder.

[Mbelli]

The idiots at Adobe didn’t have enought foresight to include a 30p preset so this question gets asked all the time and we’re forced tro spend time trying to figure out what to do!!!

You have to tweak and create your own and so there’s a margin of error there. As we’re moving right now to LCD, Plasma and DLP TV’s there’s no excuse not to have included a 30p template.

[Mbelli]

Thanks for the links guys, if anyone else has experiences with good stock music/fx libraries and highly recommend someone, please post.

Also, if anyone can recommend a good CD collection, especially for wooshes, hits and transition effects, I’d appreciate it.

[Mbelli]

I don’t understand the fascination of editing on a laptop. They’re fine for word processing, data management, the Web and to play a game or watch a DVD but what kind of serious editing are you really going to do with one. Unless you had a job where you had to edit in your hotel room while travelling, I don’t get it basing a good editing workstation around one.

Even on my dual core Intel PC (with a huge amount of RAM and a SATA RAID), a 24″ wide screen monitor, an NTSC monitor I could use more when I’m running PP2, AE and Photoshop, or just PP2 with the titler, scopes or mixer.

I know it’s cool to edit on a laptop, but also consider a small miniPC or mini motherboard system fast enough to cut DV (no external drives needed).

[Mbelli]

I find those hard to use because they have movement keyframes but they also dictate the frame size for you, if you adjust the size then the effect looks strange with the frame being too much in or too much out.

I was hoping that there was only “motion presets”, that is I create a window say 320×240, now I need it to fly in, twirl in — whatever, I don’t want the preset to change the PinP size.

This to be honest with you is an area I don’t understand why programmers make so difficult for you. Why can’t I create a piece of text to my liking (size, color, font) and then select from a long list of in/out effects and call it a night? Or the same with a PinP.

Also, as much as I like Premiere it’s really bare in the effects department, really, they should have a lot more motion presets and stuff like page peels, windows flying in and so forth — they have some, but really could use a lot more.

[Mbelli]

Don’t you just hate that??? PC prices lower so quickly. Plus, there’s always something better and faster only a few months away.

[Mbelli]

There’s stuff I don’t like about PP2 but I’m not sure you’re being fair to the program.

There’s a big difference between PP2 and 1.5, I don’t know why you’d have the expectation that it will convert successfully for you old prpject files. Can’t you finish those projects on 1.5 and start from scratch on PP2. I mean the time you’re wasting converting, fixing titles and learning a new program on a job — could be spent actually editing in 1.5 and finishing your projects much faster.

Most NLE apps which go through major updates, could have significant problems importing older projects, not just PP2. These programs aren’t word processors, they now author DVD’s, have heavy duty titling and mixing consoles — how many links to offline and online media files would PP2 or P 1.5 have in a normal half hour program (lots, so lot’s can happen if there’s an import problem on any one link).

Comforming audio is done by most PC NLE programs but PP2’s ability to do it in the background, while you can still be working is great. My version of Edius doesn’t allow that (I have to wait for the waveforms to refresh all the time and can’t work on anything else.)

Anyhow, best of luck, hope you are able to convert successfully, but again, if it’s taking you a long time to correct PP2 import problems, really consider returning to 1.5 (if it’s not to late) to finish.

[Mbelli]

It’s cool when people put the time to give their PC specs, especially when they’re getting great results. I can’t tell you how often through the years I’ve come here to find out what computers people are using successfully for NLE. I never get tired of seeing such posts cause they help so many. It’s a drag to spend a lot of money (and time) on a new system and then getting lots of problems!!!

[Mbelli]

Disk Keeper is excellent and I highly recommend it as well. Just be careful with external drives such as USB and those in firewire enclosures. On those my version of Disk Keeper seems to think they need to be defragmented every 5-minutes and once it trashed one of my USB drives. On my internal drives, it works flawlessly.

Disk Keeper is also much faster than the Windows defrager, I also used to reformat my drives before starting new projects and stuff, but Disk Keeper defrags so fast, plust SATA drives are fast to begin with — that although I still do that at times, I don’t do it quite as often.

In my opinion, defraging should be done on a Windows PC, don’t know why Mac’s and Final Cut don’t need defraging though. You should have multiple drives as well for NLE, I have a Windows drive, a drive for my DATA, a drive for cache and TMP files and another huge drive for VIDEO. Every so often I format my VIDEO drive entirely and scan thoroughly for disc errors. I also backup with TrueImage and have a few Lacie external drives for project backup. Wish I could get PP2 project manager to trim for archiving but it chokes on most of my complex and longer timelines.

[Mbelli]

I never just copy the VOB and rename it. I normally run AnyDVD in the BG at all times, so if a DVD is copy protected I don’t have a problem (of course, I have usage rights from my client for the DVD). I convert to AVI with DVD2AVI and don’t if I can avoid it, import MPEG to PP2’s timeline. DVD2AVI gives me various demuxing audio options and allows me to select an appropriate video codec, I usually go with uncompressed AVI. Often the video and audio tracks are split as AC3 is converted to WAV, so I re-sync in PP2.

For tricky DVD’s the don’t seem to work with the above method (sometimes DVD2AVI) crashed, I just plug in my DVD Player to my DSR-20 and transfer to DVCAM and digitize. This won’t work if you have copy protection on the DVD as you are usually going through s-video (90% of the DVD’s I work with don’t really have any copy protection). Althought this method is not totally digital, the quality’s pretty good if your DVD original is of good quality.