[Tom Prigge]

I know just enough to be dangerous, so if I get something wrong, someone please chime in and correct me.

First of all, transfer via Firewire won’t work with a PC. You’ll have to go USB. Premiere Pro reads P2 files natively, that is, no transcoding. Does Elements also read natively? If so, treat your P2 files as you would any computer data. But I really suggest using P2 Viewer, software designed for getting footage off the camera and into the computer. It’s free and available for download from Panasonic. Not sure if it will transcode, which brings me to my last point.

If Elements does not read P2 natively, then you’ll need to transcode. Someone else will have to help you with that because I use PPro and don’t have to transcode.

Wahtever you do, DO NOT mess with the folder and file structure on the P2 cards. Do not delete anything, do not change any file’s or folder’s name. Doing so will render your data unusable.

[Tom Prigge]

You mentioned Camtasia being out of your budget for this project. They do have a trial download, I believe.

I use Camtasia quite a bit. Works great.

[Tom Prigge]

Could this maybe be the exposure zebras?

[Tom Prigge]

Actually, I think a better analogy would be did the typewriter make more people literate. Not sure if that is true or not. For the purposes of the point I was making, try this: The advent of computers and word processors created more people who could type. Back in the day, a corner office executive couldn’t use a typewriter. Today, everyone, including the corner office executive, can type. Some even type their own letters, or at least, their own e-mails.

Perhaps these exec’s letters and e-mails are not as professionally formatted and checked for grammar, etc. as in previous generations, but they’re good enough and the process is much faster. When it comes to video, for some–not all–clients good enough is, well, good enough. Cheaper too. I just believe that that attitude, along with inexpensive tools, will eventually force a lot of video pros to find other work. What can we do to make sure we continue in this business? Well, that’s up for discussion. Which is why I brought it up. I think it’s something that needs to be discussed and addressed.

[Tom Prigge]

I don’t really have a dog in the Legacy vs X brouhaha. I used FCP at a TV station I once worked at, and now use Premiere Pro. My interest in the postings since X’s release have more to do with how X will fundamentally change the video business. Not high end Hollywood stuff, but the bread and butter corporate and local work done in flyover country. And I think Bill Davis’ post about his quick turnaround is a harbinger of what is going to happen to this segment of the industry.

Do you remember when there were print shops galore everywhere? Along came desktop publishing, which got easier and cheaper as the years passed. Who needed a print shop to design, lay out, and print low end flyers, business cards, or the like, when a secretary with MS Publisher or some other low cost software could do it?

So, a client sees you in his boardroom cut something together quickly and asks what software you’re using. It won’t take clients long to realize that for $300 they can have the same software. And after all, the software does all the work, right? The IT guy now becomes the video guy. Or that twenty-something kid just hired in accounting can do it. He’s posted a lot of stuff to YouTube, so he knows what he is doing.

And you can’t beat the cost. Per hour charges in different locales vary of course, but how quickly will a company get back their money on an investment in $300 software? Quickly. There are, of course, inexpensive NLEs, many in the Windows world. But what the wide world perceives as professionals do not use them for paying work. And those other NLEs don’t have the Apple cachet.

So, to pretend I’m Alvin Toffler, I see X as the first step in depleting the ranks of those who make a living making video. Cameras keep getting cheaper and cheaper and now the NLE has caught up with them. Desktop publishing put a lot of print shops out of business. Desktop video—CHEAP desktop video—will do the same thing to our business.

As Dennis Miller says, of course, I could be wrong.

[Tom Prigge]

Perhaps I did something wrong on my first experiment. I tried another experiment. I know the spanned clip started on card 1 and finished on card 2. When I copied the data to folders on my hard drive–one folder for card 1 and another folder for card 2–the spanned clip ended up on the folder for card 2. Would that be correct?

[Tom Prigge]

Many thanks, Noah. I wonder if folks really appreciate the Cow and folks like who help us poor, lost souls out. I have one less thing to worry about. Now, all I have to worry about is the sound, the lighting, the power, etc. etc.

[Tom Prigge]

Noah,

Thank you for letting me know that my workflow looks correct. I’m still concerned about a clip possibly spanning the cards. When I do all this copying over, will there be just a single file structure or separate structures for each card? If there are separate structures, then I have to assume that the P2 viewer software will stitch them together.

[Tom Prigge]

Addendum: Okay, I just heard the tape transport move and I got the door closed. Now I can open and shut the outer door, but I can’t get the tape transport to come up. It came up once, I closed it, shut off the camera, turned it back on again, got the outer door open, but no tape transport.

Maybe I should just stick to P2 cards!

[Tom Prigge]

I exported to an uncompressed AVI–let it render overnight–but the resulting file was 107 gigabytes. Yeah, GIGAbytes. I promptly deleted it. If Lagarith is uncompressed, I’m afraid it too will result in an unwieldy file. Worth a try. Thanks for the suggestion. I found a link for it and will try it.

Still, I wonder why Premiere is only seeing a tiny bit of the AVI I fed it.