[Vincent Rosati]

You should have sound.

Do you hear the audio, otherwise, during preview?

Check the project setting to see if audio is set to playback on DV hardware.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

“i purchased the camera from the US so when setting up my project will selecting NTSC make a real difference in quality as opposed to choosing PAL? ”
It is essential to set your project to the correct field order, based on that of your source material. If it’s not identified in the cams manual or on the companies website, download GSpot Codec Information Appliance and it will tell you.

“When I exported as AVI uncompressed it would’nt play back in windows media player why is this?”
That’s a mystery. Uncompressed video should play in Media Player. Again, open the clip with GSpot to see if it’s a codec issue.

“…what would my other
options be when capturing from my Sony VX1000 to better suite desktop video?”
If your cam records in DV you should capture in DV. Assuming you’re not dropping any frames during capture, it is a bit-for-bit prefect transfer.

Deinterlacing is as you suspect. The offset lines you see in the preview monitor (where there is motion, and when viewing at 100%) are the interlaced fields.
Deinterlacing is a process that turns you 60i or 50i (interlaced) footage into Progressive footage. Progressive ideal for desktop video.
Interlaced video is for CRT display, however note that DVD players will deinterlace when playing interlaced video on computer monitors, LCDs or Plasmas.
Interlaced video should never be resized, and if you need to add graphics or animations these should also be interlaced.
Deinterlacing adds a complicated step to your process, but it makes the footage easier to work with, in my opinion.

If you are doing a simple edit with no graphic overlays or animations it is absolutely fine to use interlaced footage for creating a DVD.

I think I’m rambling, sorry…

There are a number of techniques for deinterlacing, and they produce different results. You should search the COW archives for ‘deinterlace’.

For 1/4 Screen video (352×240, 320×240) you can deinterlace in Premiere by right clicking on the clip in the timeline and selecting Field Options/Always Deinterlace, than resize with Video Effect/Distort/Transform.
Reducing footage to 1/4 resolution effectively deinterlaces interlaced video on it’s own, but it’s sloppy, the results are much better if you actually deinterlace before scaling down.

For Full Screen video, there are a bunch of ways you can do it.
Leave it interlaced, as long as your not resizing anything and intend to make a DVD that will play on DVD hardware.
Deinterlace in Premiere or After Effects if the video is to be played at full resolution on Desktop.

Bitrates
That depends totally on you, as far as how much compression you are willing to accept.
I’d do some encoding tests on a 30-second clip that has a good deal of motion, until you get the ‘formula’ that works for you.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

I guess you are looking for some system optimizing for editing. Maybe update your profile to include your system specs.

Uninstall any software you don’t need from your OS.

Run antivirus and anti-spyware.

Are your clips in an editing format; Uncompressed, DV, HD, etc.
MPEG and other compression methods can cause preview to be slow or choppy.

An optimal setup is three drives:
1 – OS, Apps, Project Files
2 – Source Material
3 – Preview Files

Defragment all drives.

Disable preview on DV hardware, in the Premiere project.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

What codecs are used in the AVI? Try decompressing the file before import.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

How are you currently exporting?

To ‘retain’ quality, you would export as AVI/DV or AVI/Uncompressed.
Your project settings should match your source, which should also match your output – 720×480, 60i (29.97 fps interlaced, Lower Field First for NTSC) for instance.
There should be a project preset that matches your job.
If you use a custom project that is not for ‘DV Playback’ I’d recommend you set the Video Rendering compressor to None.

The intended workflow for DV is to edit, than export as a DVD-Video MPEG-2 file.

For getting the best picture out of DV source, in my opinion, is to deinterlace the clips in After Effects prior to editing in Premiere.
This is especially true if you intend to create desktop video.
There are deinterlacing solutions in Premiere, and plugins are also available.
Do you intend to output at full frame size, or will you be scaling down the frame?
Is your source interlaced?

For windows, WMV does a pretty good job, and it’s widely supported. You just need to find the best bitrates for your purpose.
For Mac, QuickTime MP4/h.264 is pretty nice.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

I’m in PP 1.5. I’m surprised that there is no effect in PP 6 that handles scaling..

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

The clip was probably scaled with the motion parameters, under the Effect Controls tab.

Look in the Project settings and uncheck ‘Scale clips…’. Than, reset the clip to 100%.

Use Video Effects/Distort/Transform to resize clips. It’s a bit more processor intensive, but it does a better job at scaling.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

Genuine Fractals

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

You could set the size to 500×500 in the Photoshop import dialogue, during import.

Or, Set the Illustrator file’s document size to 500×500 (File/Document Setup) than resize the art to fit.
You may need to go into Illustrator’s preferences and enable ‘Scale Strokes and Weights’, prior to scaling the art.
In Illustrator, depending on the actual art, you may be able to use the Transform tab to resize the art – Window/Transform.

Hope this helps.

Vince

[Vincent Rosati]

I dunno.. this doesn’t sound too good.

A VOB is a multiplexed MPEG-2 simply renamed as .VOB. That is to say, you can simply change the file extension of a .VOB to .MPG – but that’s of no use, I just thought I’d share.

It sounds like your solution has presented itself, however ugly, to use the preview files.
You might be better off decompressing your source and reediting if the project isn’t too complicated.

In the future I’d recommend you decompress the VOBs to Uncompressed AVI/PCM Audio, before import. I use AVS Video Converter to decompress all video files that are in a delivery format.

Sorry I don’t have a better answer. 🙁

Vince