Super 8 Movies

[stevek1]

I have a large collection of Super 8 (Film) movies that were converted to Mini DV recently. I converted it from Mini DV (digital) to 720x480 .AVI format.

Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?

The movies will be burned to a DVD and the very highest quality is important.

Thank you

[ATR]

Steve1

I need some clarification on what you did and what you have. I know what Super8 is, but I am not clear what you did with it.

First let us get this question out of the way, what version of Premiere Elements do you have?

How did you accomplish the Super8(analog) to digital conversion?

You say that you converted Super8 to mini DV. Do you mean that, with an analog digital converter involved, you recorded your video to a mini DVD disc in DVD-VIDEO format?

You go on to say that you converted your mini DV to 720 x 480 .avi format. That needs explaining. Better I not give examples of what I mean, just tell me what you did and with what.

The native format of Premiere Elements Timeline is DV AVI where DV is the compression type and AVI is the wrapper. This format is characterized by a frame size of 720 x 480 with an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9. The file extension is .avi. From you description, I am not sure if your "720 x 480 .avi" is DV AVI. Just because a file has a file extension of .avi does not mean that it is a DV AVI type format. As I said, AVI is just the wrapper which can have different compressions, ex. AVI MPEG4, AVI Motion JPEG, etc.

I am assuming that this video is heading for DVD-VIDEO format on a DVD disc either standard or widescreen. Please look carefully to disc capacity and video time. If the space required/time exceeds the disc capacity, then the program try to fit the content in the available space by lowering the bitrate (sometimes called data rate). The lower this bitrate, the more the compression needed to fit content to disc, the lesser the quality of the end product. But, all this is getting ahead of ourselves.

I look forward to your details so that I can customize my suggestions to your specific situation.

ATR

[stevek1]

I purchased Premiere Elements 7, a couple of months ago and have a lot to learn.

CinePost created the "film transfer" via expensive professional equipment. CinePost did the project on Mini DV tapes.

http://www.posthouse.com/ (http://www.posthouse.com/)

I converted the Mini DV tapes (digital) to 720x480 .AVI format, using a Sony Camcorder and Sony's Vegas Platinum software. The files are very large. My largest file is 59 minute duration, and 13.1 Gigs

The collection is about 14 hours

I plan to do "post production", editing, sound track, etc,........ with the newly purchased software.

This major project will be extremely challenging and very time consuming. My wife wants me to burn it onto DVDs, (high quality) only. Clips-scenes can only be removed if they are bad or difficult to view. It's our intent to distribute the DVDs to family members.

I have a Dell Vostro 400, Intel Core2 Duo, 3.00GHz, 4GB Ram, Windows XP

[ATR]

Steve1

From the information that you supplied, it looks like you had your Super8 converted professionally to either QuickTime (.mov) or .avi which were recorded to miniDV tapes. Do you know which format?

I am assuming that the Sony camcorder was a miniDV camcorder. If so, instead of using the Sony software, why did you not just connect the Sony camcorder to your computer via Firewire for Capture directly into Premiere Elements 7? You say that your end product from the Sony software had a frame size of 720 x 480 and a file extension of .avi. When you did that export, was it as DV AVI?

Starters:

1. Since your source was analog, you cannot split the video into scenes during Capture in Premiere Elements 7 with Scene Detect by Timecode. You could explore Scene Detect by Content. Or, you could bring the video into the Timeline and trim it into clips in the Preview Window of Premiere Elements. We can go into how to save subclips later.

2. The another consideration that will prove useful is working with a large project in smaller chunks. To do that, you take a smaller section of your video, edit, etc. and then export (save) to a hard drive location as DV AVI. You continue to do the same, with a new project for each of the remaining sections, resulting in your video saved to the hard drive as many DV AVI videos. When ready, you open a new project, bring all the DV AVI on to the Timeline and continue to end product, ex. DVD-VIDEO format on a DVD disc.

3. The Premiere Elements project is a .prel file. You cannot open one .prel file and then try to import another project .prel file into it. So, the above technique proves very useful.

4. I would strongly urge you to do your homework with a mini project before starting the grand project. If you encounter a block, do not hesitate to post your questions.

Here are some classic FAQs that you might want to read:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bbe608f

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bc247e2

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b699a8

To be continued......

ATR

[stevek1]

The Super 8 film was transferred to MiniDV (Digital) tapes by CinePost. I used my Sony MiniDV Digital camcorder to transfer the tapes to an external hard drive.

CinePost suggested that I use Sony Vegas software to "capture" the digital tapes onto an external hard drive. They said not to use any freeware or shareware for best export results. The end result was a 720x480 with .AVI extension. My guess is that they are DV AVI.

Is there a difference in quality with the following two choices?

1. Firewire capture from Sony MiniDV Digital Camcorder directly into Premiere Elements 7

or.............

2. The above method I used.

Not sure if this means anything, most of the .avi extension files are 1536 kbps bit rate, and a few at 1024 kbps bit rate.

NTSC DV (720x480, 29.970 fps)

[ATR]

Steve1

I still have my doubts about what you have. As far as I know, the standard bitrate(data rate) for DV AVI is 3.6 MB(megabytes)/sec. According to my calculations that is about 29491 kbps(kilobits/sec). Maybe we could focus in on this point if:
1. You confirmed with CinePost what .avi format they recorded on those miniDV tapes (I think that it was probably DV AVI).
2. You let me know if you Captured to Sony Vegas, using your miniDV camcorder and a Firewire connection to the computer
3. What format you selected in Sony Vegas when you were doing this Capture (what were the Capture format options that it offered?)

I may seem to be laboring the point, but I was hoping that we would have any easy answer now to avoid problems later. If you play your video (from its hard drive location) in Windows Media Player, what does the quality look like? Why not get started with a mini practice run with Premiere Elements 7 and see what the video looks like in the Monitor of a newly open project.

Focus
1. Importing your video via Get Media/Files & Folders
2. Trimming Clips in Timeline
3. Saving Trimmed Clips as DV AVI (File Menu/Export/Movie) to later use in a new project where you combine the DV AVI compiled for the grand project.

To be continued.....

ATR

[ATR]

Add on....

After you consider your situation, it might be a good idea to try Capturing some of your video from the miniDV tapes to Premiere Elements via the miniDV Camcorder/Firewire and see what that looks like. It should be great.

ATR

[stevek1]

ATR,

I captured the video with firewire from the MiniDV tapes to Premiere Elements via the MiniDV Camcorder.

In fact, I also did the exact same thing by using the Sony Vegas software.

I saw no difference in quality, size of .avi file.

[ATR]

steve1

Thanks for the follow up. The news sounds great.

Now it is time to focus in on the trimming, followed by editing techniques.

Remember mini projects first before the grand project.

I will be watching for your progress.

ATR