This lesson describes how to capture and import video from your camcorder and other devices for editing in Adobe Premiere Elements, and introduces the following key concepts:
• Connecting a camcorder to your PC
• Capturing video from a DV/HDV camcorder
• Using the Video Importer to import video from a Flip, AVCHD, or DVD camcorder; digital still camera; DVD; smart phone; or other similar device
• Importing audio, video, or still images from your hard drive into a Premiere Elements project
This lesson will take approximately 1 hour.
When videographers and video enthusiasts started editing video on computers, the typical source was an analog camcorder. Today, while some Premiere Elements users still shoot analog video, most will start with DV or HDV source footage, AVCHD, video shot with a digital still camera or digital Single Lens Reflex camera (DSLR), or even video imported from a previously created DVD.
Whatever the source, Premiere Elements includes all the tools necessary to capture or import your footage so you can begin producing movies. Although the specific technique will vary depending on the source, Premiere Elements guides your efforts with device-specific interfaces. All you have to do is connect the device to your computer as described in this lesson, and choose the appropriate icon from Get Media view in the Organize workspace.
Premiere Elements has two basic interfaces for capturing or importing video. After a quick overview of these interfaces, this lesson will detail how to capture video from a tape-based camcorder and then explain how to import content from an AVCHD camcorder or any other device that stores video on a hard drive, on CompactFlash media (such as an SD card), or on optical media. All the concepts in this section and the specific Premiere Elements features that support them are described in more detail in the Premiere Elements User Guide.
Premiere Elements lets you add video, audio, graphics, and still images to your project from numerous sources. In addition to capturing footage, you can import image, video, and audio files stored on your computer’s hard drive, card readers, mobile phones, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, CDs, digital cameras, other devices, or the Internet.
When you shoot video, it’s stored locally on your camcorder, whether on tape, SD media, a hard drive, or even an optical disc like a DVD. Before you can edit your movie in Premiere Elements, you must transfer these clips to a local hard drive. In addition to capturing or importing video from a device, you may have existing content on your hard drive to import into a project.
Premiere Elements provides three interfaces for accomplishing captures and imports. If you’re capturing video footage from a tape-based camcorder, such as a DV or HDV model, or live from a webcam, you’ll use the Capture panel.
If you’re importing video clips from a hard drive, flash media, or optical media, you’ll use the Video Importer. Again, to open the appropriate interface, just connect your device and click the appropriate icon in Get Media view in the Organize workspace; Premiere Elements will do the rest.
If the audio, video, or still image files are already on your computer’s hard drive, click the PC Files and Folders icon in Get Media view in the Organize workspace, navigate to the files, and select them as you normally would. Details concerning this procedure are at the end of this lesson.
If you’re capturing from a DV or HDV camcorder, or a webcam, you’ll use the Capture panel, which you access by clicking Organize, Get Media and then the source that you’ll be capturing from. This lesson will discuss some preliminary concepts relating to these devices and then detail the procedure.
The simplest way to capture DV or HDV video is to connect the camcorder to a computer with an IEEE 1394 port. Premiere Elements supports a wide range of DV devices and capture cards, making it easy to capture DV source files.
Some DV and HDV camcorders also have USB 2.0 ports. USB 2.0 is a high-speed transfer protocol similar to IEEE 1394. When present on a DV/HDV camcorder, the USB 2.0 connector is typically used for transferring to the computer only digital still images rather than tape-based video shot by the camcorder. When both connectors are present, use the IEEE 1394 connector for video capture.
Although it’s extremely rare, sometimes when connecting your computer to your camcorder via an IEEE 1394 connector, an electrical charge from the computer can damage the camcorder. To minimize this risk, always turn off both devices before capture, connect the IEEE 1394 cable, turn on your computer, and then turn on the camcorder.
How to connect your DV camcorder to your computer
Most DV/HDV camcorders have a four-pin IEEE 1394 connector, whereas most computers have a larger, six-pin connector. Note, however, that some computers—particularly notebooks—may also have a four-pin IEEE 1394 connector. When purchasing an IEEE 1394 cable, make sure it has the appropriate connectors.
Note that most recent Macintosh computers have 9-pin IEEE 1394b 800 connectors rather than 4- or 6-pin IEEE 1394a 400 connectors. To connect your camcorder to these Macs, you’ll need an IEEE 1394b–to-IEEE 1394a adapter, which typically costs less than $15 or so.
If you’re capturing from a webcam or WDM Device (Windows)/Webcam (Mac OS), Premiere Elements will capture the video from the USB 2.0 connector used to connect the device to your computer.
When you capture video from a tape or live source, you have multiple capture options, including whether to capture audio and video, capture to the Timeline, and split scenes. Let’s briefly discuss each option before working through the capture process.
By default, Premiere Elements captures audio and video when capturing a clip. You can change this default in the Capture Settings dialog that appears in the Capture panel, which opens after you select your video source. In the top line of the dialog, Video and Audio are selected by default. To capture only audio, deselect the Video check box. To capture only video, deselect the Audio check box.
Note that you can easily remove either the audio or video portion of the captured clip during editing. Unless you’re absolutely certain that you won’t use either the audio or the video, capture both and remove the undesired media during editing.
The Capture to Timeline option automatically inserts all captured clips into the My Project panel. By default, this option is selected. If you’d prefer to manually drag all clips to the My Project panel, deselect this option.
During capture, Premiere Elements can split the captured video into scenes, which makes it much easier to find and edit the desired content. Premiere Elements can use one of two scene-detection techniques to detect scenes: Timecode-based and Content-based.
Timecode-based scene detection is available only when capturing DV source video. As the name suggests, this technique uses timecodes in the video to break the capture clips into scenes. Specifically, when you record DV, your camcorder automatically records a time/date stamp when you press Stop or Record. During capture, Premiere Elements creates a new scene each time it detects a new time/date stamp and creates a separate video file on your hard drive for each scene.
Content-based scene detection, which is your only option for HDV or webcam videos, analyzes the content after capture to identify scene changes. For example, if you shot one scene indoors and the next outdoors, Premiere Elements would analyze the video frames and detect the new scene.
When detecting scenes using Content-based scene detection, Premiere Elements stores only one video file on your hard drive and designates the scenes in the Organize and Edit workspaces. After capture, while scanning the captured video for scene changes, Premiere Elements displays a status panel describing the operation and apprising you of its progress.
During capture, Premiere Elements defaults to Timecode-based scene detection for DV source video and defaults to Content-based scene detection for HDV and webcam-based videos. I suggest leaving Scene Detect enabled during video capture and using these defaults. To change these defaults in the Capture panel (which you’ll learn how to open shortly), do the following:
When capturing clips, device control refers to the ability to control the operation of a connected video deck or camcorder using controls within the Premiere Elements interface rather than using the controls on the connected device. This mode of operation is more convenient because Premiere Elements offers controls like Next Scene or Shuttle that may not be available on your camcorder’s controls.
You probably know most of these controls because they’re similar to your camcorder or VCR. You may not be familiar with the Shuttle control, which you can drag with your pointer to the left or right to rewind or fast-forward the video. This control is position-sensitive; the farther you drag the shuttle widget from the center, the faster the tape fast-forwards or rewinds. The Previous Scene and Next Scene controls use Timecode-based scene detection to advance backwards or forwards to the previous or next scenes.
Premiere Elements should be able to establish device control with all DV and HDV camcorders, but it’s not available when capturing from webcams, WDM Device (Windows)/Webcam (MacOS), or analog camcorders. You can still capture video from these sources without device control, but the capture procedure is slightly different. Procedures for capturing with and without device control are detailed in the following section.
With the preceding information in this lesson as a prologue, let’s look at the process for capturing video via Premiere Elements’ Capture panel.
This exercise assumes that a DV camera has been successfully connected to your computer and that you have footage available to capture. If this is not the case, you can still open the Capture panel to review the interface; however, you will not be able to access all the controls.
The Capture panel appears. Note that if you’re capturing from videotape, your preview screen will be black until you actually start to play the video.
If your DV camera is connected but not turned on, your Capture panel will display Capture Device Offline in the status area. Although it is preferable to turn on your camera before launching Premiere Elements, in most cases turning on your camera at any point will bring it online.
When capturing DV and webcam footage, you will see video in the Preview area of the Capture panel. When capturing HDV, you won’t see any video in the Preview area and will have to watch the LCD screen on your camcorder to determine when to stop capture.
When capturing without device control, use the camcorder’s playback controls to navigate to a position about 20 seconds before the first scene you want to capture. Click Play, and about 10 seconds before the actual scene appears, click the Capture button (). Premiere Elements will start capturing the video. Capture the desired scenes, and about 10 seconds after the last target frame, click the Pause button () to stop capture.
If you receive the error message “Recorder Error — frames are dropped during capture,” or if you’re having problems with the device control, it’s likely that your hard drive is not keeping up with the transfer of video. Make sure you’re capturing your video to the fastest hard drive available, for example, an external IEEE 1394 drive rather than a hard drive inside a laptop computer.
As mentioned at the start of this lesson, you will use Premiere Elements’ Video Importer to import video clips from Flip, AVCHD, and DVD-based camcorders, as well as smart phones with video cameras. You’ll also use Video Importer to import videos from non-copy protected DVDs and to import photos from digital still cameras and phones. In essence, if the video is stored on a hard drive, SD card, optical disc, or other storage media other than tape, you’ll import it with the Video Importer.
In this exercise you’ll use the Video Importer to import video from an AVCHD camcorder. If you don’t have an AVCHD camcorder, you can follow along using video captured on a digital still camera, DVD camcorder, or mobile phone, or even a nonencrypted DVD, such as one that you’ve previously produced with Premiere Elements. Note that Premiere Elements will not import video from DVDs that are encrypted, such as most Hollywood DVD titles.
This connection procedure will vary by device: Some AVCHD camcorders require that you set the camcorder to PC mode before connecting the USB 2.0 cable, others the reverse. Generally, when working with a camcorder that writes to removable SD cards or other CompactFlash media, it’s easiest to remove the media and use an appropriate card reader to transfer the clips. Please check the documentation that came with your camcorder for additional details.
The Video Importer opens.
When you import a DVD using the Video Importer, files for menus are distinguished from video files by the word Menu, as in Menu_Epgc_Esf_938876809.psd.
Once you choose the drive or device, Premiere Elements will populate the Video Importer with thumbnails of all available video and still image files.
• To save files to the default location—which is the location where you previously stored files captured by the Video Importer—leave the location unchanged.
• To specify a new location for saving the files, click the folder icon to open the Browse for Folder window (Windows)/Open (MacOS) dialog and choose a folder, or click Make New Folder (Windows)/New Folder (MacOS) to create a new folder.
• Optionally, Premiere Elements saves imported files to one or more subfolders with multiple naming options.
• To create a single folder with a name of your choice, select Custom Name from the Create Subfolder(s) menu and enter the name of the folder in the text box that appears.
Files that you import using the Video Importer appear in the Organize workspace, as well as Project view in the Edit workspace.
Follow this procedure to import audio, video, or still-image content that’s already on your hard drive.
Premiere Elements opens the Add Media panel.
Files that you import using the Add Media dialog appear in the Organize workspace, as well as in Project view in the Edit workspace.
1. How do you access the Capture panel in Premiere Elements?
2. Why is having a separate hard drive dedicated to video a good idea?
3. What is Scene Detect, and how would you turn it on or off if you wanted to?
4. What is the Video Importer, and when would you use it?
1. Click Get Media from the Organize Workspace, and then click the appropriate capture icon.
2. Video files take up large amounts of space compared to standard office and image files. A hard drive stores the video clips you capture and must be fast enough to store your video frames. Although office-type files tend to be fairly small, they can clutter a hard drive when scattered throughout the available space; the more free, defragmented space you have on a hard drive, the better the performance of real-time video capture will be.
3. Scene Detect is Premiere Elements’ ability to detect scene changes in your video (based on timecode or by content) during video capture and save each scene as an individual clip in your project. You can select or deselect Scene Detect by Timecode and Scene Detect by Content in the Capture panel menu.
4. The Video Importer is a feature of Premiere Elements that enables you to import media from AVCHD camcorders, digital still cameras, mobile phones and players, and DVDs, whether from a camcorder or PC DVD driver.
5. Device control is the ability of Premiere Elements to control the basic functions of your digital video camera (such as play, stop, and rewind) through the interface in the Capture panel. It’s available on most DV and HDV camcorders.