Workflow for editing 16:9 files from a DVD camcorder?

[wenglish98027]

I (regrettably) need to edit some video that came from a DVD camcorder. It's on a mini DVD, and has been finalized (it will play on my DVD player and on my PC). It was shot in 16:9, so when I started Premiere I selected 16:9 aspect ratio.

Premiere Elements 3 crashes when I try to Get Media from: the DVD, so instead I copied the full contents of the DVD to my hard drive, and dragged the VTS_01_1.VOB into Premiere.

In Premiere's preview window it is obviously 4:3 (picture tall skinny cowboys riding off into the sunset). When I save to AVI and play it in Windows Media Player 10, the image is still compressed on the horizontal axis, and Windows Media Player 10 says the aspect ratio is "4:3 actual, 16:9 displayed".

Ultimately I would like to be able to use this material both for editing in Premiere and to send it to my DV camcorder as an archive. It would be nice to retain timestamps, but I assume they are long gone with the original conversion to MPEG2 in the camcorder.

Any suggestions on the best way to handle this?

Thanks ... Mike

[Briantho]

I had all sorts of problems with my 16:9 showing as 4:3. When I posted my problems on the User-to-User forum last December, Paul LS wrote:

"The project files from Premiere Elements are XML and can be edited with a standard editor.
Do a search and replace from:
<PixelAspectRatio>768,720</PixelAspectRatio>
to
<PixelAspectRatio>1024,720</PixelAspectRatio>
This is the changes for PAL. Or are you NTSC?? You also have to clear the rendered files afterwards (from the menu select Timeline>Delete Render Files).
Oh yes, also probably best to backup the .prel file first."

For me that worked perfectly but for NTSC there might be another similar magic number involved. Anyway, that should get you going in the right direction.

[Paul LS]

As you say you need to select the 16:9 project settings. Then when the video is in the PE3 Media Bin right click on it. Then select Interpret Footage, then select Conform To and select the widescreen option. The clip will then appear as 16:9 in the timeline/monitor.

[wenglish98027]

Thanks Briantho & Paul LS. Interpret footage seems to do the trick.

Any hope of rescuing the date stamps? (I have a feeling they never make it off the camera except in the form of the menu page the camera puts on the DVD when it finalizes it).

Mike

[Paul LS]

Ummm, dont know about getting the date stamp from a DVD camcorder. Sorry.

[Chuck Engels]

Check the Camcorder documentation, there may be a way to get the time/date stamp on the footage like you can VHS tape. I can set my
VHS-C camcorder to show the date/time for just a few seconds when I start recording. That stays on the tape and becomes part of the recorded footage, I would think there would be a similar setting for DVD Camcorders too.

[wenglish98027]

Check the Camcorder documentation, there may be a way to get the time/date stamp on the footage like you can VHS tape. I can set my
VHS-C camcorder to show the date/time for just a few seconds when I start recording. That stays on the tape and becomes part of the recorded footage, I would think there would be a similar setting for DVD Camcorders too.

Thanks Chuck, but I'm not going to pursue that. It's bad enough having to deal with MPEG2 source, having date/time overlays on my video would be just too much of a regression ;-)

I am planning on archiving this footage on my DV camcorder, and having correct timestamps would have been nice to have.

Thanks again,

Mike