saving video segments

[imhal]

I like to do videos of trains , but I rarely get enough footage at one time to make a decent length show. I shoot AVCHD 1920x1080i. What I need to know is if I edit what I have , then save it as an MPEG file using Premier 10, then later bring into Premier the saved file , will the quality suffer ? Thank You , Hal

[Steve Grisetti]

It depends on what format and resolution you save it at, imhal. And which project settings you're using.

Is your project set up correctly for your camcorder footage? You'll know because you will see NO red lines above your clips when you add them to your timeline. Is that the case in your project.

Use Share/Computer/AVCHD/M2T 1920x1080i 30 and the your output video should be virtually identical to your original footage.

[imhal]

Thank you Steve. I use the preset NTSC Full HD 1080i 30 which matches the footage I bring in , no red lines. The more i thought about a big project the more i wondered how folks would edit something 1 hour long , i assume it would be done in segments . When I edited using tape with Premier 5.1 , I was limited to about 5 minutes at a time and would just put the edited segment back on tape. So I guess a way to do it is edit a manageble length , store it on disk , then bring a those stored files back in premier for the final assembly. Is that the best way to handle a long program ? Thanks Hal

[Steve Grisetti]

It depends on how powerful your computer is and how much room you have in RAM and on your hard drive.

But, yes, I always work on large projects in short segments. (So do most pros, including major movie studios.) It just keeps it all more manageable.

[Chuck Engels]

I can usually work in 15 - 20 minute segments so 5 minutes seems a bit short, what are your system specs?

[imhal]

Thanks , that makes sense to do smaller 15 minutes or so seems like a good idea. And Chuck , the 5 minutes was back when I was using Digital8 with Win98 and Premier 5.1. Now I use a Sony that shoots 1920x1080i , and my computer has XP and Elemets10. Win 98 has a file size imitation size that resticted the size of the files I could make. Hal

[Chuck Engels]

The size limit was due to the file system used when formatting the hard drive, Win98 only had the FAT and FAT32 options where XP has an NTFS option that removed the size limitation. Basically you could not have a file larger than 4gb prior to NTFS but there wasn't much need for a file that large either. Video work prior to P4 computers, extremely fast RAM and Hard Drives was challenging to say the least