presets

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Steve/other muvipix folks - just bought a copy of the muvipix guide to Prel 10. Nice job - I'm going to spend alot of time with this! Figured once I had the book, I wouldn't have to ask you guys any more questions. Made it to page 27 before coming up with one. My camera (an older model Canon s3 IS) records video in a format 640 x 480 at 30 frames per second. As I look at the preset charts on pages 26 and 27, it's not obvious to me which preset to choose for my camera. On a couple of previous prel 10 projects I've chosen DV/standard 48 khz as the preset and prel 10 seems to work ok with that preset. Is there a better preset to choose?

[Steve Grisetti]

Unfortunately, this spec page for that camera doesn't give us much information about the format it records its video as. http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/c ... ifications

Does your manual offer any info? If not, you'll need to open a sample video in G Spot or MediaInfo and get some information on the format and codec that way.

If this camera shoots in MJPEG codec, it's not really going to be a good fit for Premiere Elements. You may be stuck working with Windows MovieMaker or iMovie -- or converting the video, which can be an iffy concept. (MJPEG videos, by the way, come in both AVI and MOV formats, so the suffix on the file alone won't give us enough information.)

If it is shooting in a format other than MJPEG, your best project preset is DSLR/480P.

EDIT: I just rechecked those specs and this camera does shoot its video in MJPEG-AVI, unfortunately. So you can still try the DSLR preset I recommended above -- but do a good test drive before you commit too much to a project. Output a DVD from your project and see if you're satisfied with the results.

[Bob]

Later versions of Premiere Elements handle MJPEG much better than early versions. With version 10, It's likely you'll have no problems at all. But, as Steve said, do a test drive.

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Steve/Bob - I don't use the .mvi video clips directly from the camera in prel 10. I convert them using Streamclip per Steve's previous instructions which I've copied below.

"To use it, open the file with MPEG Streamclip and then open the AVI/DivX Exporter window from File/Export to AVI.

For Compression select the Apple DV/DVPRO_NTSC (or DV PAL, if appropriate) codec.
For Field Order select Lower Field First.
Change the default sound settings from MPEG Layer 3 to Uncompressed.
If you have widescreen footage click on the Options at the top right. Leave the Scan Mode as is but change the Aspect Ratio from 4:3 to 16:9."

After following the instructions above, I import the video clip to prel 10. So I believe I'm using dv-avi clips. Again, they played just fine on the "DV standard 48khz" preset, and any DVD's I burned were also just fine. Maybe I'm OK, but just wondered if there was a better preset to use for the dv-avi (4:3 aspect ratio) clips.

[Bob]

Yes, that's the appropriate preset for the converted footage.

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Bob - thanks so much. I'll probably be getting back with you guys as I read further in the book.