Remember that movie Back to the Future, where Christopher Lloyd’s character controlled a toaster, a coffeepot, a dog-food dispenser, and various other appliances with his computer?
Yes, it really has been two decades since that movie came out, and no, we still don’t control our coffee machines or feed our pets with com-puters. However, thanks to a technology called device control, we can control camcorders and video decks with our computers. (It’s a start.) Device controlis one of the most accurately named technologies to come along in quite some time. It allows you to control your devices using a computer. For example, if your DV cam-corder is connected to your FireWire port, you can start playing the tape in that camcorder by clicking the Play button in the Adobe Premiere
Elements program screen. When you click Play in Premiere Elements, the program sends a
“Play” command through the FireWire cable and the tape drive in your digital camcorder starts to play. Cool, huh?
Not only is device control cool, but it’s also very useful. When you capture video, synchroniza-tion between the computer and the videotape player is crucial — Premiere Elements has to access and use the timecode recorded on the tape so that problems such as dropped frames can be instantly identified.
Okay, McFly, now that you understand device control, maybe you can explain how that DeLorean traveled through space and time.
3. Click the Play button.
If your camcorder supports device control (see the sidebar nearby), the tape in the camera plays. If not, you will need to use the controls on the camcorder itself to control playback.
4. Use the controls located beneath the viewer section of the Capture window to review the tape.
To identify the exact frame at which you want to start capturing, use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard. Figure 6-4 details the various playback controls.
The Step Back and Step Forward buttons in the Capture window enable you to move back or forward a single frame at a time.
One of the handiest features in Adobe Premiere Elements is scene detec-tion. As the name implies, scene detection detects each time the scene changes, which usually occurs when you pause the camcorder between shots. If you know that you want to capture an entire scene on the tape, click the Previous Scene button in the preview window. Premiere Elements automatically rewinds the tape to the beginning of the scene and automat-ically pauses the tape at the first frame of that scene. To detect the end of the scene, click Next Scene. Premiere plays the tape forward to the end of the scene and stops the tape on the first frame of the next scene.
5. Type a name for your video clips in the Clip Name field.
The Clip Name field is located in the upper-left corner of the Capture window. Try to give a name that is somewhat descriptive so that you’ll be able to identify the clip when you clean your hard drive a couple of years from now and you stumble upon the folder containing your old clips.
6. Click the More button in the upper-right corner of the Capture window and make sure that the Scene Detect option is checked (refer to Figure 6-4).
With this option checked, Premiere Elements detects the breaks between scenes as you capture video and automatically creates separate video clips for each scene. Having separate clips for each scene can be very helpful later on, especially if you’re editing a long video project.
The More menu also includes options to capture just video or just audio.
In most cases you will want to capture both, but if you only want to cap-ture one or the other you can choose a different option here.
7. When you find the spot where you want to start capturing, rewind the tape at least five seconds.
When you start to capture video, the camcorder’s tape drive takes a moment to get up to full playback speed. This means that you may not capture the first couple of seconds of a video clip if you don’t rewind
just a bit. Rewinding the tape a few seconds ensures that this won’t be a problem. Video pros call this pre-rolling, and you can measure five sec-onds by watching the timecode indicator in the lower-left corner of the capture window, as shown in Figure 6-4. The display format for timecode is hours;minutes;seconds;frames.
8. Click Capture.
Premiere Elements starts to capture video. The Capture window pro-vides some useful information during capture. For example, if you have Scene Detect enabled, the Clip Name automatically changes incremen-tally as each new scene is detected. In Figure 6-5 you can see that I am currently capturing a clip named “Hummingbirds 11.avi.” The number 11 was automatically inserted into the name by Premiere Elements because it is the eleventh scene that has been detected so far.
Scene Detect
Camcorder timecode
Previous scene Next scene
Rewind Step Back
Stop Pause Fast Forward Step Forward Shuttle Figure 6-4:
Use these controls when you capture video.
The indicator at the top of the Capture window provides the current status of the capture. It also shows how much video can be captured in the remaining free space on your hard drive. In Figure 6-5 Premiere Elements estimates that my hard drive has enough free space to capture another eight hours, 14 minutes, and 38 seconds of video.
9. When you’ve captured enough, click Stop Capture.
Premiere Elements stops capturing video and stops playback on your camcorder, if Device Control is supported. If playback doesn’t stop auto-matically, press Stop on your playback device.
When the capture job is done, click Edit on the Premiere Elements toolbar (or choose Window➪Workspace➪Edit). The editing workspace loads, and you can locate your video clips in the Media window, as shown in Figure 6-6.
Scene detection works by using the clock that is built into your camcorder.
Virtually any modern camcorder has a built-in clock and calendar; the date and time of each recording is recorded onto the videotape along with audio, video, and timecode. There is always a time gap between scenes (that gap may be seconds, minutes, hours, or even days). Premiere Elements can use those gaps to identify the beginning of each new scene.
Figure 6-5:
Premiere Elements captures video from my camcorder.