Editing a simple video using Adobe Premiere (Zoetrope)

Premiere is a full-featured nonlinear video editing system. There's no hope of covering the full functionality on this page, but the default settings are all quite reasonable, so basic use of premiere is simple. For more advanced use, read the manual. This note is adapted from Tamara's original writeup for the SGI (moviola) which you can still use. To start up,

Log in to the console of zoetrope. These accounts are local, so your graphics lab account won't work. You may have to talk to someone or send mail to sgl-videoprod@graphics for an account. The basic reason for this is that the systems are brittle and you shouldn't install drivers or generally fool around.
If you don't already have your own subdirectory here, make one in the media drive, i.e. something like E:\ravir
Start premiere. If there isn't already a shortcut on your desktop, you may want to create one. Premiere 6.0 lives under adobe in programs. The first time you do this it may take a few minutes to get everything set up.
Eventually premiere will ask you what kind of project settings you want. The default (NTSC 720x486 ReelTime Motion JPEG, 44.1Khz 16bit audio, Lower Field first) is good; just click OK.
A whole bunch of windows will now appear.

Settings

There are a bunch of important settings, which will stay set between sessions until you explicitly change them.

Pick Edit->Preferences->Scratch Disks and Device Control. Make sure all scratch work is to the media E: drive and not C: I recommend simply using your directory E:\ravir for instance, for all work and scratch.
I have found all of the default options fine. You might want to read the SGI premiere notes if you run into problems.

Capturing video

See also my notes on digitizing a live session at a PC.

Pick File->Capture->Movie Capture. The capture window will appear.
Route the appropriate deck to zoetrope. For example, telect -idigibeta -ozoetrope. See the digitizing page for more detailed instructions.
Edit capture defaults, and turn off audio if you're not using it. Also, click settings and make sure you're capturing component (CAV) video. If you are capturing audio, make sure it's set to Balanced (XLR). The remaining settings have quite reasonable defaults.
However, if you want to capture Mini-DV footage, first hook up your camcorder to the firewire connection on zoetrope. In the first window that pops up, choose to work with DV footage. Then in the capture defaults, set both the video and audio capture to DV.
Hit record and escape to stop capturing.

Importing existing content

Pick File->Import->File and select a still image, video clip, or audio clip that you want to import. You'll see it appear in the Project window. You can drag it into place in the Construction window. To make a simple video, just import your all your pieces and drag them into the Construction window in the right order. If you just want straight cuts with no fancy transitions you can just shove them all back-to-back on the top (A) track. This is what I do :-)
You can use a clip more than once by just dragging it from the project window to a new place in the construction window. It will duplicate itself in the project window. For instance, if you want to play a video clip forward then backwards, drag a second copy into your timeline and then pick Clip->Speed to set its speed to -100%.
To set the duration of a still image, you can either pick Clip->Duration to enter an exact time or just drag the edges in the timeline to fill up some gap.
Note that you can make title frames with File->New->Title. You can also use TitleDeko in place of Title, which is fancier.
You can also do a whole host of ReelTime transitions and other fancy stuff. I've never tried these though.

Video output

The ReelTime system allows you to see what you've got simply by dragging your mouse across the timeline.
If you want to play, space plays from the current mouse location.
If you want to play from the beginning, just hit enter in the timeline.
If you have fancy transitions, premiere may need to render before it starts playing. Thereafter, things should proceed smoothly.
For dumping to tape, I've found real-time play adequate; I've never actually made a full avi file. However, read on.
You can export your video to avi, realplayer etc. by the appropriate menu under File->Export Timeline. Note the export range setting for whole project or work area. The workarea is the subset of the entire project that the yellow top bar extends over.

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Last modified: Fri Feb 22 2:00:31 PST 2002