Difficulty editing mpg files from old analogue camera

[Peter of Tweed]

I recently shot an event using multiple cameras and as a bit of a laugh included my old Sony PD170 analogue  video camera.  After much mucking around capturing the footage I'm finding the PD170 files play ok using VLC player or Quicktime though when I import them into Premiere Pro the image flickers with the performers rapidly bouncing around the frame.  Any suggestions as to how to get 

[Ann Bens]

The PD170 is a digital DV camera.

How did you capute the footage of the camera?

[RjL190365]

As Ann stated, the PD170 is a standard-definition (SD) digital DV camera. You must have captured the video using Firewire (IEEE 1394) in order to avoid a degraded capture. Unfortunately, very few computers have Firewire capability out of the box. Conversely, very few DV camcorders stream video at all via USB. And if you do it the analogue way (using an analogue capture card), you would have seriously degraded the image quality to begin with because analogue video has far less effective horizontal resolution than SD digital video - only 330 lines per picture height (or 440x480 or 440x576 resolution using a non-square pixel aspect ratio), versus 525 lines per picture height for DV (roughly equivalent to 704x480 or 704x576).

Second, even if you captured the video correctly, you would have had to deal with the fact that most digital DV video is interlaced instead of progressive scan. Unfortunately, NLEs such as Premiere Pro do a better job with progressive-scan video than it does interlaced video. And your capture is bouncing around because the capture device or software messed up the field dominance (or field order).

[Peru Bob]

Capture with 

WinDV   WinDV

HDVSplit   HDVSplit 0.77 beta

instead of how you captured.

[RjL190365]

Well, that assumes that the discussion starter already has or will be buying an add-in Firewire card and a FireWire cable. Chances are that the discussion starter bought a cheapo analogue capture card (which IMHO never produced even halfway decent results to begin with, and whose output image quality is barely acceptable for Web video use) instead of the Firewire card, and his PC never had firewire at all to begin with.

[Ann Bens]

Must be some sort of capture card as firewire gives mov/avi and not mpg.

[RjL190365]

I agree. The discussion starter had just wasted his money on that cheapo consumer video capture device. And the software that came with that unit completely messed things up.

You see, good analogue capture cards cost far more money than the $100 USD that the typical consumer capture card costs - more like $500 USD.

[Andy 1968]

There is a lot of incorrect information on this thread. Most video capture capture cards capture SD at 720 X 480i. Premiere works fantastic with intelaced video but interlaced video never looks that great on  computer screen. You would want to use broadcast compliant hardware if you edit interlaced video (you don't have to but I would). If you transfered the video to your PC using Firewire Premiere Pro should edit the video just fine. That being said did you try to capture/transfer NTSC video but have Premiere Pro setup to capture PAL? Did you select the right camera? Does the PD170 have a TBC on and off function?