Section 11. View Captured Clips

If your device is turned on, Windows is registering it as being connected, but its status in this menu is still listed as Offline , click the Check Status button. If your device is still listed as being Offline , check to ensure that you have a proper connection as described in "Your Camcorder Won't Connect to Windows," earlier in this task.

Premiere Elements Doesn't Break Your Footage into Clips During Capture

Premiere Elements breaks your captured footage into clips based on points at which your camcorder was paused during recording. It is a time codebased process, and only works with DV that was captured using a FireWire or USB Video Class 1.0 connection.

Capture options in the Premiere Elements Preferences dialog box.

In the Capture Monitor panel, click the More button and ensure that the Scene Detect option is enabled.

Capture Continually Aborts

Your capture aborts for one of three reasons: The data flow cannot be sustained, a process has interrupted the data flow, or Premiere Elements believes you are dropping frames .

Your system might not be able to sustain the necessary data flow for video capture for a variety of reasons, all related to hardware. If your hard drive is too full (if it has less than 1020GB of free space, for instance), the program has likely run out of space to write its relatively large video files. If this is the case, you might have to clear considerable data off your hard drive or add a larger drive for your captures. (See the "You Receive a Disk Full Error" section, later in this task.)

Processes interrupting your data flow can be more challenging. Most new computers can handle the intensive data flow required for video capture. However, computers operating at less than 2GHz or without enough RAM might find background processes and even spyware choking their captures. Some recommendations for streamlining this process are listed in 4 About Video Capture .

Your capture might also abort because of an indication of dropped frames. To override this, use the steps described in the following section.

Capture Continually Shows Dropped Frames Warning

Dropped frames can occur when a process or some other stoppage interrupts your capture. But you can also get a dropped frames warning when the program just can't quite figure out what's going on with your capture. These warnings are quite common when you're trying to capture analog video using a passthrough or DV bridge (See 8 Capture Analog Video) . They don't always mean, however, that your captured video will be unusable.

Play back your captured video (see 11 View Captured Clips ). If you find that the video is full of dropped frames and is unacceptable in terms of quality, you might want to turn off some background processes and/or increase your hardware resources (see 4 About Video Capture ).

If you find that your captured video looks acceptable despite these warnings, you can turn off the dropped frame warning by clicking the More button in the Capture Monitor panel and selecting Device Control . In the Preferences dialog box that opens, click the Capture category in the list on the left side and disable both the Abort Capture on Dropped Frames and Report Dropped Frames options.

You Cannot Capture to an Internally Installed Second Hard Drive

A second drive, one dedicated to your video files, can greatly improve your performance, especially during capture and output to tape. But if you're continually finding your captures aborted or if your captured files look corrupted, your drive is likely set up improperly.

There is some debate about whether it is better to install your second hard drive as a slave channel with your C drive as the master, or whether you should install your second drive as the master on a second channel with your DVD burner as the slave. In our experience, either is acceptable and both should provide for an easy data flow during capture and output to tape.

Of greater importance is that your second drive is properly installed in your BIOS. In most cases in which capture to a second internal drive is problematic , an improper installation in the BIOS is the problem.

When you first boot up your computer, follow the instructions at your logo screen, before Windows starts up, to access your BIOS setup. (Usually you press the Esc or F1 key.) If your drives are set up properly, you should see them listed as drives in this setup area. Otherwise, follow the necessary steps to set up your hardware. Remember that your hardware must be set up hereregardless of whether it is set up in your operating systemfor it to function properly.

You Cannot Capture to an External Hard Drive

The challenges of capturing to an externally connected drive usually have to do with the limitations of the connection. An external drive that is connected to your computer with a FireWire connection might have problems maintaining the data flow of a video capture because it is sharing the line with your camcorder's incoming video data. This is definitely the case if you are using a router of some sort so you can have both devices attached to the same FireWire card at the same time. As a rule, it's not a good idea to have both your camcorder and an external drive attached to your computer by FireWire.

You might be able to capture your camcorder's video over a FireWire connection to an external drive connected to your computer by USB 2.0. A USB 1.0 connection for your external drive, however, is not able to handle the necessary throughput to accept video files as they are being captured.

You Receive a Disk Full Error

Although you might believe you still have room on your hard drive, it's techni-cally impossible to literally fill a disk. Your operating system and other programs are continually writing temporary files to and reading temporary files from your disk. And huge files, such as video captures, often require large, contiguous blocks of space.

Try to keep at least 1020GB of space available on your hard drive to ensure smooth operation of your system. (Encoding for DVD output can require much, much more. See 124 About Troubleshooting DVD Output .)

In short, the less free space you have on your hard drive, the more likely you are to run into processing errors. If you find the free space on your disk getting a bit lean, move or delete some of your files to make more room or install a larger hard drive. Giving your programs and your operating system lots of breathing room, especially when working with extremely large files, will definitely save you a lot of heartache in the long run.