AVI files? compressed?

[art metal art]

I need a brief overview on capturing from my DVX into PP2.
Am I supposed to be capturing AVI files from the firewire and camera? What about DV files, do they ever come into play?
I watch the avi file in windows media player and they look like my $400 Cannon footage. All settings....60i to 24pa.
help:(

[Joe_Hicks]

Be sure to set up the initial project appropriately. 24p project or 30p/60i use standard DV NTSC.

Your footage will be captured as AVI. Because you're shooting DV, inherently there will be some compression in the footage as DV is a compressed format (which leads to artifacting).

Are you viewing the footage (after capture) from the Premiere window or an external monitor? This will make a big difference. To a degree, the Premiere window is worthless as an accurate representation of your footage.

Joe

[art metal art]

I dont have anything but my 23" HP LCD monitor hooked up right now. I do have a 19" crt not used, maybe I should have that as my external?
I captured about 40 clips last night and then took a look at a few through Adobe Bridge and it opened them in Windows Media Player. They looked bad.
I also noticed if I opened the same clip in PP2 in a source window it looked 10 times better than the window on the right(project or program window?).

I was working with 60i and started 60i project settings.

[Joe_Hicks]

Yeah, the 19" would be fine. You'll need a method in which to get the signal out of the computer and into the CRT. What I have found to work extremely well for this (at minimal cost) is a media converter made by Canopus called the ADVC110. B&H sells it for 225.00.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?ci=1&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=RootPage.jsp&A=search&Q=*&bhs=t&shs=advc110

Try this and see if your footage isn't looking quite a bit better.
It's really a must to monitor your work on an NTSC monitor so you can see interlacing issues, color rendering, text/action margins, etc.

Hope this helps,
Joe