Can you delete media without deleting from timeline?

Evenin',

Now that I have Premier Elements 2.0 working properly with the new card, I've run across one more question I can't seem to find an answer to. I'm working on a 10-video presentation; while the videos themselves are only a few minutes long, I'm cutting down literally hours of footage.

My preferred method is to capture it to the computer, cut out the parts I'll use, and delete the rest from the timeline. However, all that footage is still in the 'Media' section, and every time I try to delete it, it says it will also delete the footage out of the timeline. I'm going to run out of hard drive space before I'm finished if I can't delete the superfluous footage, and I cant just export it to .AVI as I still need to burn it to a DVD in high resolution.

I'm sure there is likely an obvious way around this, but as this is my second time using P.E. 2.0 in two years, I can't seem to find anything on it. Advice is most welcome :)

Thankee for your time,
- Zandur

Hi Zandur,
I highly recommend that you check out the free tutorials on Premiere Elements at Muvipix. You will find them on the Products/Complimentary pages. Also, the Premiere Elements 2 In A Snap book is a great resource, you can also get one of those at Muvipix as well :)

With your current workflow and projects I would say to export the project as an AVI file (File/Export/Movie) and then start a new Master Project. Import all of your AVI clips into the Master and you will be all set.

No quality loss as long as you don't edit and export from the Master into another AVI file to be imported into another project and then do that 4 more times. 4 generations is about all you can get without some sort of quality loss.

I always do mini projects and add them to a Master whenever I can. It is much easier on resources and my brain that way :)

Chuck's advice is good. To understand why you can't do what you want -- that is, delete stuff from the media bins without also deleting from the timeline, you have to understand how an editor thinks.

Your media bins are where pointers to the original material you captured are stored. Your timeline is simply a list of instructions about what to do to each clip. If you were to delete the clips from your media section, the instructions on the timeline would become meaningless because they would refer to nonexistent clips.

The best way to save disk space is to capture only what you need rather than entire tapes. For the sports videos we do, that means less than 10 minutes out of every hour of tape actually gets copied to the computer. Sure, it eats up a lot of time marking in and out points of all the clips we want to capture, but it pays off in the end.

Chuck,

I'll certainly take a look at Muvipix, come the morning. If I understand what you're talking about right, that does sound like a good solution; once the .AVI is in the master project, I presume I can delete all the files?

Hm... on that line of thought, wouldnt it be possible to simply export each one in turn as an .AVI to the computer, and then just burn them all to a DVD when I'm done, without the Master? Jus' speculation, as I don't fully understand how this works at the moment :)

Now that I think about it, I believe my last video was in .AVI before I burned it to DVD, and the res is fine... so I dunno what I was thinkin', there.

@acgold: Alright, that makes sense - thanx for explainin' it out. Now that I think back, what I did before was previewed the video, and when I saw a bit I wanted, I'd rewind and then capture it. I'm assuming there is a more elegant way to do this :-P And I doubt it'd take longer than capturing the whole thing and then rendering 42 million bloody frames.

If you're interested, heres my one and only completed project, which is what I used PE for last time...:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGMzKA2j6oY&feature=channel_page

After doing that one, I was invited back to take over the entire presentation... and doing 10 of them is a different ballpark :P

Thanx for your help... hopefully I can get this sorted out :)

- Zandur

If all of the clips will be on one DVD then you need them all in a single, Master project. If each of the clips will be on a separate DVD then you don't need the Master project.

With Premiere Elements you cannot add multiple files from different projects to the same DVD. All files that you want on the DVD must be included on the timeline in a single project.

I hope that helps make it a little clearer :o

Aye, that does indeed make it clearer. Figured it was somethin' like that... so I guess I'll jus' head on over to Muvipix and figure out how to fire up one of these 'master projects', then?

Cheers,
- Z

With Premiere Elements you cannot add multiple files from different projects to the same DVD. All files that you want on the DVD must be included on the timeline in a single project.
Or you could just use Nero or other authoring packages that let you add multiple files to a DVD timeline and burn.

acgold7 is correct there are other tools that will allow that, even some free ones. Just a lot more work than necessary IMO, but then everything has a purpose and you never know when the need may arise :)

PGCEdit will allow you to add additional content to a DVD folder. Imgburn will also do some things with a DVD that Premiere Elements will not, those two products are both free.

For me it is easier to create small projects and a Master for authoring. I may author to a DVD folder so I can then create multiple copies of DVDs from the folder using Sonic RecordNow or Nero. But these days I am pretty much stuck on Encore DVD.

Just an FYI, there are many Premiere Elements users that have purchased Sony DVD Architect for authoring DVDs. It allows a lot more freedom with menus and has many features that Premiere Elements does not have, and it is pretty cheap. It will burn clips from multiple projects as long as you export the AVI first, it works with Premiere Elements export files very well.

Aye, true that. I used to have a full copy of Nero that the shop installed for free after my reformat; however, I removed it as I did not think I'd need it :(

As it is, I'm finding this a li'l hard to wrap my head around :o As it is, I'm not finding anything in the PE2.0 manual about creating a 'master' project; I'd appreciate a pointer here :-P Otherwise I'm either going to have to see about another copy of Nero or something else, as acgold7 says, or just be a lot more careful in the clips I capture and do it all in the project my only complete video thus far.


As it is, I'll definitely keep the other options in mind, but I'd like to keep my work within PE if possible :) Which reminds me, actually - I have a copy of Premier Pro on here as well, but I haven't touched it since I don't have a manual for it and don't know where to even begin working with it. Would that have the capability to burn multiple .AVI's to a DVD? Likewise, I still have an hour and 48 minutes of space left - if I go through the clips individually, can I delete the ones I didn't use in the actual video (about 30 minutes worth) without any negative effects?

Speaking of negative effects, I've noticed that every time I try to export this video to .AVI, it throws the audio off by about half a second, and trying to 'mal-adjust' the audio to sync with how it throws it off isn't working out. Very peculiar...

Thanx again for your time & effort,
- Zandur

I have a copy of Premier Pro on here as well, but I haven't touched it since I don't have a manual for it and don't know where to even begin working with it. Would that have the capability to burn multiple .AVI's to a DVD?Depends on which version you have. If it comes bundled with Encore, you should have no problem dragging multiple files into the Encore timeline and burning from there.
if I go through the clips individually, can I delete the ones I didn't use in the actual video (about 30 minutes worth) without any negative effects?If you didn't use them at all, no problem, go ahead and kill them. Don't know how it works in Elements, but in Pro there's a way to show in the media bins how many times each clip has been used in the timeline; anything without a number next to it is a zero and can be deleted.

In Pro, you can do this automatically; there is an option to "Create Trimmed Project" which not only discards unused clips, but also discards the unused PARTS of the clips you did use. Usually cuts project space by about 90%, in my experience. But don't know if this feature is in Elements, and your project needs to be finished before you can/should do this. Note that this doesn't shrink the size of your current project; it creates a new one at the new, small size and then you delete the old one. So you need the disk space available to do this, because you will briefly have both projects taking up disk space. I do this when I archive my completed projects onto a backup disk.
I've noticed that every time I try to export this video to .AVI, it throws the audio off by about half a second, and trying to 'mal-adjust' the audio to sync with how it throws it off isn't working out. Very peculiar...Sounds like a tape dropout. If you can find the clip where this happens you should re-capture but break the capture into two parts so the dropout isn't captured. Then the whole clip should sync.

If the whole disc is going out of sync that's something else. Could be an encoding error or your PC might be having trouble keeping up.

My version of Premier Pro is actually a gift from a friend who moved onto a different program - hence why no manual, and why I stick to PE 2.0 which I actually bought :P

Wow, that sounds like a really thoughtful feature. But, as I was afraid, PE 2.0 doesn't have it, so I'll still have to go through by hand to do that. There IS a 'Clean up' option on the media window's drop-down menu, but it won't let me click on it for reasons unknown.

Hmm, I don't think it can be tape dropout, as the audio is a single song - I deleted all of the clips original audio and put this in its place. So, more likely an error when converting it to .AVI - which is odd, since it didn't do that last time, last year...

Basically, the plan I'm at now is to try and delete as much superfluous media out of the media box as I can, and then painstakingly go through my tapes and capture only the clips I intend to use, and do all 10 videos in the same project/timeline so I can burn it to DVD all at once without using external software. Primitive and roundabout maybe, but I think it'll work for now until I have more time to explore other options.

Thanx again,
- Zandur

Alright, so, doing all 10 videos in a single project seems to be working out just fine for now. I'll deal with breaking them apart so I can upload them to YouTube (and thus post them here :) ) later... but I do have a question that has been driving me absolutely nuts for over an hour now.

What I want to do is (well, one would think) relatively simple. I want to add just still text, or a 'title', to a moving video. However, everything I try just ends up inserting the title as its own still image - I cant get it to superimpose over the video, and even if I did, I have no idea how to control the duration (so I can end that text and put in a new line further into the video.) Every time I try it, nomatter how much I mess with Opacity, Overlay or whatnot, I get the same result - it just puts its own still image in, instead of putting the text in the video.

Anyway, I hope I explained that clearly enough :( I'm a little riled up over it at the moment - patience was never my strongpoint. So, basically, is PE2.0 even capable of it, and if so, how do I do it?

Thanx once more,
- Zandur

I don't really know Elements, but if it's like Pro, first you create your title in the titler, and when doing so there's a box you check to make the background transparent (so the underlying video will show through).

Then after you save the title, you drag it to the track above the video you want to show through, and you can drag the ends of the clip that's created when you do this to set the duration.

Maybe Elements works in a similar fashion.

Edit: After reading the brief tutorial below, it does seem to work similarly to Pro.

http://staffdev.henrico.k12.va.us/students/pdfs/hspdfs/AdobePremierel.pdf

So, are you sure you're seeing the checkerboard behind your text when you design/edit your title? And you're sure you're dragging the title to the track above the track where you have your video (i.e. video is in Video 1, titles are in Video 2)?

ah-HAH!!!

You're my bloody ruttin' saviour, man. I didn't realize that you could drag the timeline bar up to reveal more tracks, as I've never had need to use more than one track at a time before now.

It seems to work like a charm, now :) Thank you so very much.

I'm going to get back to work now... :D Granted, without dignity, as that was humiliatingly simple...

We've all been there....

... I imagine so :rolleyes:

Well, its a good thing I keep backups; my computer locked up, causing me to manually restart, which in turn fried the project file I was working on for no apparent reason. Jus' thought I'd throw that out there: Don't restart your computer via the big button while PE is up, even if you saved the project before doing it -_-

Other then that, the video editing is going fine. I have 5 of my alloted 10 videos done. However, I'm rapidly encroaching a new problem: I'm running out of hard-drive space. Those 5 videos - clocking in at about 10 minutes for the finished products - has brought my availible hard-drive space down from 2 hours, 5 minutes to a mere 56 minutes. I've gone thru and manually deleted all the un-used clips out of the Adobe folders, but this still leaves me pressed for space. I have a 7-gig gaming application (Steam, for those of you who know of it) that I can kill if I absolutely need the space, but its going to be tight regardless.

Anyway, I was just curious if perhaps any of you had any tips or alternatives to how I might make better use of my Adobe files to try to get more space out of my HD.

Oh, and on the sync issue: I believe it may be the latest version of Windows Media Player that is throwing the sync off, as when I view the video I linked to earlier, the sync is off - and I know it didn't used to be.

Thanx,
- Zandur

With Terabyte Hard Drives now around $100, and even externals not going for too much more than that at Costco or Newegg, there's no reason not to add more. But note that externals with USB and FW are generally too slow to edit from and should be used for backup and other storage only. FW 800 and eSATA should be fine.

And yeah, I've never gotten WMP to play anything correctly either.

Gold,

Yeah, thats what I figured. Well, if I calculated this right, if I delete Steam I should have enough space to finish this project. Then after I burn a few DVD's, I can save copies and make individual files for each movie for uploading to YouTube and delete everything else and get my space back. I've got less than 5 days to finish this, so I don't have time to mess around with getting a TB hard-drive or whatnot right now, but I will definitely look into it :)

Well, theoretically, even if it doesnt match up on WMP, if I upload it to YouTube, it should be in time, no? I'll have to test that out soon as I can.

Wish me luck that nothing else goes wrong...
- Zandur