Recently, edit rooms 2 and 3 were upgraded with new HP-9300 work stations. Adobe Premiere CS2 (Creative Suite2) is the new software which includes “Premiere Pro,” “Photoshop,” “Illustrator,” “Audition” and a host of other applications. For those who are, for the moment, unwilling or unable to move to the new apps, Premiere 6.0 is still available on the new machines (without Targa). However, I strongly recommend that you use the CS2 software. Perhaps you will be surprised to find that the new Premiere Pro is not that much different -the interface looks a little different- from Premiere 6.0. It is, however, much more powerful with lots of new features that you will enjoy. By the way, CS3 is not that far off!!! don’t panic, it looks exactly like CS2, with the addition of a couple of applications and some changes to some current CS2 apps., e.g. “Audition” is now called “Soundbooth.” 

Now, a little information about using one aspect of both versions of Premiere and the new HP work stations. Because of the installation of secondary external hard drives for backup purposes, it is now necessary to PRE-NAME all newly captured files. All this means is that you are giving a file name to the footage BEFORE you begin the capture. (This will also, many times, eliminate unsuccessful captures, which sometimes happen as the result of not hitting escape properly at the end of a capture. Incidentally, when finishing a capture, never hit “cancel” as this will simply discard the file and necessitate a re-capture.) When the capture window is open, Premiere may (not always) prompt you give a “tape name” to captured footage. This usually happens when you insert a video tape in the recorder. Any time there is a prompt for a TAPE name, please enter a name. Within the capture window itself, there will be two boxes labeled “tape name” and “clip name,” respectively. Enter the same name in these boxes as you did in the first prompt. It’s better to enter the SAME name in all of these instances. This applies to the new Premiere Pro, CS2/3 and the old Premiere 6.0.  If you do not PRE-NAME, you will not be able to give a name to a file because it will have been stored on the backup drive with the name “untitled.” Since the file has already been named on the backup drive, you will not be able to give it a different name when it is stored on the local hard drive. This would be a conflict.

I hope this doesn’t sound too complicated. Once you get used to it, you’ll find that it is quite easy.

Briefly on two other subjects: 1. When you create a folder on the media drive, PLEASE name the folder with your full name. That is, the name that QPTV has on its files. If you do not do this, your folder may accidentally be deleted, since we cannot identify the owner.  2. While the media drives are slightly bigger on the new machines, space is ultimately limited. In the past, we’ve tried to limit editors to about 20 GB of data (video files). Since these drives are a bit larger, we would ask that you now limit the size to no more than 25 GB. This is VERY important. The machines cannot be properly maintained without your cooperation. The computers are much more susceptible to freezes and crashes under these conditions. By the way, 25 GB is equivalent to about one hour and thirty minutes of video footage. 

Enjoy, have fun, be creative!! Keep all those great programs coming.