Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 batch conversion

choose the correct format DV/HDV video, 32KHz/48KHz audio, standard (4:3)/widescreen (16:9)

Do a File|Capture

skip first 10 seconds of each tape, it take few seconds for deck/camcorder to leadin, you cannot capture the first part with batch mode, only in manual if you have to (you shouldn't, you should always put some bar and tone or black on the first 30 seconds to avoid that.)

Capture only 20 minutes at the maximum so the DV-AVI is less than 4.35GB and fit on a single density DVD-R for easy backup. You can "butt" the clips back up in timeline, it would be seemless again.

Need them with meaningful names or at least in some useful numbering scheme.

log the clip

repeat from 20 minutes frame 1 (not one seconds) to 40 minutes and so on for the whole 60/90/120 minutes.

select the logged clips

file | batch capture

create a new watermark copyright tile if you don't have one already

choose the appropriate font, size, opacity, shadow

put it on the time line above the clip(s)

right click on the clips and normalize the audio also.

(more settings in CS4, only one setting if using CS3)

File | Export | Media

you want

1. a DV-AVI already trimmed, watermarked, audio fixed for easy conversion later

2. H.264 in either iPod MPEG-4 or FLV/F4V 640x480 (for DV 720x480 aspect corrected)

3. a smaller version if necessary.

repeat for each sequence, so they all added into Media Encoder queue.