Some newb questions about HDV ( Sony FX1 ) - Capturing / Authoring

[C0rnholio]

First of all I got a SONY HDR-FX1 from a friend and I shot a wedding with it in HD mode. Everything's good so far.

Now I want to capture and author a regular set of SD DVDs from it. Just like I would have used a regular DV camera. Also I want to have unauthored HD content, in wmv, mkv or whatever format just to keep over the years extra than the usual DVDs.

I tried capturing the tapes on my HDD using HDVSplit 0.77 but towards the end of the movies the video and audio were unsynced. I am using a AMD x2 5200+, 2GB RAM, 500GB ( 32MB Buffer ) Seagate HDD + 9800GT. I hope it's not a hardware requirements issue. I know it takes a long time to encode HD content but I don't know much about req for capturing. If I use PREMIERE PRO CS4 to record, I am getting a mpeg file. How can I have PREMIERE split the content into scenes based on the content so I can have short transitions between them so they don't look jumpy.

I must say I have been using Pinnacle Studio for some years now to capture and edit DV content. After I had everything like I wanted, I would get the resulting AVI ( DV ) content into Adobe Encore and author the thing properly ( with custom menus etc ). Pinnacle used to split the content into scenes so I could easy add transitions but since this is HD content I am forced to use something else to capture and edit and I am quite new on Premiere. Or if you guys have other advices on software to use.

Thank you very much.

[Emulgator]

I use Edius Pro 4.61 (Edius 5 is still waiting in the drawer here) for all HDV editing and capturing of HDV
as well from the same camera (FX-1) as yours is.

Advantages: Edius will auto-split the incoming .m2ts stream into clips as they were shot,
based on your recording start/stops and/or TC inconsistencies.
Very useful. You will find any dropout area very soon.
You will as well find out that for audio perfection
you should trim some 2 frames from every take's end because in most takes HDV audio ends 2 frames before video.

Indisposable for live concert recordings and multi-cam resync after drop-outs occurred.
No sync probs, because the capture does not alter .m2ts.
These .m2ts clips I would keep on a drawer HDD as second source.

Second: the speed and efficience of Edius' HDV-parsing while editing is unsurpassed by others.

My second choice for HDV capturing/editing is Vegas 8 (V9 still sitting in the drawer)
and as third HDV/DV capturing choice (DV preferred, many scopes) I use Adobe OnLocation CS3,
then for editing Adobe Premiere CS3.
EditStudio6 for beautiful ease of work, but for DV only (too slow for HDV).

I have thrown away anything Pinnacle, Ulead, Windows, Nero and others after wasting precious time back in 2003.

Next the encoding quality would be my main concern and so I would not be too content
with the built-in Mainconcept-SDK within Encore, Sonic/RoxioDVDitPro or Vegas.

So after editing I would export to Canopus Lossless .avi at source properties, keeping resolution.

Then encoding externally, using TE4XP.
TE4XP can do HD/SD resizing on input and keeps things interlaced
at best picture quality, no need to deinterlace.

CCE would require resizing before encoding, avisynth input accepted.

If you can still get your hands on a Edius 4 dongle,
then you get ProcoderExpress with it
(can do the same HD/SD resizing and keeping interlaced encoding directly from Edius timeline).

In Edius 5 Procoder Express is no more available.

BTW any capture tool should not attempt to alter stream structure
and definitely not try to reencode on-the fly into mediocre formats as Woundows apps try to do.