While digitizing camcorder video, PE7 has begun splitting into lots of little video files. Help!

Question

I have successfully imported/digitized ca. 80 analog Hi-8 camcorder home videos into PE7 from a Sony Digital Handycam camcorder via a FireWire cable/interface.  However, PE7 has now begun splitting the incoming video feed from the camcorder into lots of little (i.e. shorter) digital video files.  This is now happening with a 2nd camcorder tape.  I don't know why this is happening or how to change settings so it doesn't happen.  It doesn't make any sense why it is happening on these tapes.  Is there something that has happened with the original camcorder tapes that is kicking this off?  Or did a PE7 setting get messed up somehow?  Or what?

Answer 1

Thank you Steve, Neales, and Infinity Focus for your input.  I haven't tried the freeware YET but I may have to.
Here is what I have done:
In the "Capture" panel,
   1) Capture to Timeline
   2) Split Scenes
   3) Smart Tagging
are ALL turned off (and were already)
Additionally, in the Capture Preference section of the "Device Control,"
   1) Abort capture on dropped frames (was already off)
   2) Report dropped frames (I turned off)
   3) Use device control timecode (was already off)
are ALL turned off.
I am not yet finding, to my knowledge, any other possible relevant settings.  However, Infinity Focus Photos references a "split scenes setting" that he/she sometimes sets too high.  Not sure where this is in PE7 or if I can adjust the level of split scene setting is, if even possible on PE7.
One concern - I digitized via the above-mentioned means ca. 80 analog Hi-8 tapes successfully via a Digital Camcorder and the Firewire port successfully.  These tapes, except 1 or 2 were all recorded on the same Sony Hi-8 camcorder.  Howevever, I later found another camcorder tape recorded on the same camcorder machine.  Nothing should have been different in terms of the recording.  Yet, rather than record the WHOLE tape as 1 file as in the previous 80 tapes.  It split these 15-25 minutes into ca. 39 different files.  Now I am trying to digitize another 20 tapes recorded on a different camcorder and these are ALL being split into shorter files.  This makes no sense to me.  I didn't change any settings on PE7 from before.  However, I have NOW turned off "report dropped frames."  This doesn't seem to make any difference.  Plus the reporting of dropped frames is still made at the end of the digitizing task.
As I am converting from analog to digital, unless I request PE to split scenes/smart tag which I am not (to my knowledge), I don't understand why it won't record the entire tape to one file.  I wouldn't think it would be reading a digital time code as the tape is analog.  The only thing I could imagine is that is somehow reading changes in the picture (like going black) and trying to make smart decisions automatically (which I have NOT asked it to do).  If you will, please clarify for me what might be going on.
Now that I've expressed the details, let me also express my frustration with PE7.  I don't know if any here are employees of Adobe and, if so, I apologize.  However, I've been very frustrated and disappointed with PE7.  In my efforts to digitize and edit video footage, it has seemed that time and time again, whatever I think it should be able to do and want to do, it cannot do.  I'm sure that there are many things it does well.  However, importing and converting footage is one of those things that I think is an extremely limited function for PE7.  I also own an older Premiere Pro (which I don't use).  So many things that it seems counterintuitive that it SHOULD be able to do (without listing all of those out here), it CANNOT do.  Rather, the posts scattered throughout this form seem to be constantly suggesting labor-intensive work-arounds or third-party freeware or shareware to accomplish what this software SHOULD be able to do simply.  From that perspective, I would argue that this version of Premiere Elements is poorly engineered.  I bought Premiere Pro and then Premiere Elements because I have been very pleased with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and the whole of the Adobe Creative Suite software.  I feel bad because I have consistently regretted this decision which has resulted in substantial time delays in doing this project and hundreds of hours of additional work efforts.  However, I am now fully invested into PE and switching would result in much re-work.
To me, a great video editing software (well-engineered) is fully intuitive (i.e. you can look at it and figure out what to do) and can accomplish the tasks needed from digitizing/importing through organizing through editing through final rendering for any but extreme cases (non-standard applications).  Everything I've had/used and done, I would consider to be standard equipment and applications but PE7 has struggled to work with it well (Thank God, I was able to borrow a digital Hi- camcorder and that my computer had Firewire.  Otherwise, I'd still be struggling).  At the same time, if one needs to dig further for more complicated tasks/settings, it is easy to burrow into the software beyond the basic functions to intuitively find and set those settings.  I wonder whether it might be time for PE to re-design from bottom up a good Windows alternative to Apple's iMovie applications that is consumer friendly AND capable of higher end editing needs/settings rather than continuing to make incremental changes to a software design that, in my guess, probably hearkens back to a previous era when highly knowledgeable video professionals were the primary or sole users of video software that required substantive background knowledge and a steep software learning curve.  I'm sure the current versions are much better than previous era versions.  Nevertheless, I would argue that a ground-up re-design may be in order that accomplishes the whole video process well and easily.  Just my opinions as a non-expert.