I know it’s going to take a LOT of hard drive space but I really would like to know how to do this. I have a Sony DCR-TRV340 Digital 8 Camcorder with the firewire connection. I’ve got the camera hooked up to my computer and now I’m capturing video. Question is…what quality…FPS, or resolution do i need to capture video so that when i put it back on my camcorder it looks just as good as when i took it off?? Anyone have any tips for me about that or any other tricks about capturing and editing digital video??? Thanks in advance!
When you capture video, generally it captures at what the camera recorded at. Usually 29.97 or 30 fps. You can change it when you compress it but you really never should. That is the normal speed for tv, movies, etc. What software are you using to capture? To edit?
You shouldn’t be capturing, you should be copying. The camera stores its data digitally, which you can then copy of the tape via the firewire. The format is DV which is like jpeg copmpression on every frame (unlike mpeg which does this every key frame and then the differences to that keyframe). If you don’t recompress the video (ie you just edit and splice- no fancy frame altering effects) it should go back on the camera exactly the same quality as it came off.
Knowing what software your using would be a big help too. I’ll have a quick look for some good sites that’ll help you out.
Sorry I can’t help you on the other parts of your question, but I can offer a tip here: buy a second hard drive and bounce the massive files between the drives as you perform various bits of processing. I found that processing a 2GB file on the same drive caused an incredible amount of thrashing that multiplied the processing time.
One more thing: it probably isn’t worth it to get a faster drive for this since any process that involves both drives will be limited by the slower of the two.
True in principal but you are capturing digital data fed in a real-time stream. If you software, computer, and disk drive have good enough performance (probably not an issue on any equipment on the market currently) you shouldn’t have a problem. However, I use a JVS camera and some software that shipped with my firewire card, and my hard drive couldn’t keep up and I got lots of dropped frames. I upgraded the hard drive and run the software with no other applications running and the number of dropped frames is negligible.
It is not the same as capturing video from an analog video signal and converting it to digital, but neither is it copying in the same sense of ripping an audio CD.
Currently I’m using Ulead Video Studio 4.0, right now its the only software I have and can easily use. I do have a copy of Adobe Premiere but i havent quite mastered the capturing and editing on there yet…I plan on getting a nice how-to book if anyone can recommend one; that would be great. No matter what quality I pick the video always seems a bit fuzzy when I play it on my computer…is it always going to look like that on my monitor even if the quality is great or will it look the same when I copy it back to tape? Another question…whats the easiest way to copy back to tape…I’m pretty sure Ulead doesnt have this function but if Premiere does than I just use that. Thanks for all the help!
When I capture full stream digital video, mini DV, it comes out to about 100mb per minute. Get the fastest PC you can with a good disk. My old machine was adequate, a PIII/750 with a ATA66 7200RPM drive. The fast hard drive was one of the most critical bits for taking the video stream with no dropped frames.
I have a P4/1.6 with a ATA66 7200RPM 80gb and 256Mb ram. So there isnt a problem there. Just trying to find out the best program/settings to capture with.
When you use capture software, it selects all that for you. I have a few programs, they all do that for me, I just select what I want to make a video for, e.g. NTSC tv, & it does the rest. You should have got editing software with your firewire card, perhaps, if not, maybe ebay has some for you.
All of the manuals for Final Cut Pro III refer to the process of bringing audio and video materials into a hard drive for editing, as ’ capturing ’ . It is apparently the nomenclature. It makes sense. I have a Digitizer/ De-Digitizer unit, as well as a Macintosh Titanium Powerbook and an external 120 Gig HD, and a few other accessories.
The idea of importing media is best described as capturing, since if the material is already a digital media, saying I’m " Digitizing" would be a misnomer. To say you are copying isn’t exactly accurate either, since if a shot lasts 90 seconds on it’s source tape but you capture only the needed 55 seconds of media, you’re not exactly copying the shot from the source tape. ( I do realize this is being nitpicky, but it was mentioned above ).
With the Final Cut Pro III software I use, I both import and render back out at the highest resolution possible. While this means I have to wait until a project or sequence is rendered in order to view transitions and effects, it allows me to do a few things while I am editing.
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My eyes don’t melt because I’m looking at LOW res video. I’m cutting using the TiBook monitor, not one of the awesome fancypants $ 2,200 Apple Cinema LCD displays. And so, using High Resolution images helps me to SEE what I’m doing. Always important.
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Since storage space and processing speed for normal edit functions is not an issue with my particular set-up, I have no real need to work in low-resolution. Depending on what your set-up is, you may have a really serious need to work in Low Res, until you output to tape at the end. Then. you want to render out in the highest resolution that your machine can possibly deliver.
As is the case with any media-related issue, there are variables and parameters that limit what you can do, and how fast. If you have a lightning fast CPU but not enough RAM, you will suffer. If you lack storage space, but have a zippy CPU and tons of RAM, you will still suffer. ( Although, you can cut really fine looking 15 second commercials… :rolleyes: )
minor7flat5, I am inclined to agree with you. The FCP III books ALL say that you should not store your media on the same physical hard drive as the drive you are using to RUN FCP III. It makes it unhappy. I grok that.
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(Just turned) professional videographer stopping in…
The better quality you start with, the better quality the final compressed product will be. Golden rule (also applies to still images).
DEFINITELY partition your drive. We just got Sony’s new studio-in-a-bag - Vaio and camera. The Vaio was already partioned 50:50, but they’ve since reinstalled it for me so I have 5 gigs for the system and software, and 25 gigs for the media files. That allows me up to 1 hour 49 minutes of full-broadcast-quality video. (Of course I can’t use all that amount, because of effects rendering files etc needing space as well).
An external hard drive is another great option, but it MUST be firewire or USB 2. Conventional USB will be too slow for video editing in terms of data/media file transfer.
In fact as you have such a big hard drive, it might be useful to have more than two partitions.
“Digitising” might be a misnomer but it’s a commonly understood industry term. There are still plenty of companies shooting on analog Beta and literally digitising in.
When you record/dub/transfer back to tape, it should retain the same quality you played it in at. I would guess that the default for most software is to digitise/capture at full quality.
If you were working on a very long project, you might capture at a lower quality to save disk space. When you were finished, you would delete everthing except the “master clip” (effectively a list of in-points and out-points and effects and stuff that only the computer really sees) then batch digitise (an automated process the software will do for you) the footage back in full quality. So if you had originally digitised in 30 minutes of low-quality footage, but your final sequence - and hence the master clip - only included 5 minutes of that, then that’s all the computer would need to digitise back in at full-quality. If you are batch digitising you MUST organise your tapes and give them unique names and let the software know which tape it’s recording from each time.
Depending on the software, you can sometimes export your finished edited sequence to another format. Mine lets me do a heap of stuff, including Windows Media, Quicktime with various codecs, .avi, still .tiff sequences etc.
I am still researching and learning about a lot of this compression stuff and technologically it is all changing and advancing rapidly. The main point is that the codec you choose needs to be right for what you want the end file for. Do you just want it on a CD, or do you need to stream it? Windows Media is a quite a simple, cure-all option, but not the best in terms of quality.
Ultimately you would want a product like Media Cleaner for this.
Re frame rate: interestingly, I have noticed that if I export as .wmv (Windows Media) the end file size was the same whether I chose 25 frames (the full rate for PAL, as opposed to NTSC which you are probably using in the US) or 15 frames. And there was no quality difference.
When you capture a video from a DV cam, it’s in raw DV format, but in a way unique to your brand of capture card. That means you cannot move that raw DV to any other computer that doesn’t share that brand of card.
But that’s okay, because what you do when it’s edited and ready to be put on to tape again, you just need to export it (or play it) with your editing software, and it will play down your firewire cable to the camera - press ‘record’ on the camera, and huzzah, it’s done.
One hour of raw DV is 13Gb of space. Add in previews and effects and testing and whatever, and you’ll need half as much again per hour of tape.
I regularly have four or five hours of video sitting on my hard drives as I do my work, having three or four projects on the go at once, so my 300Gb of space is a necessity. Most people can go just fine with a single 80Gb drive (though I recommend it being a separate drive to your OS).
I guess I left out a few things. Harumph. I have an external Firewire 120 Gig hard drive. The mini DV cam is also in the loop via firewire.
istara, welcome to the club !!! 
Another thing you also need is XP NTSF file system, if you don’t have it, you are limited to 4 gig files, which is the famous 19 minute limit.
“256Mb ram.”
That is going to be slow, you need 512MB or better, 1gig
I tried to make a vcd using an ATI card input with a/v, input a video from vhs, & then used Nero to write a vcd, a one hour video took only one hour & ten minutes to capture & process & the quality was fine. Thats a nice way to start.
Ditto the ram - our Vaio came with just 256 and it desperately needs upgrading (the pros at Sony agree). Otherwise it’s just click click click swap swap swap off the hard drive… then crash crash crash.
Guanolad, this isn’t correct. The DV stream is copied from the camera via the 1394 card and stuffed into an AVI or QT file wrapper on your hard disk. The video stream is still DV as recorded by the camera and unchanged. The 1394 interface does roughly the same job as an ATA HD interface - allow the bits to flow to/from your computer to the camera/HD. It doesn’t modify them on the way.
(Although to be fair, often the audio is broken out into a separate stream inside the AVI/QT wrapper, so that the NLE can more easily deal with it; but this is done by the capture software (i.e. DirectShow/DVGate/QuickTime, not the 1394 card.)
software, card, card, software. That was what I meant, thanks for correcting it.
Welcome. 
Maybe it was explained perfectly above but…
If you are capturing from a DV camera it is best to capture with the DV codec. This way the transfer will be lossless. (Except for any parts you add effects and transitions etc). DV in and DV out = basically no loss of quality.
You are correctamundo, speckofdust. One day, using this wisdom, you shall become a mighty ball of fuzz. 
And, Welcome To The Straight Dope !!
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