Help: Transfer videocam-minidv to pc

[Bandido]

1. How to and what software do you use?

Thanks

[boybi]

you can use the builtin Movie Maker of WinXP.

[alnr]

you need to have a tv tuner card or firewire so that you can transfer your video (thats for the hardware). now for capturing the video, there are a lot of softwares that you can use, adobe premiere, ulead video studio and etc...

[umzzzzz]

try sonic foundry/sony vegas (sony bought vegas from sonic foundry). it's faster than most softwares based from my experience. windows movie maker is for you if you're doing this for the first time. i don't think you need a tv tuner necessarily since you have a digital device (mini dv) already. u can have either usb or firewire (transfers much faster than usb) whichever your hardware (your pc and your videocam) supports. also, prepare the cd that came with your videocam because the pc may not recognize the device. and last but not least, you should have a large hard drive so that the movie will fit. size depends on how long the movie is.

[ozcity]

Ulead Video Studio or Premier..

[wrecker]

use the firewire interface (IEEE 1394) since minidv is digital... don't use a tv tuner or similar analog cards since it will convert your digital input to analog output.

the InnoDV firewire card costs about 950 pesos. some motherboards have built-in firewire capability which means you only need to buy a firewire cable.

your minidv should have a bundled software for this. if not, use any of those mentioned above but note that they are commercial software. you can go to afterdawn.com for freeware video editing software.

hth

[picantorange]

Yep, na-mention na yung firewire and software needed. You'll also need a cavernous drive, since the data rate of DV is about 220 MB/s.

[neko-chan]

one of the cheapest out there is innodv, hardware ang software.

[Jun aka Pekto]

Check your pc first to see if it already has a firewire port. If not, there are many brands of firewire cards you can buy.

I personally prefer firewire ports built into the motherboard. But, I also use a Maxtor firewire card for my wife's pc which doesn't have a built in firewire port.

Assuming you have the hardware and software, you can then transfer video from the MiniDV camcorder to the pc. You can save in either:

1. Uncompressed DV-AVI which yields the best quality but also takes up the most hard drive space. expect 1 hour of footage to take up ~12GB of hard drive space.

or

2. You can also save in mpeg2 format. The big advantage of mpeg2 is that it takes up a fraction of the space required by DV-AVI. The tradeoff is that it is heavily compressed. You'll need a powerful pc to save mpeg2's reliably. Otherwise, you risk having the audio fall out of sync with the video, among other problems.

[3kster]

To download to your pc, you need a firewire port. Mid to high end motherboards usually have this or through a firewire PCI card.

You then need to connect your mini DV to the firewire using a firewire cable. Your videocam should have a bundled firewire cable with it.

Just as the others mentioned, you may need the bundled software with your unit just in case it cannot be detected by the pc although win xp should be able to detect it with ease.

For softwares, you can use windows movie maker which has a very simple interface. Other software mentioned above have a very powerful editing/authoring capabilities, which could become overwhelming to newbies. I currently use Adobe Premiere, and it has a trial version that can be used for 30 (?) days. It can be downloaded from their site but its a pretty huge file.

last but not the least, you need Hard disk space. As the others mentioned, uncompressed dv should be ~10GB~12GB per 1 hour of recording and compressed dv should be ~ 2 to 4GB/1 hour video in mpeg2, avi or mpeg4. Please remember that the download format should be compatible with your editing/authoring software.

Also, bear in mind that downloading video will take time, from 4 to 12 hours, depending on your video recording lenght and your pc. During download, you won't be able to use your pc since this task is cpu heavy. Intel cpus (P4 above) perform better than AMDs. Sorry AMD fans, I'm not flaming here, i have amd cpu and they perform better in games and overall day to day task but intel always have the edge in multimedia encoding (although new cpus from amd is catching up in this area).

[boybi]

kaya pala medyo distorted yung video ko after transferring from videocam to PC. nagiinternet ako while transferring.

[A121]

Kailangan mo rin ng mabilis na Hard drive, 7200RPM or better. Nung tinry ng kaibigan ko sa laptop nya (mabagal hdd nun), nagskip yung video.

May sofware ba na naibigay yung Camcorder mo? Usually kasi may kasama siyang editing and capturing tool

OT:

Intel cpus (P4 above) perform better than AMDs. Sorry AMD fans, I'm not flaming here, i have amd cpu and they perform better in games and overall day to day task but intel always have the edge in multimedia encoding (although new cpus from amd is catching up in this area).

Yep, that's true. Nung nagpaedit kami ng video mas ok ang performance ng P4 sa lumang Athlons. Kaya lang, times have changed, mas ok na yung mga 64bit Athlons compared sa P4. Yung friend ko na nagvivideo edit, AMD based yung PC nya.

[NightRock]

Firewire lang at Movie Maker... Ok na for more prof. job try mo yung software included sa video cam mo...

[Jun aka Pekto]

Kailangan mo rin ng mabilis na Hard drive, 7200RPM or better. Nung tinry ng kaibigan ko sa laptop nya (mabagal hdd nun), nagskip yung video.

That depends too on the video format you're using to capture with. I can capture uncompressed DV-AVI fine through the firewire port of my HP P4 2.4ghz laptop and it only has a 4200rpm hard drive. I do keep the hard drive defragged regularly and limit the number of apps running in the background.

I just captured some MiniDV footage with MovieMaker 2 on the laptop and it did quite well considering MM2 is one of the more unstable Windows apps around. I recommend buying a 3rd party app to capture and edit video with. Use MM2 as a last resort.

Add: Also, bear in mind that even a desktop P3-733 can capture DV-AVI fine, at least the one I have here. So, most computers build during the last 5 years should be able to handle capturing video through firewire. Just make sure you keep the hard drive defragged and get as much ram and hard drive space as you can afford.

[picantorange]

Also, bear in mind that downloading video will take time, from 4 to 12 hours, depending on your video recording lenght and your pc.

Digital Video is captured in real time.

[Jun aka Pekto]

During download, you won't be able to use your pc since this task is cpu heavy.

That's pretty much the general rule. When capturing video, it's best to leave the pc alone while it's capturing.

However with dualcore cpu's, you can get away with doing other stuff while capturing video in the background. I captured video through the firewire on this pc (dualcore X2 4200+) just now and I was able to capture MiniDV footage perfectly fine (in mpeg2 format to boot) while surfing and refreshing tsikot.com

Add: I used Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 to capture directly to mpeg2.

[boybi]

is mpeg2 better than avi, esp. if i'll transfer it into DVD?

[3kster]

Sir Boybi, If transfer to DVD, mpeg2 is better since its the format used by DVD. I usually use avi and just use my editing/authoring tool to convert it to another format.

Digital Video is captured in real time.

Di ba ang south bridge, 133 MB/s lang? Plus taking into account the transcoding into the format you want by the CPU, even using the highest CPU frequency available, you will still be limited by the PCI transfer rate which uses 33MHz. Unless your using PCIe, of which at x1, can handle ~500MB/s. Then again, you will be limited by the HDD transfer rate at around 100~133 MB/s for IDE and SATA at 150 MB/s

Current system will have those specs, but if you have SATA 2 which has 300 MB/s (or SCSI or SAS) then it will be real time.

That's pretty much the general rule. When capturing video, it's best to leave the pc alone while it's capturing.

However with dualcore cpu's, you can get away with doing other stuff while capturing video in the background. I captured video through the firewire on this pc (dualcore X2 4200+) just now and I was able to capture MiniDV footage perfectly fine (in mpeg2 format to boot) while surfing and refreshing tsikot.com

Add: I used Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 to capture directly to mpeg2.

Nice cpu Jun ....kainggit naman. dual core processors are pretty expensive (except intels D805, although AMD Athlon64 still thumps it) and you even have the latest and greatest. This processor thumps any intel processor even in multimedia encoding.

Sorry mods, OT na.

Bandido, hows the transfer going?

[Jun aka Pekto]

is mpeg2 better than avi, esp. if i'll transfer it into DVD?

MPEG2 is the format used when making dvd's. It's great if you're not going to do too many rerenders because mpeg2 is already a compressed format. It has a tendency to decrease in quality if you rerender too many times. It also has a tendency for the audio to fall out of sync with the video in certain circumstances.

What makes mpeg2 great is the tiny file size compared to uncompressed DV-AVI. Also, many video-editing apps only rerenders changes or additions to an mpeg2 such as transitions and titles (also known as smart-rendering) which helps maintain video quality and is also much faster in rendering than say converting from DV-AVI to mpeg2.

Add: MPEG2 is the format I use when recording tv shows to my pc which I then convert to Divx.

[beachbum]

better to capture first on its native format, which is DV. saka mo na lang iconvert to mpeg2. masyadong mabubulunan ang pc mo, kapag sabay. kung mabilis naman ang pc mo ok lang, but mas mabuti pa rin idownload uncompressed, hindi kc cpu intensive when downloading on its native format.

anyway kahit idownload mo sya to mpeg2 kaagad you still need to have the same amount of hard disk space as downloading in dv format, kapag sinasave na lang ang file saka sya lumiliit sa size na mpeg2.

and as much as possible, exit all background program that is running like antivirus, u need all the memory and cpu usage you can get.