OT - Camcorder again: transfer from MiniDV to PC

Hi Blitzers,

thanks again you all your precious answers on my previous thread. I'm now quite ready to buy a Panasonic nv gs 180.

But, I've just search the Internet to have an idea on about how to transfer the video footage from the camera to the pc.

And sadly, it seems a bottleneck.

First, the transfer is long: as far as I understand, it takes the whole footage duration. During this time, the videocamera can't be used.

Second, the data transfer - through a firewire cable - has be done from within a video software; on winXP comes, for example, Windows Movie Maker pre-installed, but the video resolution would be smaller than the original.

Other software allow a better resolution, but are not free, like Pinnacle Studio, Adobe Video Collection or Ulead Video Studio.

There's also an issue with Windows SP2 which sadly substitutes some of the Firewire drivers, which then don't work properly with the data transfer. From what I've read, this issue it's quite annoying, and the only solution is to hand copy some .sys files from the previous SP1 to the new SP2.

After all that, I have two question for you camcorders:

1) how do you transfer your video from MiniDV to PC, how easy is it, and how long does it take ?

2) wouldn't be better a miniDVD support instead of a MiniDV ? How easy would be to transfer from a miniDVD to a PC in a format that could be easily edited and then burned on a normal DVD, without loosing quality ?

Sorry for the long message, and thanks for your attention.

Sergio.

Hi Semar,
quick answers
1. Of course if you have 1h of recorded film, you have to 'download' on the computer for the same time - as I know there are no other method (if you use MiniDV of course)
2. Delete Movie Maker.
3. There are many programs that can connect to a VideoCam as a standard device of WindowsXP: with my motherboard I got InterVideo WinDVD Suite - capable of video-editing). Other solutions - not so bad - are Magix Video, or you can even use VirtualDub (not proper 'user frendly')!
4. MiniDVDs are 'fragile' and the quality is a 'standard' (or worse...) Mpeg2. MiniDV offers surely higher quality because uses less compression. So if you want quality - unless you have a hyper-professional-camera, is still convenient to use MiniDV.

Of course these are only my personal opinion - maybe today technology offers better results!
Byez

I haad the pinnacle softare but it was unreliable. I upgraded to Movie Maker 2 and it's OK. I've used Virtual Dub in the past for transfering Analogue stuff to the PC but it's a bit techy.

I have a GS180 and transfer video all the time. I used to use the firewire port on my old machine as it only had USB 1. My new machine has USB 2 so now I use that with no issues.

The GS180 comes with software to do the transfer in full resolution.


That's just life. What exactlly are you doing that makes this a real issue? Remember, you computer is lonely and would love to be doing something for you while you sleep.



Been ages since I've used Movie Maker but try Version 2. The camera comes with software also.

Sergio, don't be afraid to jump right in after you've done your homework. You're not going to be able to answer all your questions before you buy and use the camera.

Welcome to windows. You might have a problem and then again you might not.

Exactly. There's a reason video editing is a difficult and laborious process, and that reason is the sheer length of time it takes to do things. If you think capturing the movie is tedious, wait til you render effects on the edited video. And of course that's nothing compared to the rendering time if you do, say, 3D animation.

Think of it this way; this is still a big improvement over editing by shuttling around 2 VCRs.

Also, this is most definitely not the bottleneck. The time you spend capturing footage is a tiny sliver of the total time you spend preparing a video. Editing soaks up enormous amounts of time.


A miniDVD won't store enough data. DV results in enormous file sizes, so big that you routinely need to buy a new harddrive every time you start working on a decently-long video. Only tape can store that much data in a small and cost effective form.

Which reminds me: don't even think of buying any camera other than a tape one. I've had to tell too many disappointed students that the salesman lied to them and the brand new DVD camcorder they bought is essentially useless for editing.


Admittedly I didn't spend all that long trying, and this was years ago so I'm sure the situation is better now, but I have never gotten reliable transfer to a PC. For this task I gave up twiddling with Windows, and now I only do video work on Macintosh.

VirtualDub can't extract sounds directly...



http://www.virtualdub.org/docs_capture

Few others to try:

WinDV, DVIO

http://windv.mourek.cz/

http://www.carr-engineering.com/dvio.htm

some firewire adapters and some video cameras also come with the capture & editing software bundled...

My camera came with some ULead program... It was exceptionally mediocre though, and I ended up using Vegas Video myself. There's also an entry level version of Adobe Premiere, called Premiere Elements that's supposedly pretty good.

When capturing DV video, keep in mind that it will take about 1GB of diskspace for every 5 minutes of video... So you'll need plrenty of diskspace if you intend to do any serious editing. when it comes to editing, you can greatly increase the number of programs capable of dealing with your captured video if you download the old Panasonic DV codec. It's a standard video-for-windows codec, meaning that pretty much any video editing program you have will gain the ability to write to DV format with it.

Absolutely agree. I work with students too and I get exactly the same thing. Avoid DVD camcorders like the plague.

Semar, its good to do your homework and all but you should probably just buy it now. You're worrying yourself with all this 'information', some of which is inaccurate. Unless you're quite unlucky, transferring video from DV cam to your PC will be easy.

By the way, if the bundled software is no good you might have a look at Premiere Elements for editing.

Thank you all for the very well informative and wise suggestions - which I'm going to follow right now...

I really love this community. I would like to invite you all for a mega pizza party... and make a movie of it !!!!

:)

Sergio.