BS: Mini DV to DVD

Subject: BS: Mini DV to DVD
From: GUEST,Dazbo
Date: 16 Nov 06 - 10:58 AM

I've acquired a Mini DV camcorder which I'm very happy with and I can easily copy what I taken to conventional video tapes or copy to an SD card to load to my pc. What's the best way to convert what's on the Mini DV tape to a DVD?

I've currently only got a low spec pc (although I'm hoping to up-grade to a new pc with a much better spec after Christmas) what software/hardware would you suggest is best for this?

I've seen some adverts on the internet for companies that'll convert it for you but they seem pricey (on was £60 per tape). Have you used this method? What did you think of the quality? Was it worth the cost?

Cheers

Subject: RE: BS: Mini DV to DVD
From: JohnB
Date: 16 Nov 06 - 11:11 AM

Mine came with a piece of software called "Pinnacle Studio"
You connect the camera through a usb port and then the computer controls the camera operation. Download the movie, you can do all sorts of editing if you want. Then burn to dvd.
All it takes is a bit of time and a bit more messing around to find out how the software works.
Good Luck JohnB

Subject: RE: BS: Mini DV to DVD
From: jeffp
Date: 16 Nov 06 - 11:12 AM

You will need a PC with as much horsepower as you can muster. For video and audio editing I had one built special with a 2.5 GHz Pentium Duo, 4 GB memory and 2 hard drives - 80 GB for system and applications, and 400 GB for data. I'm using Sony Vegas for video editing and DVD authoring. It's got a lot of capabilities, probably more than you will need for simple conversion and burning. You will need a firewire cable (and a firewire port on the computer) to link the camera to your PC. You want as little extraneous stuff running on the computer so that there is as much processor and I/O capacity to capture the video properly.

I hope I haven't scared you off of the whole idea, but video production requires a lot of processor power and memory/storage. We are talking about file sizes in the Gigabytes here. It takes a big pipe to ship that much data. Makes audio look like ASCII in comparison.

Jeff

Subject: RE: BS: Mini DV to DVD
From: jeffp
Date: 16 Nov 06 - 11:14 AM

JohnB answered while I was typing. Pinnacle came with my laptop and it is a good program. I used it in conjunction with Windows Movie Maker to put together a DVD from the Maryland Renaissance Festival last year. I took tape that I had shot on 5 different occasions and put together about an hour of final product that included scene transitions, slo-mo (at the joust when somebody got unhorsed), imported sound from a CD, and even rolling credits at the end. It's pretty easy to work with and it was a lot of fun.

Jeff

Subject: RE: BS: Mini DV to DVD
From: open mike
Date: 16 Nov 06 - 12:24 PM

or use a fire wire cable to go direct to a dvd burner..
i did this last night..some editing is possible too.

mac computers are said to have more capabilities
for audio and video editing. i have a unit designed
to do just that....a stand alone computer of sorts.
which is the type used in the college video editing
class i am taking...a Casablanca.

good luck and happy shooting.

Subject: RE: BS: Mini DV to DVD
From: GUEST,Dazbo
Date: 17 Nov 06 - 03:33 AM

Cheers for the info. Looks like I'm going to have to get the most Gbytes I can afford. Sounds like fun though! I'll have a look out for Pinacle as well, not heard of it before.

Subject: RE: BS: Mini DV to DVD
From: Mr Red
Date: 17 Nov 06 - 04:28 PM

I do mine through Firewire - but modern camcorders can and sometimes only do it through USB. If your camcorder is Firewire (1394) then you will probably need a Firewire card.

I bought Pinnacle and though the competition were theoretically not as good, their software took 6 months to get right with updates and patches & I was a year behind the curve. I would never buy another Pinnacle product because of that.

In those days the cheap solutions rendered and saved in Mpeg2, and if the s/w you get does that it will degrade the result a lot sooner. If you do any fancy stuff and create second and third generation clips (rendered and saved then rendered and saved) then it will be noticeable. If you can render in AVI until you burn the CD the losses will be small. AVI DV is a compressed format but not as heavily as Mpeg2. Ask how the s/w works internally - AVI or Mpeg2.

Nero has some very easy to use s/w - give it Mpeg2 or AVI or AVI DV (they are different) in a mix of formats and it will make a very good CD for you. I am sure competing products (of similar price) are equally feature rich.

Subject: RE: BS: Mini DV to DVD
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 28 Nov 06 - 03:45 PM

also Id look into archival DVD's. As far as I know they should be on the market in a few months. THis also applies to cdr's (apparently the US army backed up 30years of medical records to cdrs only to find out they were unreadable after a couple of years). Now they are suing the supplier.
THere is no guarantee with cdrs they may last a few months or a few years, as it has to do with evaporation of the coating. (CDrs that are actually pressed will not have that problem) There are archival cdrs available (I just got some to back up family photos etc). They are a bit more pricey - but still only around $2 (Canadian) a piece. They are guaranteed for 300 years.

I am finding that some of the dvds I made of my baby daughter only last year or so, are unreadable on the dvd player, so Im looking forward to getting archival dvds.