We are trying to shorten the long task of creating copies of our high school football games. We need to get the game film from our camera to multiple copies of DVDs. After we have the original, copying is relatively quick. However, creating the first copy requires us to download DV tape into a computer in real time after the game. I know of Firestore hard drive that will accept intermittent recording onto disk, then this must be rendered into DVD format. This is the extent of my knowledge on this project. Can the data be transferred to "DVD" format and recorded faster than using the method above? Is there a firewire Disk recorder that can burn "on the fly" while we stop and start between plays? Any help will be appreciated. Chris Barnes
If your camera uses tape, it's either an analog recorder or a digital tape recorder. Transfers will generally be at 1X or real time. If you get a digital camera that records to digital media other than tape, transfers will be very quick. Some record directly to DVD (which sometimes are nonstandard in recorded format and hard to edit), hard drive, or flash type memory. Just investigate and try before buying.
My camera does record to mini DV. However, this requires me to play this tape after the game into a computer and then render it to DVD format. We are not able to replace our cameras at this time, as they werein the $2000 price range and bought only last year.
I don't know any way to do it other than real time transfer. That's the disadvantage of tape. Can't you set the tape to xfer to your hard drive overnight and then do the editing and DVD duplication the next day?
I wish I could. Here in Georgia, High Schools try to keep cost down where possible by trading game tapes. You meet with the next week's opponent coach on Saturday morning to trade your Friday night tape. So it has to be done before I go home Friday night. While we are at it, I make all the copies that the coaches use for grading at that time. It is typically 1:00 a.m. before I am finished. So Iam looking for any speed increase I can. Chris
If someone else is working with you, you might try using a different tape for each quarter and then dividing the work up on two computers to do the transfers. That'd halve your time. I assume you're editing out everything except the plays. Are you only recording the plays or the entire game from start to finish? If you only record the plays, that'd speed things up as well since no editing would be needed.
That's right, I stop after the whistle each play and start when they leave the huddle. I do little to no editing of the film. Then time is entering the film into the computer and rendering the file to DVD format. Since I am on top of the press box, it is impossible to start entering the film into the computer we use for creating the DVDs. Chris
Your game tapes must run about 80-90 minutes I guess. Does it take longer than that to transfer to your computer hard drive? A good dual core laptop would have enough horsepower for the transfer. Do you have a good USB2 dongle you could use as the capture device like the Pinnacle Dazzle or the Plextor converter? If you had access to a laptop and used a tape each quarter, you could have the transfer for the previous quarter taking place while taping the current quarter. Of course you'd need a player other than the camera itself to play the DV tape for the transfer which you probably don't have.
A dvd recorder or other hardware encoder would take the dv to dvd in real time without encoding which takes up a lot of time (1.5 times realtime) on a good machine however quality can suffer.
So even the coaches have to view the tape on the camera unless you convert to a DVD. Is that right? spiesfan's suggestion of using a DVD recorder to capture the output from the camera would save you the time it takes to encode to DVD once the transfer is accomplished. That might be quite a bit of time, unless you're already converting to DVD anyway as you do the transfer to your hard disk. I think the quality would be acceptable for your purposes. Just be sure to get a recorder that is compatible. Some of them are a little weird in how they record stuff and make it difficult to duplicate. I'd use RW media in the recorder and then duplicate onto -R or +R media. I have an RCA recorder that uses +R and +RW media and I have no problems ripping the DVD files from the +RW disks and making copies of family videos for others. DVD ecorders can be had for under $100 if you look around. You might be able to borrow one from someone at school to experiement. Maybe your school already has one. Using the recorder won't help much if you're already creating DVD files as you transfer. Since we don't know exactly what steps you're currently going through, it's hard to be more definitive in suggestions.
This idea is very interesting. I have one question - Since I stop after each play and start before the next play (again, to shorten the tape for the coaches), what happens in the recorder? Is is still running recording a black screen or snow? I would be afraid that when we play games with a lot of passes(probably incomplete!!) that the stopping the clock in the game could extend the total time of the game past 2 hours that would over-run the length of the DVD. Would that happen?
Unless you stopped/paused the recorder it would continue to record whatever shows up on your camera screen, the last frame or black screen. Most DVD recorders can be set to record 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, or 6 hours per DVD. You could probably set the recording time to 3 hours and catch the entire game, but then you'd have to edit out the dead space afterwards. I'm not sure that'd save you any time in the long run over just transferring the entire tape after the game. Is your tape input being converted to DVD format as it's being xferred or do you have to convert it to DVD format after transferring to your hard disk?
Right now, I have to download the tapes immediately after the game into the system that the coaches use for cut ups (position by position). I then create the DVDs and VHS tapes (when required by other schools). Later, I take a copy and download into another computer to create the DVDs or VHS tapes( can you believe that some colleges still want VHS?) for hi-lite DVDs (for college recruiting). This is where the majority of editing time is. The recruiting DVDs do not have the time constraints of the after-game DVDs. It is just difficult sometimes to return from an away game and then have to spend another 2-3 hours to be prepared for Saturday morning by 10:00 a.m.
Yes I can see how that would be taxing. I just don't see any way around the real time xfer no matter what you do. If you were recording to solid state digital media or DVD it'd make your job much easier for sure. It seems you may also be constrained by the coaching system software your school is using as well. I'm not sure what format it requires.
