Newbie: Video capture card automatic with firewire jack?

Okay, my apologies, but I am a total newbie to this DVD burning field, as well as being a newbie to WindowsXP.

My goal is to transfer S-VHS footage and edit it to DVD. My editing experience is so dated that we're talking hybrid editing systems (outgrowth of birthing pains of non-linear editing).

Wading with deep ignorance through seas of acronyms, I'm thinking I need to invest in Canopus and Vegas.

How newbie can you get? Well, I'm wondering if I have a videocapture card since I have firewire jacks on the front of my PC.

If I purchase the Canopus 300 in order to get the S-VHS into the PC, do I still need to buy a capture card?

[hope I've posted to the proper forum in the proper querie format]

 

Firewire can not be Used Directly to Capture Analogue Video ,Firewire is Mainly used for Transfering DV Video from Digital Camcorders or from Hardware DV Capture Devices Like the Canopus ADVC-300.....

So if you wanted to Transfer S-VHS Video to your PC you would Connect Your VCR to the Canopus ADVC-300 and then Connect the ADVC-300 to the Firewire Port on your PC and then use DV Capture Software or DV Editing Software Like Vegas to Capture the Video to your Hard Drive in High quality DV AVI format which you can then edit in Vegas and add any effects and Transitions ect, Then render your project as a DVD Compliant Mpeg-2 File then you then author to DVD with your DVD Authoring program (Maybe "Sony DVD Architect v3.0"??)....

The Process is a Little Time Consumeing and you should have a Fast newer PC with a Lot of Drive Space on a Second drive other than the Drive your OS Is installed on (because DV Capture uses a Lot of Disk space and it needs a Fast drive and the drive with your OS and Software on it will tend to drop Frames if you use it to Capture on to) luckilly Big hard Drives are very Cheap these Days....

Sony Vegas Video 6 is a very Good and Stable Editing program but it is a Little Bit expensive and if you aren"t planning on doing anything extremely Complex you could get away with useing something that is Less expensive and maybe less Complex.....

There are a Few less expensive Editing programs that are a Little more Basic and easier to learn but still allow you to do effects and Transitions ect....

Like maybe check out "Adobe Premier Elements v1.0/2.0" which is only about $99....

Or One that is Just as Good as Vegas and is about half the price is "Ulead Media Studio Pro 7.0/8.0" which I think is about $250....

Another One I just recently Bought which blew me away with it"s Features was one called "Magix Movie Edit Pro v10" which was only $49 and it has LOTS of great Features and can actually do Some more Complex stuff than Vegas can and has more features and Comes with about 3gb of Extra Royalty Free Images and Footage that you can use in your Video and DVD Authoring projects...
They actually Market the program as a Basic Editor but once you get a Look at it"s interface and at what it can do you quickly realize that it isn"t a Basic editing program....

All of these programs should work Perfectly with the Canopus ADVC-300 and if not there are freeware DV Capture programs that can Capture the Video and you just have to import it into your Editor...

Well anyways If you need any more help Let me Know...

Cheers

 

Thank you so much Minion! That cleared up a lot.

I have a Compaq "Presario" with an Intel Pentium 4, 2.93 GHz, with 504 RAM and a 142 GB hard drive. I understand now that HP computers have been known to have issues and that I instead should have invested in a Mac and run Final Cut Pro, but it's now too late for that.

How big a second hard drive dedicated for video capture need to be? I would like to duplicate what I used to be able to do with my hybrid system. I would like to be able to cut between say 6 tapes of a 90-minute production. I gather I would have to capture all that onto a hard drive? Is this even possible? I once had to cut between 30 hours of footage. I'm not sure that's possible even now with hard drives so "cheap". Is it possible to capture onto flash drives? Could one plug in several flash drives to simulate having several tapes available or would it really all easily fit onto a dedicated hard drive? [Am I supposed to move this now to some other forum?]

 

Actually PC"s are Much better these days for editing than Macs are because there aren"t a Lot of Editing and DVD authoring programs for the mac and there aren"t many good Mpeg-2/DVD encoders and macs don"t have the File Type support that PC"s have pluss PC"s are so much cheaper to Run....

DV AVI Video uses up about 4gb per 20 minutes of Video so a 200gb HD should be Plenty or at least enough to Hold 8 hours of Video But you Only have to capture the video that you Need any Video you aren"t going to use doesn"t need to be captured....

Captureing to flash drives isn"t very Practical as they are More expensive than hard Drives and they aren"t fast enough to capture in Real time....

Well Good Luck....Cheers

 

Thank you again, Minion... you're pure gold.

 

I don't know if you can say that PC's are much better than Mac's. I work on both and they both have their problems. Mac's are much more stable, less upkeep, and lend themselves to a faster workflow. PC's do have many more applications to choose from but you have Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier and Avid for Mac. After you use any of these you will never look elsewhere. There aren't as "many" for Mac because the ones that are there are the best, there is no need for anything else. The competition is close but if anything PC is still a little behind Mac.

 

if the mac is better than a pc ,why will mac be soon coming out with windows operating system installed ?

 

@permatex: I don't know where your information is coming from but mac's will not come with a Windows based OS installed. They are switching to Intel processors but they are not switching the OS. It will come shipped with OS X 10.5. You can however install a windows operating system if you like but that is with a few modifications. I think you got your info a little mixed up.

 

the information i have received from apple is that they will be shipping mac with a window operating system in the near future,unless they change their plans.wait and see.

 

I'm not saying you're lying but why would Apple ship their computers with an OS created by their main rival?

 

i can`t answer that,you will have to ask apple for their explination.

 

to dmerc,check netscape business news for an article from apple mac.apple clearly states that the new macs will have intel chips which will be able to handle windows operating systems.

 

I knew that they could handle the OS. The statement that you made suggested that the windows OS would come installed when you purchased the Mac, that is what we were debating. There is no way that a company would do something like that.

 

from what i have been able to find out,micrsoft will benifit from mac using the windows operating system however apple feel that they would also see an increase in sales over time as mac die hard users who want to stay with mac and benifit from the wide varity of window based programs.apple is looking at the bottom number and it only a matter of time before we see macs coming off the assembly line with windows operating systems.the word is in time you will be able to buy a mac with what ever operating system you want.

 

Could one buy a Mac and have it operate deal with all one's old PC work through windows and yet also be able to access Final Cut Pro? Can one choose each time the computer is booted up which operating system to load?

 

currently apple is still in the planning stage as far as i could find out,sometine soon apple mac will be coming out with a mac that use intel chips which will allow the user to install and use windows operating system.apple is not releaseing all the specs at this time.we will probably have to wait for the first production modles to hit the market before we can realy find out how the mac with intel chips can be used.i look forward to the new model going on the market anyday.

 

The intel mac lines were released for orders on the 9th. They came out with a new laptop and a new intel version of the imac.

Yes, eventually you will be able to dual boot. I don't know yet if you will be able to partition the drive for both OS's but you will be able to use two different drives, one with each OS on it. Which would mean that you could access windows apps and Mac apps on the same computer.

 

Thanks for the useful info mignon. I also have an ADVC-300. I wanted to know if capturing in DV format is the same as a raw AVI (ie: is it lossless?). I ask because I'm using Edius Pro to capture and it doesn't really allow me to select different capture settings (Perhaps I'm missing something).

Also, I wanted to know if you do much work around adjusting aspect ratios. The guide on Doom9 recommends adjusting the ratio whenever performing a capture, but it feels a little beyond me at this point. Will it make a huge difference?

 

Hi, No the DV AVI Format is Not Totally Lossless nor is it Uncompressed...The DV Format uses a Very effecient but Low Compression algorythm which makes the Format Near Lossless when you Keep the Format in DV and you use a Good DV Codec....

There aren"t really any settings for DV Compression Accept Captureing to either "Type 1 DV AVI" or "Type 2 DV AVI" and the Capture resolution for DV is allways the same (Full D1 720x480 NTSC or 720x576 Pal).....

I have never had to adjust the aspect ratio when editing or encodeing DV AVI files...
If Makeing a DVD From the DV Files I generally just render my DV project to DVD Compliant Mpeg-2 format useing the 4:3 aspect ratio which is used for Viewing on a Normal TV Set so if you do the Same you shouldn"t have problems.....

Cheers