What is the best/easiest software to capture MiniDV??

I bought a Sony Mini Dv cam that came with something called image mixer. I really dislike the program as it only lets me capture 30 secs at a time from my 60 min. long mini dv's. I would just like to import the whole 60 minutes to the hard drive and edit from there. I downloaded thi sprogram called DVapp and it seems to trasfer nicely, but I still have a question I can't find. is there a program that can transfer and encode a minidv into say Mpeg2 dvd? I have been using dvdapp and mainconcept to encode it, but it would be nice to have a prog that would do it all in one shot.

 

Hi there,

Try Sonic my dvd, doss the lot in one shot with my mini dv panasonic.

 

I would not recommend to do it in one shot. The encoding would have to be done real time while capturing, PC's are just not powerfull enough to do that, unless the encoder uses low quality settings. Best is to stay in DV-AVI as long as possible (i.e. edit in AVI) and encode the final result.

 

M8 sonic mydvd will do 1hr of mini dv video from camcorder to pc and then on to dvd- disk in one go, only thing it takes about 3hrs for 1hr of video off the camcorder as the pc doss the converting as well. The outcome is pritty good as well and thay will play in any player under the tv.
I have done lots of them on dvds and dvd+rw's, the software did come with my panasonic mini dv cam and u upload it from the av input with firewire leed to the pc, the faster the pc the faster it will put it on the disk from what ive been told.
My pc is a p3 800 with 512- 133 ram and it will do 1hr to disk in about 3hrs, i just go out and when i get in its on the disk spat out of the burner tray.

latersss.

 

Hello everyone. I am a new to this thing about editing and transfering video from a camcorder to the PC. So I was wondering if some one can recomend me a sofware that will capture and convert the video to a format that I will be able to save and then burn to DVD. I used Movie Maker but the quality of the video saved in my PC was not good. I tried Pinnacle 9 Plus and I save the video as AVI, the quality is good but the video is too big because for 48 seconds it uses 170 MB. So I was doing some calculations and 1 hour and a half would require more than 4.7 GB. So I want a program that would give me a very good quality and that won’t make the video too big, because that way I can burn it to DVD. I have a DV camcorder. If anyone can help me I will really appreciate it. Thank you.

 

Start reading this: http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/basics/tapetodvd.php
and then read the other basic articles there.
The bottom line is to capture in AVI, do the editing and then covert to MPEG-2.

 

You keep posting that and I have read that forum, but it doesn't tell HOW to capture in AVI and HOW to change it to M-peg 2. I want specific instructions for specific programs.

Has anyone ever used the Roxio DVD creator?

 

As i said m8 get sonic my dvd plug in camcorder to fire wire in the front or back port start my dvd and pick direct to dvd put the dvd in drive + or - and its easy peessy from there u carnt go rong. Dont tuch the pc until its finish doing you film to the dvd, this may take as long as 3hr depending on the speed of your pc and how long the film is. Windows me will only let you put just over 1hr to your hard disk, xp ntfs you can put as much as you wont on the hard disk , thats if you wont it on the hard drive and not the dvd that is.

Hope this helps.

 

Converting from DV to AVI & then to MPEG2 is always recommended but 15mins of full AVI equals to 3Gb of HDD space. I don't go for that. I prefer converting direct to MPEG2 but you need a fairly powerful PC. My system is P4 3.0E/ 1Gb PC3200 DDR/ 120Gb SATA/ 256mb MSI FX5500 VGA/ Pinnacle AVDV Capture card/ Studio 9plus software & running on WinXP pack 2.
I remember when I first started scanning photos into my PC. Everybody told me to use uncompressed format like TIF or BMP. I never listen & I always use JPEG because it's easier to open & edit & share. Never mind that it's a lossey format - you need to open it hundreds of times before the pixels start to lose.

 

swingtip,

does that Sonic program let you edit in any kind of way or is it just straight transfer?
Also does it acutally put the files into DVD (.VOB) files? or simply M-Peg2 files.

 

[bold]Bene wrote:[/bold]

Hi Bene,
There are hundreds of different programs that you can use for this stuff. The referred article there explains the basics of the process so that you know which steps to take.
Next, it's a matter of personal choice and what you want to do. If you just want to burn your minDV stuff straight t DVD without any editing and you're satisfied with "reasonable" quality, you can go for a direct-to-DVD solution (like e.g. myDVD or DVDMovieFactory offer). If you're planning for high level editing, create advanced DVD menu's and only settle for the best quality you will end up using different programs for each task.

But OK:, if you want specific instructions, here is my preferred method:
Capture with WinDV. Why? Because it is simple to use, reliable an it will not take any reources on my system, so that I can keep doing other things at the same time.
Edit with Premiere Pro. Why? Because it offers the most advanced editing possibilities for me (but probably over the top for most).
Encode to MPEG with TMPGEnc. Why? Because I found it to give very good quality.
Author to DVD with Ulead DVDWorkshop (for relative simple menus) or DVDlab (for advanced menus which include multiple audio tracks).

Cheers

 

HEllo
I have a question. So if anyone could answer it I will appreciate it. If I want to transfer the video into the hard drive does have to be a internal hard drive or it could be an External hard drive? Because I have an external hard drive.
i been reading all that has been posted here and the last message posted is great becuase it tells you the good programs. Thank you to everybody.

 

I have a program called intervideo windvd creator you can make really good menus, i think it is quite good although it did come with the pc so i havent needed to look around, it also does the whole capturing process in one go and you can do everything with it.
Nero vision is okay aswel.
I did receive image mixer with my video camera and could never get it to work.

 

In principle it can be possible to capture directly to an external drive, but most likely you will run into performance issues. Better capture to an internal drive and later copy it to external.

 

I been having a little problem on how using Adobe Premiere Pro. So if anyone can help me out That would be great. I am editing a video, so when I finish editing the video in the time line I do not know what to do in order to encode it with TMPGEnc to MPEG-2.
I don't know if I have to save the video in the time line as AVI. and if I have to save it,I don't know how to do it because I alreday try to save it and what it was save was the whole video. I am sorry but I am new on doing all these things and I just got this program. Thank you.

 

Maybe you should start by looking in the manual? ;-)
Saving the timeline to AVI: File->Export->Movie... Then there is a Settings-button which you can use to change all kinds of settings.
You can than encode tha AVI with TMPGEnc.

Another direct way to encode the timeline using TMPGEnc is using a frameserving process. Here's a tutorial: http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/tutorials/frameserve.php

 

Does somebody know Which method would give me better quality video. Saving the video in the timeline to AVI and then encode it to MPEG-2 or Encode the timeline using the method Frameserving. Thank you

 

It does not make any difference at all.
What makes a difference in quality is what encoder you use and which settings you apply in the encoder.

 

Maybe you should look up at the homepage for some information.

 

If anyone can a help me with this problem I would appreciate it. I am editing with Adobe Premiere Pro. The problem is that the sound of video that I saved from the timeline sounds like when you are listen to a radio station and you listen to some small spikes or something like that I don't know how to describe this or something like dots of sounds. The sound in the original video is fine. Thank you