| ghost |
Hey you techies...
Does anyone have a recommendation for a video capture card - I would like to go from a camcorder (firewire or S-video input) to a card that will put film clips (guess it's not film anymore) on my hard drive?
From there my goal is to get stuff on DVD - now I get to learn about the great +R/-R debate...
Thanks much! |
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| DaleB |
Are you planning on video editing? Because there is software out there that is great for that (the best costs a bundle, of course) or you can have limited editing but designed mostly for burning DVDs.
That software is cheaper, and often you can find it packaged with a firewire card.
Only just learning this stuff myself, maybe others have better suggestions with regards to brand of software or hardware. |
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| voltes |
Whats your budget? This is a hobby that can go from 100- thousands.
I always recommend going to www.videoguys.com and look for the right editing package for you. Last night, I was watching TechTV and they recommended the Pinnacle Studio DV edition that is bundled with the firewire card.
Good luck! :) |
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| crmsnidol |
You really don't need a seperate card for video editing if you are taking video straight from a DV camcorder to the PC - just go firewire. I have the ADS Tech Pyro IEEE1394 card. It works very well.
For Making you own movies, it's actually the DVD player that will determine what you can and cannot do. Some won't read home-made DVD's/VCD's. Some won't read anything burned on a CD-R/RW. Check www.vcdhelp.com for compatibility issues with players.
Also, Sony just came out with a DVD burner that does DVD +R, +RW, -R and -RW. It should be around $300 and is considered very good. You don't have to worry about standards with this drive because it conforms to both. |
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| hockeyplayer |
| I second Voltes pick. I have Pinnacle Express. I didn't need the card.(got a Vaio) You are able to burn "watchable" movies on a regular cd using your cd burner. It will burn it in VCD format to play on your DVD player. Note that you will need to verify what type of format your set top DVD player can play.Check www.vcdhelp.com. Most do these days. Pinnacle is great. It will take breaks in the movie and set up chapters for you automatically. It will take a snapshot of the chapter and place a picture for each chapter. You can then use your remote to pick which chapter you want. Only word of advice is that Video needs alot and I do mean alot of GB of hard drive space. Be prepared to set aside alot of time to edit and burn DVD's.:29: |
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| ghost |
Thanks all - the web links are great (and will probably kill much the rest of my day...) My budget is closer to $100s than $1000s, but it looks like there's some great stuff out there.
In terms of software, I have Adobe Premiere (powerful, but the words Fun and Easy don't really apply), a copy of VideoWave, and my PC came with a copy of Sonic MyDVD.
Looks like I need to pick up a Firewire card - I assume that most of the programs have a Import or Capture function to write the video to disk. I've searched around to see if I can use my USB 2.0 ports for this, doesn't look like it.
Thanks again, I'll keep you posted as I learn stuff. |
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| voltes |
| Adobe Premiere is also what I use. It really is powerful but complicated and not user friendly. Any firewire card should be compatible with Adobe Premiere (DV edition of course) as long as your card is properly installed in your PC. The Sony DVD Writer is the best right now for compatibilty with the 2 DVD formats but since it's new in the market, we dont know yet if its reliable in burning discs. The Pioneer DVR-A04 or A05 is also an option and has been in the market for a while and is proven. Decisions, decisions... |
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| JimH |
I am interested in getting a analog video to DVD converter in order to convert my Sony camcorder HI-8 tapes to the DVD format. I was looking at the Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U or the ADS Pyro A/V Link API-550. I have read the reviews and they seem to be mixed (both good and bad comments). Does anyone have any of these two models and/or have a recommendation for a stand-alone converter.
I am not interested in any PC Card. |
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| one4gatr |
With the cost of stand alone DVD burners dropping to the $200.00 level I would recommend buying one of these unless you really want to do a bunch of editing. I have both a 1394 card and a dazzle capture device. The problem with PC video capture is it eats up tons of resources and hard drive space. My DV camcorder actually allows me to do some basic editing before I pass through the stand alone DVD recorder. Additionally I can burn copies of TV shows, VHS tapes, etc...
Good Luck. |
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| DaleB |
quote:
Originally posted by one4gatr
With the cost of stand alone DVD burners dropping to the $200.00 level I would recommend buying one of these unless you really want to do a bunch of editing. I have both a 1394 card and a dazzle capture device. The problem with PC video capture is it eats up tons of resources and hard drive space. My DV camcorder actually allows me to do some basic editing before I pass through the stand alone DVD recorder. Additionally I can burn copies of TV shows, VHS tapes, etc...
Good Luck.
As long as this subject has been revived, and I was in a mad editing session for my wife's presentation these last few days, I thought I would update the link I had previously. Although I did everything with my VAIO laptop, which is the most updated around the house.
Pinnacle comes out with some nice products.
http://www.computervideogear.com/pi...tudio-av-dv.htm
My notebook has all the capability crmsnidol talks about in a burner, but it's only a 2X DVD drive which was the norm a year ago. Time to upgrade some components now! |
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| Mr. Mom |
| Last year for Xmas I got the Pinnacle 8.1 Studio package and a Plextor 708A DVD burner with the idea of putting all the Hi 8 Sony tapes of my daughter on DVDs because she and they (the tapes) are thirteen years old and I and the tapes are getting to the meltdown stage. So, happily I started out to do this wonderful job but after three days of getting one DVD ready to burn, I looked down at my two shoeboxes of 8mm tapes and realized it would take a solid three months to accomplish this. And so my tapes are still sitting in the shoebox one year later…:( |
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| zafer |
| Nero 6 Ulta has some simple and easy editing functions. It gets the basics/job done if you don't care much about the editing part. You can build menus, ad backgrounds etc. etc. http://nero.com/us/Nero_6_Ultra_Edi...date_Video.html and if you tape in 16:9 format with your miniDV cam, you can upload and create DVDs in this form factor too, which I haven't seen available in other ~$100 software packages. |
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| crmsnidol |
As a Christmas gift to my dad and in-laws I made a DVD using Ulead's CD/DVD PictureShow 3. What a great app! I included 16 animated slidehows all set to music. The DVD itself has a custom background with naigation and several pages with the slideshow previews. There is background music on every menu page too.
Here are the specs of the show:
- The project included 1,200 images across 16 slideshows (all were digital and not scanned)
- The longest show has just under 500 images and runs approx 40 mins
- The entire DVD took me over 20 hours to edit and tweak.
- The total size of the DVD is 7.74GB (dual-layer). adding slide transitions like fades, wipes and scrolls eat up a lot of space!
- To render the DVD which takes the JPG images and converts all to still-frame MPEG images with the transitions took approx 13 hours. I say approx because I went to bed after 12 hours and it was close to 95% done.
- I used Verbatim DL (dual-layer) +R discs. The reviews on them are very good and professional grade (consistent dye) and they were $10 apiece at Best Buy.
- My system that took 13 hours to render is a 3.0Ghz HT with 1GB DDR2 mem and a 128MB vid card. Nothing else was going on when the DVD was renbdering and the screen saver was turned off.
I'm planning on scanning older photos in the coming year and building another show. Photo albums are boring now! |
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| JimH |
It sounds like everyone uses a PC Card for reading in the video and
conversion. Does anyone use a stand-alone converter where you then use the USB port to send to the computer to burn on a DVD?
It could be I am not understanding the basic process. |
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| Mr. Mom |
| The Pinnacle came with a analog to dv converter to the fire-wire port on my PC. I don't know how the USB 2 products work, maybe a little slower. |
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| wmquan |
I use my MiniDV camcorder to convert my old Hi-8 tapes. My old Hi-8 camcorder is hooked up to my newer MiniDV unit (using its mini audio cables and an S-Video cable). A lot of MiniDV units support pass-through, so I then cable from the MiniDV cam to the computer using a Firewire cable (bought a Firewire card for the computer).
Then the Hi-8 tape plays, is converted to a digital signal by the camcorder's built-in analog-to-digital converter, and then saved by the computer. From there, I can edit the video and save it to DVD.
For MiniDV cams that don't support pass-through, you first have to record the Hi-8 output to a MiniDV tape, and then transfer the contents of the MiniDV tape to the computer for editing and burning.
Most folks with MiniDV cams already have a Firewire cable and inputs on their PC, so it's a cost-efficient solution. The analog-to-digital converter on the MiniDV cam is an inherent part of the unit and works quite well, at least in my experience in converting about a dozen old Hi-8 tapes. |
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