Transferring old analogue footage

[Northerner]

Just bought a Panasonic DS 60 Mini DV and haven't tried transferring footage to PC yet but I have miles of old analogue footage which I would like to get onto the PC as well for editing and wondered where to start

Is this possible and is there likely to be picture degradation in the transfer.

Any help greatly appreciated guys

thanx

[Brian110507]

The Panasonic NV-DS60 does not have AV (or analogue) input and so can play no part at all in transferring your analogue footage to your PC, you could have done that at any time.

What you need is an analogue capture card/device these range from small devices which you connect to the USB port on your computer costing around £50 up through internal cards to converters which cost hundreds of pounds.

Quality of captured image will never be the same standard as a straight digital capture so the £50 device might only just meet your minimum acceptance standard with the high cost converters changing your analogue to digital propably being the best.

With your new digital camera you will need a firewire card (if you haven't already got one ) so -- how much do you want to spend on capturing your analogue footage and then we'll see what fits your budget.

[Northerner]

Beejaycee

With your new digital camera you will need a firewire card (if you haven't already got one ) so -- how much do you want to spend on capturing your analogue footage and then we'll see what fits your budget.

Got a new PC on it's way from Dabs and it's Firewire enabled so that takes care of the digital transfer. as far as the old analogue footage is concerned, wouldn't want to spend much more than £100 - Scotsman you see

[Brian110507]

For the analogue capture you could use one of these :-

http://www.serif.com/store/partners/usbvideolead.asp

But I did try one of these when they first appeared a couple of years back and I was not terribly happy with the quality - they may have improved by now, Perhaps you should stretch your budget a little to something like this :-

http://www.dabs.com/uk/productView.htm?quicklinx=122J

Pinnacle also make some analogue capture devices, you can also do it by internal PCI card if you feel happy about opening up your brand new computer.

[Northerner]

Beejaycee

you can also do it by internal PCI card if you feel happy about opening up your brand new computer.

[MarkE19]

PCI is just an internal card that plug on to the mother board and is the connection type for all modern internal cards (except for graphics cards that are mainly AGP).

if you feel happy about opening up your brand new computer.

I guess not then

Mark.

[Northerner]

PCI is just an internal card that plug on to the mother board and is the connection type for all modern internal cards

Sorry for not making myself clear. I don't have a problem opening a new PC. Done it often fitted many PCI cards in the past. My question was which card would you suggest.

[Northerner]

Done it often fitted many PCI cards in the past.

....and I've just discovered that I have a Hauppauge WinTV card which I bought some time ago and never used:o

This'll do the job presumably. The only other problem is the software. Got Windows Movie Maker but I believe this is pretty basic. Any suggestions for something a bit more flexible?

Thanks again guys

[Brian110507]

Yes the WinTV card should be OK for you as long as it has analogue in as well as an aerial socket. you will need to record sound as well and this is usually done by connecting the camcorder sound out to the 3.5mm line in jack socket on your PC, to do that you may need one of these :-
http://www.keene.co.uk/cgi-bin/codesearch.pl?KA134

Depends on which version of Windows MovieMaker you have, if it is version one then yes that was pretty basic, but you can get a free copy of version 2 by simply going to the microsoft website and downloading it. MM2 is actually quite good for a beginner and will get you well into editing so that when you finally do reach it's limitations you will have a much better idea what you want next. I believe you will find no better site on the web to tell you all about MM2 than www.papajohn.org go and have a look at that and you might be pleasantly surprised.

[Northerner]

Beejaycee said Yes the WinTV card should be OK for you as long as it has analogue in as well as an aerial socket

Yes it has and I've got it up & running. Linked the Video out from the camcorder to the Video In on the Win card and ran some footage using Movie Maker ver 2.

I did not make any changes in the MM2 settings and, although the clips in the preview pane looked not bad, when I come to playback on Media Player, they are dreadful And on Fullscreen just unwatchable.

Is this the norm for transferred analogue footage because, if it is, I won't bother with any more and just stick with the raw uneditted tapes or am I missing something somewhere

[Brian110507]

Yes what you see on your computer will not be as good as your final output although it should at least be watchable on your PC even if not best quality- you need to de-interlace if your going to view all your footage on PC only - I don't use MM2 personally so can't comment on what settings you should use, a visit to www.papajohn.org should help out.


Best plan would be to burn a short video to VCD - don't think you can actually do that from within MM2 you may need a separate burner software like Nero. See what it looks like and see what Papajohn says

[Northerner]

Beejaycee said I don't use MM2 personally so can't comment on what settings you should use

Solved the problem. When configuring Video Format in MM2, the ideal resolution seems to be 384x288. This gives reasonable quality of picture and virtually on a par with the raw footage when viewed direct from the original tape,on the TV.

Got to get through all the editting and transition stuff now to see if I can create something worth putting on disc

[Brian110507]

OK we're getting closer - I would just add that I believe the optimum resolution for a PAL- VCD is 352x288 you might get some slight 'squashing' of your picture on a TV screen with 384