[cubix]

Got myself a second hand mini dv camcorder(canon mv600) and am going to start to do some editing of the clips I have taken,I hope . So my questions are
With in reason what kind of a rig would I need to edit my footage ie:cpu/memory/HD space. Do I need to get a fancy input card like one of those Pinnacle's or if I have a decent spec machine would it be enough with just a firewire card. From what I have read some of the higher end video editing cards do a lot of the work saving your cpu.

My dv tapes are running out and I dont think I have time or the proper rig right now to edit them. So if I just dump them onto my HD what format does it put them into and how much space would a 60min tape take up on the HD. When editing your vids what format do most people here save them as

Thanks Cubix

[redsox_mark]

You don’t need any special capture card with DV, just use a standard Firewire (IEEE 1394) connection.

To edit DV you don’t need a high spec machine. The software I use recommends a minimum 800Mhz CPU with 256MB memory.. but it will run on even less than that. I’ve edited happily with a 650Mhz CPU. The final render (after you’ve made the edits) will take longer on a slow machine, but this can be done while you sleep.

You will need disk space. When you capture DV, it will be copied unchanged, in a .avi wrapper. An hour of DV requires somewhere between 12 and 13 GB.

You say you are running out of tapes. If you don’t have time to edit now, I’d just buy more tapes. I always keep my original tapes anyway, as a backup, and also you may want to use some of the “deleted scenes” in future. Also Hard Drives can fail.. if you dump all this stuff on your HD and reuse the tapes, you now need to backup your HD or risk losing your material.

When editing, what I do (and I think is typical) is:

- Edit the DV
- Create a DV version of the edited project, and copy this back out to tape (requires camcorder with DV-in)
- Create a DVD of the edited project
- Save the project files from the editor, the original tapes, and any other media so that the edit can be re-done in future if needed.

[cubix]

Cheers Rm

[Gordon Briggs]

You listen to Mark, he talks a lot of sense, and with price of good DV tapes at less than £2, I would take Mark's advice and keep the original footage.

I have been shooting in DV since day one and in my video cupboard I have a stack of "original" DV tapes, all labled and kept in Ferrera Rochas plastic boxes, they hold 7 DV tapes each and take up very little room, not like the old SVHS tapes.

Gordon

[senu]

Wish I was as organised
Although I label them immediately and have a "catalogue" they are often not in the right place
Just kidding.. given the cost, with care DV tapes offer for now the best way of archiving your original and edited footage That has become even more crucial now that I use my HC 1 and edit HDV a bit more

I wonder, is there a simple workflow to make windows media HD from HDV footage.. might be better to start a new thread for that

[cubix]

Forgot to ask RM but what editing software are you using? and is it newbie friendly

Cubix

[MarkE19]

I use a Matrox RT2500 capture card that offers some real time effects and does help reduce the load on the CPU, but to be honest these days with the power of even a fairly modest PC this is overkill. If (no I mean when) I build my next PC it will have just a basic firewire card in it. The only real advantage of the RT2500 is the analogue capture it offers as this save me needing a Canopus ADVC or similar, although I could use the passthrough on my camcorder as well.
The RT2500 was supplied with Adobe Premiere 6.05 which is a very powerful editing suite, but far from easy to learn. If you want easy and have a PC running XP then you could use the free Windows Movie Maker program that is part of the Windows install. This is very easy to use, but full help with it can be found Here if needed, and will do all you need for now except create a DVD. If you want to create a DVD then you can use Nero (if you already have it) or Ulead DVD MovieFactory (about £30) and this is very easy to use and gives great results.

When I capture video from a miniDV tape I save it to the PC's HDD as an .AVI file format as this is a 100% quality copy of what is on the tape. Then like 'the other Mark' I copy the edited footage back to a new DV tape for archiving and then create a DVD from the video (Useing Ulead DVD Movie Factory 5) and once happy delete the video from the HDD to free up space ready for the next project.

Mark.

[senu]

Originally Posted by cubix

Forgot to ask RM but what editing software are you using? and is it newbie friendly

Cubix

I know for a fact that he uses Vegas 6

However there are lots of threads devoted to video editing software ranging from " neebee friendly " to high end. In truth they all have a bit of a learning curve.
A few of the Faves are

Pinnacle Studio 10.5: pros/: excellent GUI easy to learn and use

cons: can be unstable ( and frustating) in some setups and cannot be universally endorsed
Ulead video studio 10: pros : easy to use
cons: easy to use The hand holding and interface is not to everybodys taste but it is very popular
Sony vegas Studio 6: pros: quite easy to learn for simple stuff , very modest PC requirements : fantastic user tutorials
cons: has a lot of hidden depth so needs "lots of practice" for the more advanced stuff
Adobe premiere elements2: pros: stable,all youll need for a long time

cons: despite adobes intentions, not that newbee friendly, need a "decent"( ie powerful) PC, doesnt support HD ( maybe not essential for you yet)

A rather good but less popular ( poor marketing??) is software by Magix . Ive tried and rather liked it and it is newbee friendly
All of the above have user forums , online help (Official and non official) and all will capture off firewire. They are "aimed" newbees and intermediate users at degrees levels of complexity but all need getting familiar with
HTH

[redsox_mark]

Yes, I use Vegas. Vegas Movie Studio is very powerful, but does take some effort to learn.

Mark's suggestion of Movie Maker with Ulead Movie Factory is a good one. Movie Factory is very easy to use to create a DVD.

If you think you may get the editing "bug" and get into more complex editing, consider Vegas Movie Studio + DVD...

Mark

[senu]

Can Movie maker output to dvd -mpeg2 ( cant remember).
I was just thinking of PQ. If you edit from DV AVI in WMM then output to wmv, Movie factory in authoring to DVD will need to transcode the wmv to mpeg2 for DVD.

[MarkE19]

No Movie Maker will not output to MPEG-2, just AVI and WMV. So keeping the video as an AVI file at all times in MM2 will keep 100% of the origional PQ.

Mark.

[miceri]

All this copying backwards and forward - Yikes!

As you say, the *.avi siiting on your HDD is DV quality. HDDs are mega-cheap. Here's what i do...

Transfer Raw, unaltered footage to HDD as archive.
Edit / Make movie on HDD.
DVD Backup of all original footage.
If needed, DVD of new movie.
Bin Tapes.

I'm sure everybody has a DVD Burner now, and DVDs are cheaper than DVs(?). They are also easier to store and find data on...

HDD - Burn more! 250Gb approx. £50.

[redsox_mark]

As the original footage is already on a DV tape, I can't see how it is easier to copy it to DVD for backup (especially when it takes 3 DVDs to hold the content of one tape). Also I believe DV tape to be more reliable for long term storage. To really cover yourself you could make a DVD backup as well, but I still don't see why you would bin the tapes.

Mark

[senu]

I agree:
I wouldnt bin tapes: they are the original quality ( and edited stuff can be returned to them.
Non commercial Optical Discs ( can be) fickle and Hard drives may fail ( + you would need a LOT of HDD to store lots of footage ) anyway. HDD advantage is about instant access with top PQ.
Yes ,...tapes can get mangled but of the 3 archiving media, they offer the most bang for buck, the best quality and are least likely to get damaged

[MarkE19]

If you give a DVD to a small child I wouldn't like to bet any money on it being playable again - DVD's, even comerical discs, are not reliable long term storage as they get damaged far too easily. HDD's are mechanical and do break down, so also not the bet way of making long term secure backups. So as already mentioned by mark & senu I believe DV tapes to be the most cost effective and reliable backup/archive media available without spending mega bucks on a DLT backup tape drive.

Mark.