Hi,

As my username suggests I'm afraid the IT revolution largely passed me by (I'm an old git of 55) but I need to become very proficient with digital camcorder technology for my business.

I need to be able to make movies and make them into promotional DVDs. I cannot use professionals because 1. They are too expensive 2. I need to be able to film things at the drop of a hat 3. I want to be able to control the editing.

A few months ago I bought a Sony Handycam DCR-DV105 mini disc recorder under the misaprehension that I would be able to just input the mini disc into a pc or mac and then just edit away. Apparently this is not possible unless I buy some special Sony software from the US for about $800 - according to Sony's helpline (There is no firewire output on this camcorder). With the first movie I made I eventually went to a professional videographer who made it into a DVD for me. The results were excellent but it cost me £250. As I intend to make lots of movies it is out of the question to keep doing this. However, I was able to ask him how he did it and what he did was run the mini dvd in a dvd player while recording onto mini dv tape on a mini dv recorder. He then inputted this into a mac and edited it.

I then tried contacting media studies students to get them to do it for £50 a time but this is not satisfactory. The guy who was doing it for me was just taking way too long and kept telling me about all the things he was doing which were keeping him from doing my work. He then started to want a lot more money. I found another student but he was even more flakey.

So now I am stuck for the moment. I am thinking of trying to buy a second hand mini dv recorder. Can anyone tell me what I do when I have the results on the mini dv recorder. How do I get the results onto a mac or pc? I am guessing that a mac is going to be easier. I have a mac mini. Will this have enough processing power? I think I have to do something called "rendering" which I believe takes a lot of processing power. Will the mac mini be able to cope with this? I don't use the mac for anything apart from this so it does not matter if it takes a long time. I did a lot of research on the net via usenet groups but could not find an answer to the question: Is there some way of inputting the mini dvd straight into a pc or mac and editing?

I think I am going to have to bite the bullet and buy myself a "hard disc" digital cam corder. What is the cheapest I can get away with and how do I then use it? I presume I can use a firewire to connect to the mac mini? If so, can someone tell me the exact procedure step by step?

Cheers Chris

[redsox_mark]

A lot there.. I’ll try and keep it simple:

You can edit your footage from the DVD camcorder on the PC,. and without spending $800. Most video editing packages will edit video from a camcorder disc, some make this easy, others you have to rename the files. For $90 US dollars this will do the job for you (on a PC… for mac you’ll need something different)
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/Pro...ct.asp?PID=977
It includes “Easy import from finalized DVD disc recorded with Sony® DVD Handycam® camcorders”.

So I don’t think you need to change your camcorder. You are going to need editing software anyway…

If you were to change it, you talk about getting a hard disc camcorder. Note these are different than miniDV – in fact they use the same format as a DVD camcorder. Like you can edit from a DVD camcorder you can also edit from these HDD camcorders, but if anything this can be harder (JVC, which is the main producer of these, names the files differently, so some renaming is again needed. Not hard, but for a tphobe more hassle).

If you were to change I’d recommend going to MiniDV (tape); with these you capture to the PC using Firewire.

A mac mini would be fine for editing, as would most any reasonably modern PC. Once you have finished your edits and wish to apply them (that is rendering) this will take some time, and the faster the PC the less time it will take. But you can just let this run and do something else. (On long or complex projects I often render overnight). You may find you need to add additional Hard Disk storage - you could add an external drive for this.

[jomike]

Hi Chris

I own a Sony DVD camcorder and I edit all my videos and burn 12cm DVDs from them. This is how I do it.

I use a (4 year old) PC and software called Womble mpeg video wizard to edit. You can download it and try it for 30 days for free. I take the finalised 8cm DVD from the camcorder and put it in my PCs DVD drive. I start Womble, then click Import Items button. I then go to the DVD drive and in the VIDEO_TS folder on the DVD, I open all the file(s) called something like VTS_01_1.VOB. Then I drag the clip(s) that appear on the left onto the bottom section called the timeline. Here i do all the editing such as cutting bits out, adding in transitions to scene changes, adding titles, sound and commentary tracks etc. When I am finished I save the file. It gets saved as a xxxx.mpg file. At this point, if you have the DVD version of Womble, you can go ahead and start making menus and adding clips to burn your 12cm DVD without leaving Womble. I prefer to use another program called NeroVision to do this. I drag the clips into this program, make up a menu with a fancy background and titles and burn the DVD. The whole procedure usually takes me less than 1.5 hrs to do from start to finish for a 1hr DVD.
It may look a bit daunting at first glance, but it is really easy and quick (relatively) once you get the hang of it. Definitely easier and using less kit than the IMO convoluted way the pro did it!

Regards

Mike

[CarlB]

I would get a new camera, miniDV with firewire out, as mentioned previously. Then I would buy iLife '06 for the Mac (only £50). It inlcudes the excellent, and extremely easy to learn iMovie and iDVD packages. iMovie will capture footage directly from your firewire-connected camera directly, at full DV resolution, and without the need for additional MPEG conversion.

You can then use iMovie to edit the video, and iDVD can produce slick, professional DVDs with the minimum of fuss. In time, if you find your skills exceeding iMovie, you can upgrade to the £200 Final Cut Express to offer even more power and flexibility.

For ease of use, and a nice upgrade path, I highly recommend the Mac software.

Hi Guys,

Woa! Excellent stuff! Many thanks. I think the "Womble" avenue sounds like a good way to get out of trouble at least for the short term and best of all it won't cost anything! I find it difficult to focus on anything to do with computers because there is no way of knowing whether it is going to take 5 minutes or all day and if it does take all day it can really screw my business up.

So I will get my young assistant to come in over the weekend and see if we can get things up and running. Once he has mastered it he can then show me.

In the long run I would like to do the editing on the mac because I hate MS stuff and the rendering can take as long as it likes on the mac mini because I am still using my pc for most things. I would like to avoid the expense of buying a new camcorder though. Does anyone know of any cheap or free software that I can use to get the mini dvd content onto the mac?

Cheers Chris

[CarlB]

I think there is some free Mac software called Diva which will perform the conversion, but it's supposed to be a little on the slow side. Maybe Quicktime Pro with the MPEG decoder would also do the job. The only problem you'll have is that you have already created a compressed MPEG stream in your camera, which is then converted for use in iMovie, then will be recompressed by iDVD into DVD format once more. As the MPEG stream is lossy, all this conversion will have a noticeably detrimental effect on your final picture quality.

With a firewire/DV camera, there are less steps of encoding/compression in the chain, so your end result will be much better.

Diva software:
http://diva.3ivx.com/

Quicktime Pro (you'll need the MPEG-2 component as well):
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mac.html

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by tphobe

In the long run I would like to do the editing on the mac because I hate MS stuff and the rendering can take as long as it likes on the mac mini because I am still using my pc for most things. I would like to avoid the expense of buying a new camcorder though. Does anyone know of any cheap or free software that I can use to get the mini dvd content onto the mac?

Actually I'm using a Sony DVD Camcorder as well, and you will find that when using Womble there is hardly any rendering time. This is because it is a native MPEG (DVD) editor, as such the only rendering that is required is for any transitions that you have made....Depending on the length of the movie, we should be talking seconds/minutes....

Getting mini DVD contact to a Mac is no problem, you can just load it straight from the DVD...But...finding an application that can do native MPEG editing will be more of a challenge....I started off on Macs or Video editing and DVD creation, but in my opinion PC's have come a long way and are as good as unbeatable for this task these days...

[jomike]

One thing to watch out for on a Mac is that if it has a slot loading DVD drive, the 8cm DVD will not fit. If you have a normal slide out tray type DVD drive it will be OK.

Regards

Mike

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by jomike

One thing to watch out for on a Mac is that if it has a slot loading DVD drive, the 8cm DVD will not fit. If you have a normal slide out tray type DVD drive it will be OK.

Regards

Mike

Sometimes its the simple things that thwart our intentions....Well spotted....

Hi,

I have downloaded womble mpeg video editor and have opened it up and it looks excellent and relatively easy to use even for me.

Do I have to get a special DVD reader now? I have tried putting the mini dvd in the normal slide out CD tray thingy and was reassured to see that there is a special inset for a mini disc. However my pc does not seem to be reading this. When I close the drawer thing the green light flashes intermittently for a few seconds so I presume my pc is trying to read it. But nothing happens.

I click on the "open file" ico on the womble wizard and the browse window comes up but in "compact disc" there is nothing. Does this mean I have to get a dvd reader?

Cheers Chris

[jomike]

Hi Chris

Yes, the drive does have to be a DVD drive and not a CD drive in order to read the DVD. If you want to make a DVD after editing, it will have to be a DVD writer as well. You can tell if your drive is a DVD drive if it has a DVD logo on the door. If it also has a RW logo, it is a writer as well. DVD writers are cheap, about £30 plus fitting.

Regards

Mike

Hi Jomike,

Sorry to be so dumb. OK I've bought a Philips RW reader. Its a "SPD3000CC portable DVD reWriter".

I'm installing it now. I am installing the Nero Vision Express disc that came with it. It has now reached a window where it is asking me:

"Select the file types for which you want Nero Show time to be the default application". There is a long list of tick boxes which I can either tick manually individually or I can click "select all" or "deselect all". Given that I am going to be using Womble what should I do? Should I just click "select all" or will that result in conflict with Womble?

Cheers Chris

[jomike]

Hi Chris

You can just deselect all, or leave them unselected for the time being. This is just asking what types of files you want to open automatically with Nero. You can always change this at a later date.

Regards

Mike

Originally Posted by jomike

Hi Chris

You can just deselect all, or leave them unselected for the time being. This is just asking what types of files you want to open automatically with Nero. You can always change this at a later date.

Regards

Mike

Hi Jomike,

Some of them were already ticked. So I just clicked next.

I have just tried opening the dvd. I've got a feeling though that I don't have a video card in my pc - something which I had forgotten about. How do I find out if I have a video card?

A realplayer window is opening up when I insert the DVD saying:

"The DVD cannot be played. Please try the following and then restart playback of the DVD.:

If any other applications are running try closing them, (no other apps running)
lower your screen resoltuion & colour depth (for example 1024x768) (How do I do that?) update your video card driver to the latest version."

Its the video card isn't it?

Cheers Chris

Right. I looked in "my computer" then "Device Manager" then "Display Adaptors" and I found:

"S3 INC. Trio 3d/2x Display Driver Version 5.30.05

Engineering Release"

Is this the video card? Is it adequate? Or is it hopelessly out of date?

Cheers Chris

Well I think I am going to try the mac route now. I don't think my pc will cope without an upgrade.

I have managed to play the mini dvd on my mac mini. I have plugged the new dvd reader I just bought into the mac mini and away it went. None of that MS "new device found" cobblers.

Unfortunately there seems to be something wrong with safari on my mac mini (or more likely something wrong with me using it

Once I get that sorted I will get DIVA as carlB suggested.

Onething that is worrying me now. While fiddling around I came across something saying "you cannot burn a dvd, superdrives are not supported". Does anyone know if I will be able to burn a dvd ok when I finally work out everything else?

Cheers Chris

Cheer