How to import HDV tapes to hard drive for archival

[SteveCA]

I am trying to archive my HDV tapes to a hard drive in its native format (to avoid loss of data, future editing, ease of back up,etc). I am Using Mac's but could use a PC if needed (windows 7).

I want to be able to play the files using a Western Digital HD media player when done.

What software should I use for this purpose? I have Final cut pro, imovie, etc but don't want to import in proprietary formats that may not stand the test of time or not readily playable on devices like the WD media player.

[aedipuss]

on a pc you would use HDVsplit and capture over firewire to the native 1440x1080 .m2t files. on a mac i think it converts to aic if you capture with fcp.

converting to something the w.d. hd player will play is up to you.

[edDV]

I use HDVSplit (under Windows) and archive as native *.m2t to multiple hard disks.

I've been looking for a similar program for Mac OSX but haven't found one yet.

iMovie gives you a choice of quarter resolution and half field rate 960x540p/29.97 or 1920x1080i AIC (horizontally expanded) at about 60GB/hr which is rather large for archive vs. 13GB/hr for native HDV *.m2t.

FCE captures to AIC. FCP offers uncompressed, AIC or ProRes422. All are huge.

[SteveCA]

on a pc you would use HDVsplit and capture over firewire to the native 1440x1080 .m2t files. on a mac i think it converts to aic if you capture with fcp.

converting to something the w.d. hd player will play is up to you.

Thanks for the quick replies. WD media player supports m2ts files so i think HDVsplit is the way to go. I have used fcp and imovie before but the found that the files are gigantic compared to the native files. Even with cheap storage, it was untenable.

I someone has a way to do the same with a Mac, that would be my first preference as I only have one windows PC and it's performance is not at the level of my Mac's

[davideck]

HDVSplit works for me. The m2t files play on the WDTV Live as well as the Seagate FAT+

[SteveCA]

I have related question for all my Hi8 and DV tapes lying around. I have a canopus ADVC 300 for use with the hi8 tapes and my old sony DV camcorder with 1394 output for the DV tapes.

What software do you guys use for transferring the hi8 and DV tapes to the hard drive? I presume HDVsplit only works for HDV.

[edDV]

I have related question for all my Hi8 and DV tapes lying around. I have a canopus ADVC 300 for use with the hi8 tapes and my old sony DV camcorder with 1394 output for the DV tapes.

What software do you guys use for transferring the hi8 and DV tapes to the hard drive? I presume HDVsplit only works for HDV.

Do you have access to a Windows PC? If so

Hi8 -> ADVC -> IEEE-1394 to WinDV
Result is a DV-AVI file which can be converted for use on Mac with Quicktime Pro or EnoSoft DV Processor.

MiniDV or Digital8 -> IEEE-1394 to WinDV ..... ADVC not needed.
Result is a DV-AVI file which can be converted for use on Mac with Quicktime Pro or EnoSoft DV Processor.

On the Mac, iMovie or FCP will capture to Quicktime DV (*.dv)

[SteveCA]

Thanks for all the quick answers! You guys are great!

I hope my pc is up to the task. If it isn't will it manifest itself in glitches or dropped frames? I suppose I better test things out after the first transfer.

[edDV]

Thanks for all the quick answers! You guys are great!

I hope my pc is up to the task. If it isn't will it manifest itself in glitches or dropped frames? I suppose I better test things out after the first transfer.

Test everything twice. Never delete original data.

[SteveCA]

Thanks Ed, I never delete anything. The cost of tapes is insignificant compared to the content they contain. It always baffles me when I hear about folks deleting and reusing their tapes to save a few bucks. Even with the high end sony HDV tapes I use, we are only talking about ten dollars a tape. I plan on transferring everything to duplicate hard drives that will be stored in different locations for safety.

[edDV]

If the PC is old, turn off monitoring during the capture. HDV monitoring takes a fast CPU.

If you still get dropped frames, capture to a drive other than the OS drive and turn off all background tasks and apps.

[SteveCA]

The PC is very new (intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q8300 (4MB L2, 2.5GHz, 1333FSB), Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English) so hopefully it will work OK. I just received a WD elements 1.5TB drive that I plan to use with the WD media player. Is it okay to capture to that drive via USB or will that connection be too slow? Alternatively, I can add another internal drive to the PC for capture and then transfer to the elements drive.

[edDV]

The PC is very new (intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q8300 (4MB L2, 2.5GHz, 1333FSB), Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English) so hopefully it will work OK. I just received a WD elements 1.5TB drive that I plan to use with the WD media player. Is it okay to capture to that drive via USB or will that connection be too slow? Alternatively, I can add another internal drive to the PC for capture and then transfer to the elements drive.

A second internal drive is the most reliable.

eSATA is best for an external drive and similar to the internal SATA uses a hardware disk controller protected from OS activity by Bus Mastering. http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/buses/types/pciMastering-c.html

Firewire is next best.

USB2 will usually work but since the disk controller is a software process, it can be interrupted by background OS tasks during capture.

[SteveCA]

Sounds like it's time to add the second internal drive. My Mac's have second drives but since I really don't use the wife's PC, it doesn't have a second drive. Good thing they are so cheap these days.

[edDV]

Intel Mac's are very similar. They use PCI/PCIe and SATA/eSATA.

[SteveCA]

I downloaded HDVsplit on my PC, tested out a few captures which worked perfectly. I tested split scene and no split captures, with and without previews, everything worked perfect. That was last night. I had to download and configure the audio decoder (ffdshow) to get audio as my first test clips had no audio.

Today I opened up HDV split to capture a full tape. first error message stated that my computer may not be fast enough for preview so I shut it off and proceeded to capture a full 60 minute tape. No further error mesages but there was no capture on the file whatsoever (0 kb file size). HDVsplit controlled the camcorder (sony HC1) but didn't capture any information. incidentally, the preview no longer works.

I then restarted the computer and tried again. Still no preview available and after a few seconds of attempting to capture I get an error message that states that there is no information from the camcorder and the camcorder is stopped.

This is very strange as everything worked perfectly last night. I even have the test clips to prove it.

Any ideas? I am in seriously need of help.

[SteveCA]

Update:

After trying everything I could think of, I decided to do a windows 7 system restore to a point before I downloaded HDVSplit and ffdshow. I then downloaded HDVSplit and ffdshow, configured the audio decoder as per the readme and voila, everything works again. Preview worked for the first full tape capture. On the second tape capture I got a warning that my computer may not be fast enough to preview while capturing. It was moot because the preview stopped working before the error message popped up. The capture worked fine though so i'm happy.

The only question is whether it will continue to work after I shutdown and restart the computer again. I'm keeping my fingers crossed..