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  1. Hi there,
    I really am a newbie so I'm not even sure of the terminology or whether what I'm after is the video editing holy grail.
    Recently converted a number of Camcorder Tapes to MP4s in the hope of preserving the contents whilst I can still play them.
    Like most people playing with a "new toy", the Camcorder was often used more like a "movie snapshot camera", the resulting tapes have many scenes shot on different days, different locations - some of them are of reasonable duration but there are also plenty of the 20 second clips synonymous with this type of amateur use.
    Power Director 10 came with this machine as a freebie and I'm not really interested enough - yet - to upgrade to the latest or even a superior alternative.
    The big question; Is there a method or utility that will allow me to scan the entire file and produce an index of the likely target times marking the points where the scenes are most likely to have changed? I did try expanding the time line and scanning through almost frame by frame but even as a retiree, I don't have enough time (or patience) for that!
    Quite a few of the interstices are characterised by frames full of a snowy interference, some appear to be just black and some even have an almost professional "fade" - I'm at a complete loss as to how the wife managed that!
    Once I find the culprits then hopefully I can isolate and eliminate the serious dross and produce something a little more pleasing on the eye!
    All help would be greatly appreciated and I'm assuming I get to ask more questions than I can ever hope to provide answers.
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  2. I don't know of any software that will do what you want. You have to do it yourself manually. The fades probably comes from a camera setting when it was filmed. My camera has a selection for auto fade mode. We all did what you did with our first video camera. After using it for awhile we are more discriminating as to what we film so that we don't have so much work editing later.
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence -Carl Sagan
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  3. Thanks for responding TreeTops,
    As you might imagine, that's precisely what I didn't want to hear .
    I think it might be preferable to throw away the first 15 Hours or c1,350,000 frames and start again
    BTW I was under the impression TreeTops was in Kenya - Not Oregon
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  4. There's no law that says you have to watch it at real speed the first time through. I don't use power director, but I'm sure it can play at 2x or 3x speed. I wouldn't go faster than that because you'll miss stuff. Make rough edits leaving some leeway, then go back and watch the remainder in real time and refine your edits.

    What kind of camera did you use? You say "tapes," so your initial transfer may not have been optimal.
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  5. smrpix; You're quite right, it can play fast forward but it still means staring intently at the screen for 45 minutes+ with pauses for each tape so I can jot down the reference points without missing something.
    It's a Samsung Camcorder so I have to play the tapes on the camcorder, capture them on the fly with the editor and then write them out into Digital format first. You're probably right, sub-optimal but my only option. I did say Rank Amateur didn't I
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  6. Is it HDV or DV? You don't have to sit and watch the camera ingest, just check on it once in a while and restart it if it stops. Ingest the entire tape in it's native format.

    Make your selections on your captured media. Doing it straight from the camera is inefficient and aggravating. You'll need about 13gigs of disk space for each hour of material, but you can reclaim much of that AFTER you edit.
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  7. I don't think the camcorder's that sophisticated. A 10+ year old machine using HR tapes. It only has a 3.5mm AV out and an SV out socket (PS2?) like a pre-USB PC keyboard/mouse socket. I use an analogue capture/converter via a USB port to create an MP4 file on the PC. I didn't bother going HighRes on the input because I figured an older analogue tape wasn't worth it. I can of course do it all again because disk space is not a problem, and as you say, I can just play and forget but, is the game worth the candle?
    I was always using Power Director on the captured MP4 file but it still means studying the entire tape to isolate the segments.
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  8. Originally Posted by Rank Amateur View Post
    but it still means studying the entire tape to isolate the segments.
    Yes, there's no way around that. You have to look at what you're doing.

    Is HR tapes a typo? I haven't heard of that. Do you mean Hi8? SV I assume is s-video? What is the camera's model number?
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  9. Yeah, you're quite right - they are Hi8 tapes but I think the HR designation signifies High Resolution and it is s-video but there's little room on the camera to emboss the full designation. As I thought I was finished, I carefully packed all the kit and tapes and filed them safely in the attic. Perhaps I will go up there and check the serial number - one day
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  10. Member
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    Did you try content aware or scene detector with powerdirector?

    Sent from my Samsung Note 3 using tapatalk
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  11. Originally Posted by deereguy View Post
    Did you try content aware or scene detector with powerdirector?
    Just tried scene detector! Precisely what I was looking for

    I guess I need to sit down with the manual and find out what else I don't know - or maybe that would take too long

    You have my eternal gratitude. I've spent ages on another forum, where I've experimented with all sorts of alternative capture and pre-processing schemes - none of which has yet proved effective - simply to now discover that it was right under my own nose, in a package I already had.

    That's a Rank Amateur for you!

    Thanks again.
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  12. Member
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    Hey your welcome.
    I use this a lot myself....it's been a real time saver and seems to work well.
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