Best way to transfer Mini-DV to DVD for archive & editin

[jumbotron]

Hi everyone, this is my first post here. I'm a verteran Mac user with 17 years of experience, but new to this video thing. I've googled and google, but have not been able to find a definitive solution for my goal...

I have shot about 35 Mini-DV tapes over the last year of our baby and want to toss the data for storage and back-up. My goal has been to go in and author a DVD with all the highlights from the last 12 months, but haven't found the time (one day, I keep saying).

Anyways, I would ideally like to dump two 60 minutes tapes onto one DVD-R - is there an ideal way to do this? I have a program on my PC that automatically copies one tape to one DVD, but I'd rather have two tapes per disc. Not being cheap, but wan to reduce the bulk.

The other thing, is that I want to be able to import the clips later into iDVD, iMovie or Final Cut Express for editiing. Will all three of these programs allow me ot import clips off of a disc?

So what is my best method to capture data and in which format?

Thanks in advance.

[ps2daddy]

Toast 6 will let you import straight to disk but imovie and final cut use the dv tape

You can use dvdxdv to transfer a dvd to an imovie or final cut project to the programs I just named

[tWoSour]

if you want to put the footage onto dvd's, your going to need to compress the footage. 1 hour DV = ~12 GB. 1 DVD = 4.37 GB

[jumbotron]

if you want to put the footage onto dvd's, your going to need to compress the footage. 1 hour DV = ~12 GB. 1 DVD = 4.37 GB

I guess that throws the idea of dumping the mini-dv onto 1 dvd-r, never mind the idea of dumping 2 onto on disc. I'm assumming that the iMovie imported clips are compressed? How much space does 1 mini-dv take up when imported into iMovie?

[jumbotron]

Toast 6 will let you import straight to disk but imovie and final cut use the dv tape

You can use dvdxdv to transfer a dvd to an imovie or final cut project to the programs I just named

Thanks for the info - I'll try read up on the "dvdxdv" tonight - I assume that Toast imports the data a uncompressed?

[Frobozz]

As noted by the others when you compress the video for video DVD it no longer works in iMovie or iDVD unless you export it back to DV again. This takes some toll on the image quality (but typically not a big toll). However, you want to compound the problem by compressing so much that you get two hours on a DVD rather than one hour. That's your call to make. Maybe the large majority of the video isn't worth saving in high quality anyway.

Toast 6 has a very easy-to-use Plug and Burn feature which first writes the DV video to your hard drive and allows you to do a little work with it before burning to DVD. If you also have Jam 6 you can get two hours of video on a DVD using Dolby Digital rather than PCM audio. Without Jam 6 you are limited to about 90 minutes on a DVD.

Miraizon's Cinematize is an excellent application for quickly exporting any or all of a DVD to a .mov file that can be used in iMovie.

I suggest you also look into a standalone DVD recorder that has a Firewire connection. My Pioneer DVR can make 1-to 6-hour DVD in real time from a DV camcorder via Firewire as well as export from that DVD to iMovie over Firewire. I think that's pretty cool. Also, the 2-hour recording mode looks very good because its hardware encoder is better than many software encoders.

[DanSlagle]

35 tapes? First baby huh? :P

I would edit them down to something someone is going to watch first. I doubt their on own grandmother would want to watch 35 hours of video. Once you have that make a few copies and send them out to people.

Backups... There are many ways to do this: I personally just keep the tapes and in 5 years if I decide they are worth keeping I will duplicate them to another tape. Other suggestions here:
http://danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/usage/5011.shtml

[BernieR]

Miraizon's Cinematize is an excellent application for quickly exporting any or all of a DVD to a .mov file that can be used in iMovie.

I suggest you also look into a standalone DVD recorder that has a Firewire connection. My Pioneer DVR can make 1-to 6-hour DVD in real time from a DV camcorder via Firewire as well as export from that DVD to iMovie over Firewire. I think that's pretty cool. Also, the 2-hour recording mode looks very good because its hardware encoder is better than many software encoders.

This is what I would do. Buy a stand alone DVD recorder (about 300-400USD) and then use Cinematize to edit to .mov or cut scenes.

Then take back the DVDRecorder if you dont like it ......


Bernie

[jumbotron]

35 tapes? First baby huh? :P

I would edit them down to something someone is going to watch first. I doubt their on own grandmother would want to watch 35 hours of video. Once you have that make a few copies and send them out to people.

Yeah, yeah - first baby and the bug hasn't worn off - I'm still snapping digitals, 35mm and mini-dv every few days... sad isn't it?

I do know I need to capture the good bits and edit the content down, but I just have little time to sit there right now (new Dad and self-employed) and the longer I wait, the more tapes I have... it's a snowball.

I guess there is no way other than being critical and selective, sitting down and hour or two a night and just get bits done here and there.

I was just hoping that I could dump it onto DVD and have a back-up, and then import the footage as needed - saving the wear and tear on my mini-dv cam.

Lot's of good feedback and info here - thanks to everyonw who responded.

[ps2daddy]

If you got lots of money to spend this might be an option
Staight to quicktime from camera you could just play your tape straight to this hd to quicktime

http://www.mcetech.com/quickstreamdv/specs.html