mini DV tape into computer

[caseyrunning]

I have about 30 hours of mini DV tape I want to get into my computer so I can edit it. My sony vx 2000 in broken. I have not set up edit system yet, but thinking about pinicle liqued edition as I have the software.

How about transfering the tape to DVD, then inputing to computer?

[redwudz]

You'd get better quality and easier editing with the DV format. If you convert to DVD format, not too hard to edit, but you will have some quality loss. How are you planning to transfer to DVD, a DVD Recorder? If so, I would recommend keeping the original tapes in storage for later transfer at a higher quality.

Another option would be picking up a used mini DV camcorder on Ebay or similar. I'm assuming your computer has a FireWire input for the camcorder.

I'll let someone else suggest some editing software.

And welcome to our forums.

[EddyH]

Just for the purposes of getting it from tape into the digital domain:

Cheap second-hand DV camera or just borrow one from somebody for a week or two. So long as you haven't recorded all in LP on a system that has poor head tracking it should be alright.

Cheap firewire card and cable if you don't already have such input on the machine.

Windows movie maker. No, seriously. It can capture direct to DV-AVI without reencoding. I've done it enough times because it's a no-brainer simple way of turning DV data on tape into DV data on hard disk.

And a terabyte external hard disk (as 30x SP tapes will be about 375Gb, LP ones about 500, and you'll want editing wiggle room).

With shrewdness, that comes to under £100 / $150 I reckon. 2/3rds if you only need the hard disk and can borrow the camera. Nothing if you can borrow a camera, have Firewire and ample storage already.
Once it's on disk as DV, you can do whatever the hell you want with it afterwards and not have to recapture, only deleting the original form once you're absolutely happy with the final output.

Outputting to DVD at an equivalent rate of one tape per single-layer disc should be fine - aka 9000kbit video for SP, 6000 average for LP - unless you have REALLY challenging material or an eye for artefacts. So that's another $25 on a half-decent quality 50-disc spindle...

I have done the DVcam -> standalone DVDR -> rip into PC route before, as a last resort when it was the only way of doing it and there was no time/money to fix that problem. It came out good enough, but that was because it was a short clip (allowing us to use the recorder's maximum quality) and it ultimately ended up on a webpage, the limited resolution and bitrate hid a multitude of potential sins. If you're to use it as a master for doing good-looking things from, having a quality bottleneck like that as the first stage of the process might not be the best idea. Recording direct to 9mbit MPG2 using an SD camera is just about acceptable; transferring DV to that level or lower, maybe not. Plus you then have the extra steps of having to make your ripped DVD files usable with PC editors if they don't natively handle it, whereas pretty much anything should work with DV-AVI so long as you have the codec installed and are using NTFS.

[caseyrunning]

thanks to all for he good info.

[edDV]

WinDV for DV Firewire transfer to hard disk.