VHS to DV DVI thru canopus 300

[cabruss]

Bought a Canopus 300 used, works great, converting 125 VHS and HI8 home movies, is there anything I should be doing that a newbie would not know to check? Goal convert all to AV AVI thru Canopus, run thru Virualdub deshaker with an output of DV AVI, edit with windows latest movie maker output to AV AVI for archival for my two kids on two 3 terebite external hardrives. Is this over kill by not compressing to h.264. Or am I missing a bigger picture somewhere. Windows 7/64 i5 8gig. Plan to process two hours at 26gig at one time then transfer to external hardrive as I go. Thanks for any advise.

[Vidd]

Using VirtualDub deshaker, compressing again to DV, editing in Movie Maker, and then compressing to DV a 3rd time is not the best plan if you wish to archive.

I would suggest archiving the raw DV to the hard drives with no editing or processing the files. Then using the DV raws process in VirtualDub. Then either frameserve out of VirtualDub or export to a lossless format such as Lagarith. Open the frameserve or lossless in your editing program. Export lossless from the edit program and then convert to h.264 using x264. The idea is to compress only once, not two or three times.

You will end up with two sets of files, raw DV for archival purposes and edited h.264 files for viewing purposes.

[manono]

Do you have a line TBC in the chain? Don't say the ADVC-300 has one (because it doesn't). And I agree with Vidd that after the initial capture all other intermediate stages should be lossless.

[cabruss]

Thanks, starting to get the basics, (1) So I should take the raw DV file created from Canopus's output now in my computer, (2) Have Virtualdub with the deshaker filter do it's thing making sure Virtualdub outputs using the Lagarith codec ?, not DV. (3) Input this de-shaken Lagarith /DVI file into Movie Maker?, (4) Edit in Movie Maker making sure I can export in Lagarith / DVI? I believe MM can only output in WMV,DV-DVI, or now H.264 I think my brain is starting to swell.

[manono]

I, for one, wouldn't ever use Windows Movie Maker for anything at all. But if that's all you have and all you know how to use, then I guess you have no choice.

[cabruss]

Well I'm probably going to buy a copy of Vegas then. Thanks for the advice.

[cabruss]

Thanks for all the advice, I've discovered Lagarith files can be very large. Any problem using an external hardrive. Just sending the lagarith file to it instead of internal hardrive in laptop? Any min. requirements ?

[Vidd]

Since the lossless file (Lagarith in this case) is only temporary, you can choose the drive that is the fastest and has enough space to hold the file.