Home Movie Editing

[ashtones]

Does anyone know of a site or a forum where editing home movies is the primary focus. I feel like asking in depth editing questions here that are not related to vcd's is probably frowned upon.

[PAPACHIK]

Hello ashtones and ALL

You may try http://www.videouniversity.com , I visited that site
quite regularly for video editting informations.

Regards ..papachik

[KingJohn]

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On 2001-09-05 22:52:50, ashtones wrote:
Does anyone know of a site or a forum where editing home movies is the primary focus. I feel like asking in depth editing questions here that are not related to vcd's is probably frowned upon.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Who told you that ? Ask away unless the type of home movies your making are, "nudge nudge, wink wink" Know what I mean

[ashtones]

no just movies of my kids nothing so exciting but i could use some tips

[BeTa]

Please, use this forum.
I have done some home video editing already. Let's exchange our experiences.

Anyhow, this forum is getting full of posts indicating people lazy enough not reading the basics (help, manual, FAQ) of the programs they try to use. Let's bring some quality in

BeTa

[ashtones]

Well to tell you the truth other than my Apex 500w not correctly reading CDRW's my experience making (S)VCD's has been flawless because of this sight. The only problem I have seen is that there is almost no discussion on editing any file but mpegs. I use Premiere and I am pretty happy with it. I use a DV camcorder but like most I have an archive of Home footage on VHS. I want to get a capture card that will transfer this video in high quality and in a format that adobe accepts to my computer. I am also prepared to spend some money. All I have gotten here is a plethera of mpeg1 & 2 capture cards. I could use some suggestions. A card that captured DV AVI & Mpeg2 would be a dream!

Sorry so long

[KingJohn]

Well problem is what might work well on somebody's system might not work at all on yours. I use the WinTV capture/TV card and have also transferred some Disney VHS tapes to VCD, I also got some home movies on VCD now.

Up until recently I have always captured in DivX AVI, but now with a mpeg program I can capture to VCD.mpeg So the basic WinTV card less than $50 is working fine for me.

I was going to take out my graphics card and capture card and buy a ATI All in wonder Radion, but for what I have herd they are not worth the money.

Most discussion on here about mepeg is because the final product is a VCD, so everyone wants to convert Downloaded AVI into that and make the disk. Mostly movies. Also uncompressed AVI takes up a lot of room and you need a good system to mess around with it and a large hard drive, which people are now buying.

I do have Premiere, but its not something I like, if I am editing mpeg files I use "M2 Edit" but if they are AVI then its programs like Vdub for chopping and filters. For creating my own intros I use Paint Shop Pro (Animation Shop) its not heavy like the AVI programs as it creates animated gif's but you can save them as AVI then join them with Vdub etc.

The old VHS tapes like Banbi are not very good quality, so you cannot compress those down much without loosing the quality, but newer VHS tapes like Snow White are fine.

So at the end of the day you need all the programs available, there is not one that does everything you want, in a way you want it and at good speed.

If your VHS tapes are high quality then you wont have any problems with any of the capture cards, but if they are poor then I don't think you can improve them much anyway.

I use RF for normal captures, but recently I had to make up a video and audio lead for the poor quality VHS tapes like Banbi

[ashtones]

I really appreciate the feedback. I like Adobe because it offers me a lot of control as it relates to editing. Not so much as it relates to import & export files. But I get around that with Tmpenc. I guess if the bottom line is that if Premeire is so sorry that it is not worth messing with then what is an alternative software that is good. I read on the Dazzle Dv Bridge and it said that it came bundled with Main Actor software with a very very long list of files that it can import and export including AVI Mpeg1 & Mpeg2. I have also looked at getting the Pinnacle DV500 Plus. I just want to be able to edit my old VHS home movies with my current DV home movies & eventually go to vcd & dvd.

[TheInformer]

Ashtones, stop by your local magazine shop and check out the magazines dedicated to digital video. I was looking at one called "Video Camcorder" (Ithink) and in it were lots of ads for the various video boards you could plug into your machine. Once you have the names and some specs, you can hunt down reviews and more specs on the net.

[KingJohn]

Hi

Well this is personal choice, what some people like others hate. There use to be a great program for avi movie editing, but that was for Windows 3.1, think it did the old dos animations also. It stopped working in Windows 95.

I think that might have been an Adobe program also. (Just looked) Auto Desk Animator, was the DOS version, Ah yes it was "AutoDesk studio" are they still making products. I was using a 286 I think at the time the DOS version was out and 386 or 486 when they brought out the windows version. Now that was a good program for animation and editing video, on our machines that would run super fast now....

I think a lot of the time the frames are extracted and edited in art packages and finally converted back to AVI later.

Stick with what you know until you tried them all...

[ashtones]

I have a sub to computer video maker magazine. But I feel that all too often the reviews for products are more like ads. These forums are great because usually people have actually used the hardware and can offer feedback. Like a post from someone with the moniker "deathwish" who said he had the Dazzle DV Bridge but that he had experienced severe problems with it. That kind of stuff is usefull.

[legman]

Ashtones.

The wintvgo card for 50 bucks is pretty good. You will have to adjust the color a bit.

You will need a 1.7 p4 or better to cap 640 x 480 @29.97fps.
Grab the huffy codec. they propb. have it here in the download section or over at doom9.org. It's free.

I use virtualdub, also free as the capture utility.
Remember to only cap files up to 2 gig or premiere will crash if you try to import them. I will generally cap as long as necessary, then create direct stream copies from vdub at 2 gig each. Very time consuming, but it get me quality and the avisynth plugin for importing files doen't work correctly for me with premiere 5.5.

Premiere 5.5 works great for me. I do editing also. I use 5.5 because I can export to the cce 2.62 plugin and really good quality on svcd.

I don't deinterlace at all. No reason to. The source is true interlaced and it will be played in a dvd player, made to display true interlaced footage. Only deinterlace progressive film.

You may want to look into this new proggie also. TSCV @ http://www.ttool.de/indexe.htm great for motion menus and motion thumb nails.

[holistic]

[quote]
On 2001-09-08 20:22:47, legman wrote:
You will need a 1.7 p4 or better to cap 640 x 480 @29.97fps.

SORRY disagree - the processor is not the deciding factor in a 'fullscreen' capture,(ONLY if you are compressing on the fly - i.e MJPEG) a 500mHz proc will do OK for AVI.
Processor and Memory however, WILL help in the encoding process .
I have managed to capture 640*480*29.97 fps on a 600 celeron (O/C to 900 but beside the point) and a ATA66 controller/7200 spin 30 GB Harddrive.
The issue is hardrive write speed (sustained NOT BURST).
I have benchmarked mine at (32Mb/sec the best i achieved) typically about 28Mb/sec . This being on the hairy edge as 640*480@29.97 fps is approx 27Mb/sec data transfer in uncompressed AVI format. Pointless since 2GB gets gobbled up in about 70 seconds.
If your drive is partitioned, select the lower partions (C: , D: ) as the 'inner' partitions have proved to have faster write speeds (my observation)

Ashtones.

You mentioned you wish to transfer old VHS and want a capture card . ?! WHY bother. Typically most new DV cameras have s-video / RCA (composite) support. Simply plug your source VHS into the camera and thru-put the signal to the firewire card.

For transferring my VHS collection (NO DV cam here) i have gone the way of a AVERmedia capture card (BT878 chip) and capture at 352*240(NTSC) then use TMPGEnc to encode to a 'non-standard' high bitrate xVCD. Satisfactory results since most tapes are over 10 years old.
Better average the not at all !

hope this helps

[vitualis]

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On 2001-09-08 20:22:47, legman wrote:
You will need a 1.7 p4 or better to cap 640 x 480 @29.97fps.
Grab the huffy codec. they propb. have it here in the download section or over at doom9.org. It's free.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I have to echo holistic's sentiment on this. As long as your PC is set up correctly (i.e., you don't have driver conflicts), you don't need a beefy machine to capture to AVI.

I can easily capture to 352x576 at 25fps (i.e., PAL) using the PicVideo MJPEG codec with minimal frame drop (there will always be some slight frame drop if there are timing irregularities with your soundcard/capture card). I can almost capture full frame PAL with no frame drop. I have a cheapo Brooktree based TV capture card and a PIII 500.

If you search through the forums, you will discover that full frame capture to AVI (with a good capture codec like PicVideo MJPEG) only requires a very modest system. Fast hard discs are nice, but not really required unless you plan to capture to uncompressed AVI.

If you have a capture card that does hardware compression (e.g., the DC10+ does hardware MJPEG compression), your PC specs can be very modest indeed (e.g., PII 300MHz should present no problems).

Regards.

[ashtones]

Ok so basically what I'm hearing is that you don't have to have a $800 capture card to get the job done. By the way my digital 8 does not have anolog in or this whole topic would be moot. So one last question is the picture quality on these less expensive cards decent?

[Lamont Cranston]

I capture full frame 720 X 480 avi from the ATI AIW 128 Pro with AVI_IO and very rarely loose 1 frame. I have a 1 GHz Athlon. The key is Mainconcept's codec which is much more efficient than the PicVideo. My CPU usage dropped 10% with the Mainconcept's codec. According to Mainconcept's tech support you can recompress up to 6 times with no apparent loss in image quality. And you can save up to 4GB files with higher compression. However, the Mainconcept is limited to a resolution of 720 x 480 only. It's not free but they have a demo version.

[TOMMO]

Ashtones.

I have used the DV500 and it is a good device. It will support VHS capture and output back to tape. The card also has Firewire inputs so it is very well supported. So all your purposes would be catered for. Comes with a good bundle of software. This includes Premiere 6. I have used version 5 which has served well. I do not like version 6. The problem with version5 is that it does not support DV.

i use a DC30 Plus for video capture from VHS. This is a good card. Solid and reliable. Outs back to tape.

However if you have digital 8 , you only need Firewire support. I bought the PYRO basic so that I can input from my Digital 8 Sony. Very simple to install and cost £47.

Perhaps you could enable DV in on your camera. There are ways. Mail me for link.

Most of my editing and VCD creation is on the same subject, the Kids and family.

[KingJohn]

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On 2001-09-09 05:49:06, ashtones wrote:
Ok so basically what I'm hearing is that you don't have to have a $800 capture card to get the job done. By the way my digital 8 does not have anolog in or this whole topic would be moot. So one last question is the picture quality on these less expensive cards decent?
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That's right, I use the WinTV capture card with the German Mpeg software and save to VCD.mpeg. If quality of the source is very good then I get "DVD" quality

That should start someone off, but anyway yes its very good for $50 card. But like I said poor quality source files do not turn out as good when converted.

P2, 450 and a slow hard drive !!

[ashtones]

Thsi is all really good news. If I can go cheap on the capture card then I can afford to get the DVDR drive. Any thoughts on that purchase? Also how do you feel about the people who work in electronic stores. I plan on soliciting the advise of Frys employees before I buy.

[holistic]

ROTFL .. hahahah heheheee. ................ oooooo ! **

Do your own research
Somewhere to start : http://www.emediapro.net/EM1999/parker1.html

Be careful here . There are still a few DVD formats slugging it out for a "standard"
The Pioneer DVR-A03 is worth looking into
ALSO (for your firewire port)
http://www.macs4all.com/Merchant/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=T&Product_Code=CW-...egory_Code=CDD
It says MAC but firewire is firewire.



** cavet ** - just the sales(people) i have met .

[cwbenz]

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On 2001-09-09 14:54:44, TOMMO wrote:
Ashtones.

I have used the DV500 and it is a good device.

i use a DC30 Plus for video capture from VHS. This is a good card. Solid and reliable. Outs back to tape.

I bought the PYRO basic so that I can input from my Digital 8 Sony. Very simple to install and cost £47.

Perhaps you could enable DV in on your camera. There are ways. Mail me for link.

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So u have 3 cards in your pc? If Pyro & DC30 will do, why DV500? Sorry confused. I am comtemplating DV500 or Dazzle's DVnow.AV until I see yr post. May be cheaper if I get DC30. Pls advise. Many thnx.

[KingJohn]

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On 2001-09-09 19:05:19, ashtones wrote:
Thsi is all really good news. If I can go cheap on the capture card then I can afford to get the DVDR drive. Any thoughts on that purchase? Also how do you feel about the people who work in electronic stores. I plan on soliciting the advise of Frys employees before I buy.
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"Also how do you feel about the people who work in electronic stores"

Well I guess they are the same in the USA as they are in the UK They don't know much "if anything at all" well they waffle on with the odd technical keyword "thrown in" now and then (To impress you) , but as soon as you ask something technical, they say "err", "ummm", "I'll ask the mangier", then come back with "err", "ummm". "Don't Know"

Its my experience that you need to know exactly what you want before your visit those places, then you wont get fobbed off with a bargain basement "On offer" "We make more money from it" Item... You will get what you ask for if you know about it before

Use the Internet sites' that sell the item you want, fined out the average price and the exact model, if the shop your going to buy from has it on the net cheaper "Tell them" you might get it at the internet price.

I have seen a lot of USA sites selling the WinTV card at $49 for the basic PCI, The card manufactures usually have links to sale outlets. Then visit your local shop if you can, with print outs from those sites.


_________________
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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: letmeinforgodsake on 2001-09-10 10:09:59 ]</font>

[TOMMO]

cwbenz,

I said I have used the DV500.

I have my computer 2 capture cards, the DC30Plus and a firewire card.

You have to consider carefully on your choice. The DC30 comes with Premiere 5. No good for Digital AVI. No firwire input, and Premiere 5 does not support the format. Hence my purchase of the Pyro Firewire.

DV500 come with Premiere 6 which does support Digital AVi, has a breakout box and 2 firewire inputs.

Depends what you need.

[ashtones]

Tommo,

How would you rate The DV500. Is it worth the price? Did it change things for you? I am seriously looking at this one. Hopefully Sony's proprietary issues wont effect the capture card.

[thxkid]

Well I have been editing my home video's onto VCD's since 1998.
Done about 20 VCD's with 8-11 edited video's on each one.
See I like to do Family Video's with music added, so I end up with a Family music Video with broadcast quality transititon effects from scene to scene. Here is what I use in my setup.

1.2 thunderbird
512 megs of 133mhz SDRAM
30 gig 7200rpm western digital hard drive
5.1 sound blaster dolby digital
5500 AGP Voodoo 5
Hauppauge WIN PVR PCI Capture card
HP Burner
16x DVD pioneer
utopia DVD encoder card

I capture in uncompressed avi using virtual dub from Hi8mm
edit video using Ulead 6.0 with Hollwood FX silver plug in broadcast effects
Add in what effects I want while in ulead, render video as a uncompresed AVI, encode to VCD using TMPGE beta a.
I can usually get a complete 4-5 minute(usually about 20-25 scenes) family music video done in about an hour, from turning computer on to popping CD-R into DVD player for a finished product.
Now I have Adobe 5.0 tried it for about 6 months then switched over to ulead, adobe is easy to learn and faster to render but nowhere near the quality that ulead offers in video but adobe does offer more and better lookig effects, except about a 6 months ago I got HollywoodFX Silver.
HollywoodFX Silver is a plug in for ulead or adobe and it offers more than 800 broadcast quality effects for scene transitions. It even uses Morphing.
Recently I have switched over to burning SVCD's, much sharper picture over VCD's, have not had the change to make a Family Video using ulead in SVCD, did get the SVCD patch for ulead though.
This computer editing let me tell you is soooo much easier and rewarding over the previous 12 years of analog tape editing I was doing, I will never go back and edit on video tape ever again.
So if anyone has questions or idea's I can help you with post it here or email me.
thank you
Dan

[TOMMO]

ashtones,

My recommendation to you is as follows.

1. If your DV camera supports line in, copy your VHS footage to your DV Camera.

2. Purchase the PYRO Firewire card that comes with Ulead Media Studio Pro 6. its about £200 for the bundle.

of course, if you have Media Studio Pro 6 already - just go for the basic PYRO card.

Email me if you want

[ashtones]

My Hitachi Digital 8 Cam does not have anologue in.