Transfering DV from camcorder to PC with W98SE 4GB limit

[babyboo]

Hope everyone is doing well and that my fellow posters in the US didn't eat too much turkey yesterday.

I have converted tons of "home movies" from VHS to VCD/SVCD and recently to NTSC DVD compliant MPEG2s (for future burn once I get a DVD burner). Now...I have just gotten my hands on my first minidv camcorder and before I start shooting I have an initial question/concern.
I am currently working within the 4GB limits of Windows98 and will not be switching to XP anytime soon (read 6 months).

How is DV video stored on a minidv tape?

As 1 long continuous stream? (in that case how would I transfer enough to keep me under the 4GB limit?)

or

As separate files based on the length of the video segment? (I could shoot in small segements and transfer individually)

Thanks,

[GeoPappas]

How is DV video stored on a minidv tape?

As 1 long continuous stream? (in that case how would I transfer enough to keep me under the 4GB limit?)

or

As separate files based on the length of the video segment? (I could shoot in small segements and transfer individually)

I'm pretty new to this area of computing, but I will share with you what I have learned. Maybe someone else can chime in to verify this...

The answer is that it depends on how the scene(s) were shot. If you videotaped a one-hour scene, then it will be stored as one continuous shot. If you videotaped ten six-minute scenes, then that is how they are stored.

But it really doesn't matter how they are stored on the camcorder. Even if you have a one-hour long scene, you can always break it up with capture software into smaller files. For example, I believe that Scenalyzer will break up the download into multiple 2 GB or 4 GB files. I'm sure there are other capture programs that will do the same.

But once you get these scenes on your computer (in Type 1/2 AVI format), I am not sure what you would do with them (since you can't splice them together). Maybe someone else can help you with that part.

[Richard_G]

How is DV video stored on a minidv tape?

As lots of 1s and 0s. It is a data stream, it isn't video at all.

As 1 long continuous stream? (in that case how would I transfer enough to keep me under the 4GB limit?)

Although the contents of the tape are a datastream, it does have timestamps so you can easily find every different clip (the point when you pressed the record button). If you transfer about 15 minutes worth at a time you will keep below your FAT32 limit. Some transfer software can automatically split your files so you could capture a whole 1 hour tape and get 3 or 4 sequential files. You'll need to do a bit of research to find one that can do it.