Bout To Invest In Some Video Equipment Need Some Advice ???

[Scriptkilla]

Hey new to the board but i have been reading up on the technical side

Ok i'm trying to convert my company into the 21st century really
i have loads of my work on various analog formats such as super-vhs and beta-cam but i may need to capture off dvd as well

wat i'm lookin to do is capture the old footage into dv then add a timecode send it to the bbfc then edit the changes

now this is where i'm at......

i'm buying a new g5 dual to go with my normal g5 to run FCP to edit

the 'Canopus advc 110' looks to be able to handle all the formats i'm after any suggestions would be great.

i'm not sure bout the graphics cards or capture cards

i will probaly need to best quality transfer as it will be converted eventually to a dvd to sell. i heard from other video guys to capture my footage using a low resolution codec then when i need to make the dvd save it off as a MPEG2 any suggestions again.


sorry bout the length of the post but i needed to say everthing
and YES MY COMPANY IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST PRODUCERS OF ADULT ENTERTAINMENT IN THE UK

so i can keep you guys informed

[rumplestiltskin]

Old footage > DV
Canopus or similar device is fine. You can also use most modern DV camcorders as they have an "analog-to-DV" passthrough feature (Canon's ZR series, for example, are fine for this).

Graphics cards or capture cards
Really no need for this if your footage is coming in via FireWire (from DV camcorders, for example).

There is a feature in FCP that permits you to capture (via FW) as low-quality footage for editing and then, when editing is done, re-capture (at full quality) automatically using the EDL.

At 15GB/hour (more or less), you can store about 20 hours of full-quality DV-Stream video on a 300GB HD. There are larger HDs, of course, but the 300GB units are pretty cheap. Buy a multi-bay FW tower (or a number of single-bay FW units) and load up your "inventory". I'd backup using HDs, not tape, as virtually all who use tape backups never bother to check that the BU is restorable. Besides, the nature of DV workflow doesn't make tape BU's affordable.

Frankly, the more I think about it, I'd forego the "capture as low-res" to save time. Storage on HDs is cheap. Your time is what is costly.

DVDSP (heck, even iDVD) will do the mpeg2 conversion automatically. Do you have titles longer than 2 hours? No? Then iDVD works fine.

Have more Q's? Post or contact me offline. Always happy to assist...or beta-test...

[Scriptkilla]

thanks for your quick response and for takin the time to help me

i forgot to tell you that when i capture from my source (supervhs vhs)

i will need to add a timecode to that dv footage (will FCP be ok ?)

then copy that dv footage to vhs to send to the bbfc as a sample (is there a quick way of acheiving this this could definately be lower quality ? )

you spoke about FCP having a feature but i'm unsure when you say..."automatically using the EDL" i don't know what that is ?

also i plan on buying content from America and i could do with finding a way to straight convert a NTSC dvd into a PAL dvd with no change in the quality of the dvd if possible

for the future i may plan to compile the footage into mini comps that could be up to 4 hours long is there any problems with this

thanks again hopefully you won't find this a chore i have to sleep now as i have to be up at 5am to work

[rumplestiltskin]

Good morning!

I'm fairly certain that FCP will automatically add the timecode. I do know there's a function somewhere within the app to "homogenize" (if that's the right word) the disparate timecodes from, let's say, a number of different clips.

"copy DV footage to VHS"?? Why on earth would you want to do that? All that does is do another conversion (now digital back to analog) and degrade whatever quality was left from the original footage. I may not be understanding what you intend to do; perhaps it's this "bbfc" thing (acronym unknown to me).

"EDL" - Edit decision list. When you're doing your editing of the timeline, there's actually a kind of text file in which all of the clips, in/out points, transitions, audio volume, composites, titles, etc., etc. are stored. If you do this editing with the low-quality/low-res capture, this EDL permits you to automatically re-capture the specific clips you need and then automatically apply the I/O points, transitions, titles, etc. to this newly captured footage. It's the EDL (you see it represented in the app as the timeline that you edit) that is critical and is the one file in every FCP project that -must- be backed up. Backing up the footage just saves you the time and effort of re-capturing but, if you lose the EDL, you're screwed. Start over from scratch.

DVD - NTSC>PAL - Probably MacTheRipper & then DVD Remaster. There's also an app called "Cinematize" that lets you rip DVD content to DV-Stream but that might cause a loss of quality. There's also an app called DVD Shrink (for Windoze) that can do this in one step and even shrink DVD9 to DVD5 if that's necessary; quality loss seems to be minimal if you're conservative in the "shrinking".

"mini comps...up to 4 hours long" - iDVD won't do this as it has a 2 hour limit. DVD Studio Pro (DVDSP) will handle this. I'm assuming you'll want to make a rather attractive menu system. If, however, you'd be happy with a minimal menu structure and do not require subtitles (that's funny; adult entertainment requiring subtitles??), Toast can do this simply by dropping all sorts of video files into the app's window (using the DVD tab). You don't even need to have all the files be the same source format; Toast will encode everything to the required MPEG2 and AC3. (Lots of choices in this category of mpeg2 conversion - ffmpegX, MPEG2Works, etc.).

Don't forget encoding for iPod! (ffmpegX, MPEG Streamclip work great.) Maybe you'd like to include an H264 version specifically for iPod. DVDSP and Toast will permit you to include files that are not part of the menu structure. Obviously, you'll need space for them on the disc. Using ffmpegX to encode as H264 for iPod (tweaked for best quality) takes about 100MB/hour.

Let me know if this helps. Happy New Year!

[Scriptkilla]

hi thanks again for your response its really helpin me understand what i need to look into

the bbfc thing sorry i didn't explain myself properly is 'The British Board of Film Classification' that i have to send my content or american bought content to so the film can get an r18 certificate

they ask for a timecoded vhs of my content so if i buy content that is supervhs i need to capture it to dv add a timecode ( FCP maybe or if theres a product that does this? ) then copy the footage back to vhs with the timecode to see if the bbfc need me to cut any thing out that is unsuitable. Then once i have made those changes to my dv footage in fcp then i need to convert it to a format that a dvd replicator would need i'm not sure of the format maybe mpeg2 ?

after that then i could convert it to ipod or mobile phone formats to be accessable to people

when i capture the footage at the beginning i just need a straight capture so i think the canopus will do the trick coz i've ben shown devices that improve the vhs footage but they where like £2000 which i can't afford to spend.

thanks again for any input you can give me i'm really appreicative of anything anyone can contribute thanks

[Scriptkilla]

hey guys if any one has any more feedback to help me it wold be appreicated thanks