Capturing Old MiniDV with Canon HV30

[assman24]

I have some old MiniDV tapes that I want to capture on to my pc. The tapes were from a pretty new Samsung stanard def camera. I use DVSplit with my current HDV MiniDV tapes that I record with my HV30 and it works great. When I try it with the old tapes there are errors. Some times it doesn't recognize my camera, and when it does it stops short. The camera will play and the video will show up on the camera screen, but not on the preview window in DVSplit. After a few seconds the tape stops and the error message says there was nothing to capture. Other times it will play all the way through and end when the tape is done playing, but the .m2t file will be 0KB. I have the PLAYBACK STD set to auto (i tried forcing DV), 4:3 (tried 16:9), I tried AVtoDV on (dont really know what this is), and DV OUTPUT on HDV/DV and DV LOCK. Has anyone had any success capturing from tapes from other cameras? Or heard anything about it? Also, I'm pretty sure I heard that you can run another camera through the HV30 and capture on to pc. I have an old camera that I would like to do that with. How's this done?

Thanks,
Adam


Also, when DVSplit wouldn't recognize the camera vista tried installing drivers for it and treated it like a webcam or storage device? type thing. When this happened I opened Device Manager and uninstalled the camera drivers, then unplugged the firewire from the pc, turned the camera off, put the camer in 'camera' mode, plugged it back in with DVSplit open, it recognized it, then I put it in Play mode and it seemed to fix that problem. Thought I'd add that in case anyone was having that issue too.

[edDV]

You will need to switch the HV30 into DV format output mode over IEEE-1394 if it doesn't do it automatically. I'll have to check my HV20 menus later.

Once you are outputting DV format. HDVsplit won't work. It works only with HDV format. Try WinDV instead.

[assman24]

Thanks ed.

Is there a program that will convert to a .m2t file? Or is that unnecessary with DV? What is the highest quality output format to use with DV?

[edDV]

Thanks ed.

Is there a program that will convert to a .m2t file? Or is that unnecessary with DV? What is the highest quality output format to use with DV?

DV format isn't MPeg. It saves all frames with no interframe compression to a 720x480i DV-AVI file format. In frame compression is approximately 5x. 1440x1080i HDV compresses approx 25x to fit the same 25Mb/s bit rate as DV.

What are your editing plans?

[assman24]

The only editing that I would like to do is sometimes taking clips from 2 different tapes and putting them together on one dvd/blu ray.

I used Microsoft Movie Capture or whatever the program is called, I can't remember. It popped up when I plugged in my camera to firewire. It seemed to do okay. Is this just as good, or would WinDV do a better job? I couldn't get it to recognize the camera.

[assman24]

Now that I've been watching some Vimeo vids I think I may want to eventually do some more editing than just clipping.

[edDV]

You will get the same results transferring DV format using Windows or WinDV. Both use DirectShow and Windows device control. IMO, WinDV is more intuitive.

A DV or HDV format transfer results in the exact same data transferred from the tape to a file on your hard drive. There is no quality loss. DV will go to a DV-AVI file (DV format). HDV will go to a *.m2t file (MPeg2 transport stream). Both can be edited in Vista's Windows Movie Maker but other programs give greater capability such as

Adobe Premiere Elements 4
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/?promoid=121DJGSC_P_US_FP1_PRE_MN&tt=P_US_FP1_PRE_MN

Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope

ULead Video Studio 11.5 Plus
http://www.ulead.com/vs/

[dLee]

Hey Adam -

Are you working on a project for your family business?

[assman24]

Thanks a lot for all of your help ed, its very much appreciated.

dLee: I'm doing this for my home movies.