Firewire Capture

[bombart]

Hey Guys. I was just wondering... about capturing from a MiniDV camcorder to my computer... I just bought a Firewire adapter so that I could capture my movies without losing quality. However, I've heard that this requires a lit of hard disk space. How much exactly are we talking here. I have a total of around 3-4 hours of video footage that I'd like to edit... how much HD space are we talking if I want to "capture" all of them so that I can interlink the movies etc...???

Thanks a lot ladies and gentleman.

PS. This site is absolutely fantastic. Cheers to all of you out there who are so eager to help us lost soles

[EricB]

I forget the exact figures but I think its around 6 mb/second (yes per second). So if you have an operating system with a 4G file size limit, thats about 19 minutes of video. So 3 hours is like 36 - 38 G. Keep in mind you need room for preview files and other scratch stuff.

[tgpo]

According to the chart under the VCD menu DV takes 216mb/Min. Which is about right. I've done many things with DV and that figure seems to be right.

[bombart]

Hey Eric. Umm. what's this about the 4Gb limit? Can I or can I not "capture" via firewire an hour at a time?

Thanks in advance.

[tgpo]

What he was saying is that certain OS can only handle files that are under a certain size. For example a few Windows OS can't handle files >2gb. Seeing that you have XP you should be fine and able to do a hour at a time perfectly.

[eskimojan]

It does not depend solely on the Operating System you chose. Win9X and WinME runs only on FAT with 2GB filesize limit and FAT32 with a filesize limit of 4GB. If you run WinNT4.0 / Win2K or WinXP you have the option of running the NTFS filesystem, which limits the filesize to an astounding 16 exabytes.

[EricB]

...sure, guess I mentioned the file limit out of the blue. Working in video is the first time you're ever likely to find these limits! Most capture programs (Scenalyzer is great) provide seamless transitions. I haven't changed to XP yet, so on my ME system, I capture with 2G maximum files. It is not a problem when they are assembled in Premiere where you see absolutely no transition. It has become a problem with making DVDs where I want to produce a > 4G image file prior to burning.

[bombart]

Hey Guys. Thanks to all of you who replied. From what I gather from all of you... I won't have a problem with the file size and an hour of video should take approx. 13GB of space.

My next question is... what software is good to capture? Adobe Premiere is expensive... but I could justify it because I'm completely doing my sister's marriage and professionals charge A LOT! But, I'm basically looking for software that is not toooo expensive... yet has excellent features. I basically want to be able to add a background track... edit transitions... add frames that have some information in text.. stuff like that. Nothing too fancy.

Finally, I'd like to be able to burn my edited video onto VCDs. Also, I'd like to be able to put the edited movies back onto the DV tapes. How would I do this?

Is there any site that gives me comprehensive step-by-step info for newbies like me? If so... which one would you gurus recommend?

Thanks a lot again.

Cheers

[EricB]

Well to answer your last question, I've always used this site!

I really like Premiere. It has a steep learning curve so I highly recommend you get a book on it. Once you learn it, the whole process is very intuitive and a lot easier than some of the simpler programs. I believe there is still a full demo version available at the Adobe site.

If money is an issue, ULEAD VideoStudio6 is very nice and can even produce your end VCD, SVCD if you like. I still prefer using Premiere to edit and TMPGenc for converting.

You save your edited film back to the camera over firewire. You just play the timeline from your editing program back out to the camera.