Mini DV to Hard Drive to WDTV

[piperpilot12w]

I have about 30 Mini DV tapes that I would like to transfer onto another medium so I can view them in a more convenient manner in the best quality possible. In the past I have transferred to DVD, but was thinking about a different way. Reading through some of the posts here I became familiar with the WDTV Media player.

If I were to get transfer all my Mini DV tapes to an external hard drive of 1.5 TB and connect to a WDTV Live to the TV would this work, or is there more to it that I'm not aware of? Would I be able to edit portions of the Mini DV in its original format? What program would I use to capture and edit? I have a Mac Pro.

WDTV Live or Asus O Play any thoughts which one is better?

[redwudz]

I don't see DV-AVI listed on the WDTV site, so I doubt it will play back. For editing, you could try AVIDemux, Mac version.

You can find discussions on our forums about WDTV VS Asus. I have a WDTV Live and I have no complaints.

[jagabo]

WDTV does not play DV. You have to convert to Divx/Xvid, MPEG 2, h.264, etc.

[piperpilot12w]

Looks like it won't be as simple as I hoped.
Any suggestions on what format for best quality video/audio if size doesn't matter?
What program would be good for doing this along with basic editing? I have a Mac, is iMovie/iDVD good or are there better options?

[edDV]

Looks like it won't be as simple as I hoped.
Any suggestions on what format for best quality video/audio if size doesn't matter?
What program would be good for doing this along with basic editing? I have a Mac, is iMovie/iDVD good or are there better options?

If this is hand held DV camcorder material, I would recommend high bit rate interlace 720x480i /29.97 (DVD spec) MPeg2 as the highest quality WDTV format. Your HDTV will convert this to its native resolution at 60p, 120p, 240p etc. Keep the original DV format file for archive.

You will find interlace h.264 quality inferior and interlace VC-1 file sizes larger compared to MPeg2. Deinterlace would be destructive and result in suboptimal processing at the TV.

[rumplestiltskin]

While I essentially agree with edDV's advice regarding deinterlacing, I will ask if you intend to abandon those mini-DV tapes or keep them for any future editing. If the latter, then run them through MPEG Streamclip and go to H264 with deinterlacing turned on. Use a quality of 100% and a bitrate of, let's say, 3500kbps. You might even find that 2500 will do the job. Use 160kbps for the audio as that is quite sufficient. If you keep the video bitrate down to 2500 (and audio to 160kb), you'll also create files that are compatible with the AppleTV (although the aTV Flash hack will remove that 2500kbps limitation).

I play such files in both my AppleTV and my WDTV and find no issues with deinterlacing. Perhaps if I had a 1080p 65" set, I would feel differently about it but I have a 32" 720p set and an older 32" Toshiba SDTV.

[rumplestiltskin]

re: capture & edit DV. You can do that with iMovieHD (v6) which Apple made available for free to users of later versions of iMovie. However, Final Cut Express is fairly cheap ($166 from one Pricegrabber merchant) and works very well.

[piperpilot12w]

What would be better-both MPEG 2 and H264 were recommended. If I went with MPEG 2, what program would be best for encoding?
I currently have iMovie 7.1.4 What is it about iMovieHD V6 that makes it preferable?

These tapes are from a camcorder and I would like to dispose of them if I have the same format (DV-AVI) stored on a hard drive and backed up. Is that a good idea?

Do you see a time when WDTV would play DV-AVI?
I plan to view these on a 50 inch HD LCD TV

[Soopafresh]

Keep your tapes - who knows what the future holds in the way of video enhancement technologies. Besides, you should always have more than 1 data backup format.

WD might make native DV playback available, but I wouldn't expect it anytime soon.

Experiment with both deinterlaced h264 and interlaced Mpeg2. Chances are Mpeg2 is going to be crisper, although the files will be bigger. You're not limited in bitrate on the WD TV Live like you are on a DVD player, so you can encode your DV material at visually lossless bitrates.

[edDV]

duplicate post

[edDV]

What would be better-both MPEG 2 and H264 were recommended. If I went with MPEG 2, what program would be best for encoding?
I currently have iMovie 7.1.4 What is it about iMovieHD V6 that makes it preferable?

These tapes are from a camcorder and I would like to dispose of them if I have the same format (DV-AVI) stored on a hard drive and backed up. Is that a good idea?

Do you see a time when WDTV would play DV-AVI?
I plan to view these on a 50 inch HD LCD TV

1. Keep the dv original files as your archive. You can capture those with iMovie or iMovie HD and keep them on a hard drive or 20 min at a time to a 4.3GB DVDR. Any further encoding will degrade the source quality.

2. For the playback file I recommend you stay with DVD spec 720x480i MPeg2 at >8000 Kb/s if you want best quality. Deinterlacing is destructive to quality especially for hand held camcorder material. For 30 minutes the original dv file would be ~6.5GB. MPeg2 file size would be about 2GB. You can export to MPeg2 from the Quicktime menu if you purchased the Apple MPeg2 codec. If you don't have the MPeg2 codec, you can simply use iDVD to make a DVD Video_TS folder ready for burning, or simply copy the folder to the WDTV for playback.

Apple's implementation of h.264 will deinterlace your DV video (i.e. make it choppy) and over compress (i.e make it blocky) when viewed on a large screen.

It is unlikely media players will directly implement a hardware DV codec due to licensing costs.

[rumplestiltskin]

MPEG4 is replacing MPEG2 (eventually). BlueRay is MPEG4 (although at quite a high bitrate).

WD can do a number of things to their existing WDTV media players because they periodically make available updates to the firmware. However, I don't expect DV inclusion; edDV's comment about licensing + DV is still sort of massive in size and requires a bit more muscle than the WDTV has available to it.

Take a minute of your footage and try various formats and bitrates; let your eyes be the judge.

[edDV]

Interlace h.264 doesn't compress much more than MPeg2 for equivalent quality. Apple's h.264 implementation forces a deinterlace which does lower quality.

[piperpilot12w]

You can export to MPeg2 from the Quicktime menu if you purchased the Apple MPeg2 codec. If you don't have the MPeg2 codec, you can simply use iDVD to make a DVD Video_TS folder ready for burning, or simply copy the folder to the WDTV for playback.

If I understand, I can pay $19.99 and have the ability to encode to MPEG2 added to Quicktime and with the recommended settings this will provide high quality encoding to my DV-AVI. Obtain iMovie HD Version 6 to do my edits. Would this provide the simplest way to accomplish what I want, which is to keep on a hard drive and view through WDTV.

[ron spencer]

Looks like it won't be as simple as I hoped.
Any suggestions on what format for best quality video/audio if size doesn't matter?
What program would be good for doing this along with basic editing? I have a Mac, is iMovie/iDVD good or are there better options?

If this is hand held DV camcorder material, I would recommend high bit rate interlace 720x480i /29.97 (DVD spec) MPeg2 as the highest quality WDTV format. Your HDTV will convert this to its native resolution at 60p, 120p, 240p etc. Keep the original DV format file for archive.

You will find interlace h.264 quality inferior and interlace VC-1 file sizes larger compared to MPeg2. Deinterlace would be destructive and result in suboptimal processing at the TV.

good info!!!

[edDV]

You can export to MPeg2 from the Quicktime menu if you purchased the Apple MPeg2 codec. If you don't have the MPeg2 codec, you can simply use iDVD to make a DVD Video_TS folder ready for burning, or simply copy the folder to the WDTV for playback.

If I understand, I can pay $19.99 and have the ability to encode to MPEG2 added to Quicktime and with the recommended settings this will provide high quality encoding to my DV-AVI. Obtain iMovie HD Version 6 to do my edits. Would this provide the simplest way to accomplish what I want, which is to keep on a hard drive and view through WDTV.

Yes this is correct. Or you can use iDVD to generate a VIDEO_TS folder and play the VOB files in the WDTV.

Better to just buy the codec and encode directly with Quicktime MPeg2 export.

[Case]

If I understand, I can pay $19.99 and have the ability to encode to MPEG2 added to Quicktime

No, the $19.99 QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component is a decoder only. A QuickTime MPEG-2 encoder is not for sale separately from Apple (but it might be/have been bundled with Final Cut Pro or something).

[piperpilot12w]

If I understand, I can pay $19.99 and have the ability to encode to MPEG2 added to Quicktime and with the recommended settings this will provide high quality encoding to my DV-AVI.

Yes this is correct.

No, the $19.99 QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component is a decoder only. A QuickTime MPEG-2 encoder is not for sale separately from Apple (but it might be/have been bundled with Final Cut Pro or something).

I'm confused now as to what to use as MPEG2 encoder

[jagabo]

Is there an HcEnc for the Mac? Probably not since it requires AviSynth input. How about ffmpegx? Another learning curve...

[edDV]

If I understand, I can pay $19.99 and have the ability to encode to MPEG2 added to Quicktime

No, the $19.99 QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component is a decoder only. A QuickTime MPEG-2 encoder is not for sale separately from Apple (but it might be/have been bundled with Final Cut Pro or something).

Turns out you are correct. The MPeg2 export setting in Quicktime that I have was placed there by an earlier version of Final Cut Pro. The current Studio package places MPeg2 export in Compressor, not in Quicktime, so even if you spend $999 the low end apps still can't export MPeg2. You have to use Compressor.

Further, iDVD gets the MPeg2 export codec bundled only with the SuperDrive DVD burner. It appears one must actually burn a DVD to get to a VOB. The low end Macs are such toys.

To get around this one must settle for third party solutions or use h.264 which deinterlaces the DV video. Be sure to archive the DV version of your edit if you want to retain full quality. Any low end Windows editor will allow export to an MPeg2 file or creation of a VIDEO_TS folder without burning a DVD first. Sometimes I just want to throttle Apple.

I may be missing something here since my Mac is corrupted by higher end applications.

[edDV]

If I understand, I can pay $19.99 and have the ability to encode to MPEG2 added to Quicktime

No, the $19.99 QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component is a decoder only. A QuickTime MPEG-2 encoder is not for sale separately from Apple (but it might be/have been bundled with Final Cut Pro or something).

Turns out you are correct. The MPeg2 export setting in Quicktime that I have was placed there by an earlier version of Final Cut Pro. The current Studio package places MPeg2 export in Compressor, not in Quicktime, so even if you spend $999 the low end apps still can't export MPeg2. You have to use Compressor.

Further, iDVD gets the MPeg2 export codec bundled only with the SuperDrive DVD burner. It appears one must actually burn a DVD to get to a VOB. The low end Macs are such toys.

To get around this one must settle for third party solutions or use h.264 which deinterlaces the DV video. Be sure to archive the DV version of your edit if you want to retain full quality. Any low end Windows editor will allow export to an MPeg2 file or creation of a VIDEO_TS folder without burning a DVD first. Sometimes I just want to throttle Apple.

I may be missing something here since my Mac is corrupted by higher end applications.

[piperpilot12w]

Any suggestions for an MPEG2 encoder. Previously when I had a PC, I used TMPGenc. With the Mac Pro I have no clue as to what's good but not too costly.

[jagabo]

ffmpegx?

[rumplestiltskin]

iDVD will let you burn to a disc image. Once done, mount the image and simply drag/copy your VIDEO_TS folder (or items contained therein) wherever you'd like. No physical DVD necessary.

[edDV]

iDVD will let you burn to a disc image. Once done, mount the image and simply drag/copy your VIDEO_TS folder (or items contained therein) wherever you'd like. No physical DVD necessary.

I forgot about the disc image. Will iDVD create a DVD disc image if a SuperDrive burner is not installed?

[rumplestiltskin]

iDVD will let you burn to a disc image. Once done, mount the image and simply drag/copy your VIDEO_TS folder (or items contained therein) wherever you'd like. No physical DVD necessary.

I forgot about the disc image. Will iDVD create a DVD disc image if a SuperDrive burner is not installed?

Yes; absolutely. Apple implemented this feature after the first (maybe second?) version of the app. Just look in iDVD's File menu for the command. In fact, this is what I use when I'm making DVDs. Better to make the disc image first and, once you're positive the mounted image works as you wanted, do the burns with Disk Utility.

[edDV]

iDVD will let you burn to a disc image. Once done, mount the image and simply drag/copy your VIDEO_TS folder (or items contained therein) wherever you'd like. No physical DVD necessary.

I forgot about the disc image. Will iDVD create a DVD disc image if a SuperDrive burner is not installed?

Yes; absolutely. Apple implemented this feature after the first (maybe second?) version of the app. Just look in iDVD's File menu for the command. In fact, this is what I use when I'm making DVDs. Better to make the disc image first and, once you're positive the mounted image works as you wanted, do the burns with Disk Utility.

Good. I have friend with stock Mac Mini (no DVD burner) with iLife 8. I'll try it there this weekend.

Once you have the image, the DVD can be burned in any Mac/Win/Linux machine with a DVD burner.

Or, in PiperPilot's case, you can extract the VOBs for playback on a WDTV. Maybe the WDTV plays from the image?

[rumplestiltskin]

I doubt the image file would play; it would have to be "mounted" as a disc first and the WD won't do that. As for burning the image back out to disc, iDVD will create a ".dmg" file which Disk Utility and Toast will burn (among other OSX burning utilities). I'm not familiar enough with PC and Linux burning utilities to know whether they can deal with a ".dmg" file. However, if this is a problem, there's always "Any2ISO" (IIR its name correctly) that will convert the ".dmg" to a ".iso". Probably many other options, as well.

[edDV]

I doubt the image file would play; it would have to be "mounted" as a disc first and the WD won't do that. As for burning the image back out to disc, iDVD will create a ".dmg" file which Disk Utility and Toast will burn (among other OSX burning utilities). I'm not familiar enough with PC and Linux burning utilities to know whether they can deal with a ".dmg" file. However, if this is a problem, there's always "Any2ISO" (IIR its name correctly) that will convert the ".dmg" to a ".iso". Probably many other options, as well.

Thanks. I was expecting a DVD image as an ".iso" but once again Apple goes rouge with proprietary ".dmg" as the only option.

[jagabo]

Maybe the WDTV plays from the image?

The WDTV Live does play DVD ISO images. But it has noe DVD menu ability -- it simply plays the longest title. That's ok with a movie but it's useless with episodic DVDs. I don't know if it handles Mac DMG files.