Passthru software, formats, 8mm, MiniDV {NEWBIE}

[stevenj]

I have some questions for the knowledgeable folks I see on this forum. I have searched and reviewed much of the forum, and reviewed the Guides, but it is all pretty overwhelming. I just need to see if I'm on the right track.

Our Sony CCD-TR65 Video8 camcorder stopped working. I have about a dozen 2-hour 8mm tapes from it.

I want to buy a digital camcorder. I reviewed the formats, and my first thought was D8, to be able to play our old tapes, but after reading about analog passthrough, I don't want the size of a D8 camcorder just to play a dozen tapes once (I will borrow a friend's 8mm camcorder to play the tapes). After many hours reviewing what's available, I have homed in on the Sony DCR-TRV22 MiniDV. I don't want to spend the money for MicroDV or 3" DVD.

I want to archive my dozen old 8mm tapes to DVD. I have downloaded and read the TRV22 manual on this. They talk about an i.LINK (IEEE 1394) cable. I have two laptops. The one I will use is a Dell Inspiron 8100 with a P4-1.6, 384MB RAM, and a 1394 port, running WinXP (yechh). I believe I can get the drivers to work for the 1394 port, so that would complete the physical connection. (If not, I have USB, but Sony warns about the low speed of USB1.) Here is my first question:

1. I've read about various software packages to do the transfer to the PC. Why is software needed? Isn't the i.LINK device available at the operating system level?

And then this:

2. I've read about people converting video formats. I am familiar with VirtualDub. Is the MiniDV format the same format that is written to DVD-R? I'm just not clear on the MiniDV and DVD-R file formats.

I kind of understand the concept of authoring, although I haven't done it yet. I have Nero 5 which I can try.

Now, still on the old 8mm tapes, I am confused about quality and the file formats required. I understand that the video from an 8mm tape is of much lower resolution than one from a modern MiniDV camcorder. So:

3. Once the 8mm analog signal is converted via passthrough to MiniDV format and stored on the PC, what format does it need to be to be burned onto a DVD-R, while fitting as much video as possible on the disc, and still making it playable on generic DVD player hardware? Should these videos be converted to one of the older file formats, and then burned to the disc (to fit more video and still be playable)? And I've read that I could use CD-R, but will these play in a DVD player?

Finally:

4. What will I do differently to archive my new MiniDV tapes to DVD?

Thank you very much in advance. With the answers to these questions, I think I can actually make some progress on this.

Steve

[turk690]

Even after the dozen tapes you may still want to transfer stuff from tape to DVD-R. Laptops are not the optimal machines to do this. Nearly all of them only have one HDD, and a small one at that (rarely >40GB), which will fill up quickly with DV-AVI, if that. One of the basic things a PC intended to be used for capturing video must have is a separate, fast (~7200rpm), big (>100GB), optimized (with all of the correct ATA drivers/programs) HDD, which should NOT contain anything (not even system files) BUT the captured material. This is a separate, physical drive, not merely another partition of an existing drive (:C, for ex.). Next, NOT all 1394 ports work well or at all with camcorders. They have to be OHCI, and have the appropriate drivers (and even loading the drivers is not guaranteed to make them work). This is easily verified enough: on a PC with such port running WindowsXP, connect a recent Sony DV/D8 camcorder, then on checking system>>>device manager, a new category "imaging devices" should appear (if it wasn't there before, as this is the same category that appears on the fly on connecting other devices such as scaners and digital cameras) and under it "Sony DV camcorder". In my experience TI-based 1394 adapters fare best.

1. The DV camcorder is a tape machine. Even if the PC recognizes it other programs are required to transfer the tape contents to your HDD as DV AVI. This is in common with other tape storage systems for computers: for example Windows does NOT assign them drive letters (unlike other drive types); the archiving program takes care of that.

2&3. The miniDV format was designed primarily so that consumers get the benefits of digital video recording: no copy loss, easy NLE, etc. that were once enjoyed only by pros. In Windows, after successful transfer you get DV-AVI files (type-1 or type-2, depending on what program transferred them), which conform to DirectShow/VfW standards. All original frames are present, called I-frames or keyframes, compression done only within each frame. Even then, about 1hr of DV-AVI will occupy about 13GB of HDD space. In simple terms DVDs use MPEG-2, a compressed format that can allow 1hr of material to occupy about 2GB (varies greatly, depending on a lot of factors). You can see the DV format IS NOT the same as that written onto DVD-R, if the intention is to put the same DVD-R into a DVD player and expect it to play. To play on a DVD player sounds great but due to getting converted to MPEG-2, a (very) lossy format, you can't exactly call that archiving. If you want to really archive, a blank DVD-R will only hold about 22mins tops of DV-AVI material. Not much, no? In the end most people archive just by letting their videos lie on the DV tapes themselves, then storing them well. The DV tapes can be copied onto other DV tapes through FireWire with no loss; if the tapes are really that valuable a regular archiving sched can be followed.

4. From these tapes (and subsequently the DV-AVI files in them that get transferred to your HDD) you can author your DVDs to play on your DVD player. Just stop referring to these DVDs as archived versions of your tapes because they are not. To capture and edit I use Adobe Premiere 6.5 that came with an ADSTech PyroPro Platinum FireWire card (this card uses the TI chipset, and works when all others have failed, like some who bought certain ASUS and Gigabyte-brand motherboards with built-in FireWire support). For encoding to MPEG-2 I use the built-in MainConcept encoder in Premiere, or TMPGenc (for top quality). Then I author the DVD with DVD-lab. The resulting set of files may get beyond the 4.7GB limit, and to get them down I open them in DVDShrink (in the deep analysis mode, which doesn't seem to degrade the quality, and for once I'm proud that the material involved IS mine and NOT some ripped, oh OK, backupped DVD). I submit these files to Nero 5.5.10.42 in DVD-video mode and create my DVD-video with a Sony DRU-500A/2.0g.

There are any number of other guides in this site to help you further. Here's seeing u get into the nitty-gritty.

[stevenj]

Dear turk690 -

Wow. Thank you so much for that great answer. It is so very helpful to get input from someone who knows what they are talking about.

So here is where I am:

1. Fundamentally, I am looking to archive my tapes (family videos--don't want to have to have more kids if the tapes get ruined ). The reason I thought about DVD discs is that I've read they can have a life of 50-100 years, whereas tapes can be 5-15 years, and tapes can be eaten by the player. Now, realistically, once I get the content into a digital format and archive it, my kids will be able to convert/transfer as necessary to a different medium--I doubt that DVD will be the rage in 30 years. So maybe I'm missing the boat by wanting to do this DVD writing. I guess the fundamental question is, should I go with MiniDV and borrow a second camcorder to make archive tape copies, or should I work on transfer to the PC, or should I spend the money and go with a 3" DVD camcorder? I think the 3" DVD option is too new and too expensive. I think PC transfer is something I could work on later, after I have MiniDV tape archives. Planning on MiniDV tape archives initially could work well, because I believe the TRV22 can record the "passthru" signal, i.e. convert analog to MiniDV and record to the MiniDV tape in the TRV22. So I could archive my old tapes, and later borrow a MiniDV camcorder to archive my new tapes.

2. If I try some PC transfers, I may or may not be successful. I'm adding an 80GB or 100GB second HDD to one of the laptops (the Inspiron can have two internal HDDs). Whether or not the 1394 port will work, as you say, I won't know until I try, unless someone here has tried an Inpiron 8000 or 8100 and knows. I can also check on the Dell forums. Now, in terms of formats, if I understood you correctly, MiniDV uses a lot of space, then the Windows DV-AVI format compresses within frames and uses much less space, and finally the MPEG-2 format for a DVD-R employs lossy compression and uses much, much less space, but the quality wouldn't qualify as true archiving. I'm thinking (and please tell me if I'm wrong) that as computers grow another 3 orders of magnitude in speed and storage, these video standards and compression algorithms will eventually merge into a handful of widely-accepted standards, and bringing in digital material from a MiniDV format will become easier. This should happen well within the life of the tapes, meaning maybe I should hang with the MiniDV tapes for now, as you say.

Any futher commentary you have on my ramblings would be appreciated. You are really making me think about what I want to accomplish, and in what timeframe I should do it, and that's great. Thanks again.

Steve

[turk690]

1. Buy the TRV22, borrow the other camcorder, then transfer all of the analog 8mm material to miniDV tape. On the TRV22, use SP even though LP is tempting: this is archiving after all. There's a better chance of playing back SP-recorded miniDV tapes on other miniDV tape machines in the future. You can alternatively use the TRV22 as an A-to-D converter (pass through) so that the analog camcorder is connected to its inputs, then the FireWire onto the PC, directly saving the analog tape contents as DV-AVI files on the HDD. But this requires you duly test the 1394 ports of the PC and are indeed working. Note that back-upping files onto an HDD is not normally considered a long-term storage solution: HDDs fail just when u need them most. So the miniDV tapes are your best bet for now.
2. MiniDV uses the same space as DV-AVI: they are one and the same. We only realize the space when an hour's worth of miniDV has been transferred to HDD: 1hr of DV-AVI is about 13GB, so it means a 60min DV tape at SP can hold 13GB (so?). Done properly, and with high enough average bitrates (6-7Mb/s), an MPEG-2 video can be indistinguishable in quality from the original DV-AVI when viewed on TV. It's not only quality that is the concern on archiving, though, but bit-perfect copies as that achieved when copying a miniDV tape to another miniDV tape through the FireWire ports. MPEG-2 (DVD-video) in this sense therefore is NOT an archiving medium, but merely a transport and playback medium. One does not normally store AV material in MPEG-2 with a view to re-editing them again.

[stevenj]

turk690 -

Thanks. I read the TRV22 manual again regarding SP and LP tape speeds, and I don't think I'll ever use the LP. I will order the TRV22 and get started. I will archive to MiniDV tapes--any recommendations on which tapes to use, or if it matters? Thanks again for all your input.

Steve

[D_Knife]

Yep - get the TRV 22 - I love mine
Tape brands usually don't matter - however a friend of mine suggested sticking to one brand of tape - something to do with the tape coating or similar.

Personally I'm using TDK - they work, are cheap near me and haven't given me any problems