how to archive a miniDV onto a harddrive

[newOne]

I have a bunch of miniDV tapes from my Sony camcorder that I'm in process of converting into DVDs. I tried Firewire captures/transfers with WinDV, Scenealyzer, and Ulead and burned a test DVD, WinDV seemed like it gave the best quality.

But I was wondering, is that lossless? What's the best way to get my data stored onto a removable harddrive or DVD so that, if some better encoder comes along in 5 years, I could try to redo it?? I get DV .avi files. Is that the same as what is on a miniDV tape? Or how do I get the closest to the original? I'm worried about storing the miniDV tapes long term.

I've looked around this site but didn't find this specific issue.

Thanks for any ideas!

[greymalkin]

if you are using the firewire/WinDV method then you are transferring digital information..i.e. no quality loss.

Just do it like you're doing it and save it to a hard drive. You might also want to archive the tapes just in case.

[newOne]

Thanks...I guess I am also looking to understand the process better.

Why would it be that the other 2, at least with my system, didn't seem to be as sharp for fine details? Especially what I don't understand is that Avicodec gave the Scenealyzer and WinDv about the same rating of 98%, but a bunch of people together with me all agreed that the finished product looked sharper with WinDV (this was burned on a dvd-r played on a hi-def tv, encoded bff with tmpgenc)

The specific clip was partly a downtown area, partly some leaves blowing in the wind while people walked past the trees. Difference was noticeable mostly in the leaves.

[edDV]

You are transferring the DV stream data off the camcorder to the HDD. All this is usually managed by DirectShow (part of DirectX) under Windows.

A codec isn't needed to do this. WinDV uses the Microsoft DV codec to view the transferring stream only.

Understand that a DV transfer is a stream, not a file transfer. Data losses can occur if the HDD can't keep up with the stream due to OS or background task HDD activity which can take priority.

For this reason, it is better to transfer to a separate physical drive from the OS and it is better still to use a different hard disk controller.

Once in a file on the HDD, DV playback will be natively interlaced* so you need a deinterlacing computer player like PowerDVD or WinDv. Alternatively, for quality judgement just use WinDV to transfer the file back to the camcorder (tape doesn't need to run) and view the file on a TV attached to the camcorder. The file should look the same coming from the HDD or played locally off the original tape.


* motion video will exhibit field split since the fields are offset in time by 1/60 second. This is normal and probably what you are seeing with the leaves. You won't see this when interlaced video is played to a TV from a DVD or from the camcorder.

[whitejremiah]

another suggestion would be to reboot before transferring anything...also close out all your unneeded programs, ect....i'd recommend storing the transfered files on discs........maybe single layer dvdr's? harddrive's unfortunately have this bad tendancy of occasionally crashing and burning...

[newOne]

hi,
I think I am doing some of these things. I only have the one built-in harddrive, but it is 120gb and defragmented, I was able (I think) to pretty much kill background processes - disabled my Norton, not doing anything else at the same time, no applications showing on Task Manager, no processes showing on taking up CPU on Task Manager as of when I start capture. My Firewire runs from the camera directly into a Dazzle PCI card, I also have an Adaptec PCI card with Firewire ports if anyone thinks that might make a difference.

I am archiving .avi to dvd+r as well as harddrive, and burning DVD that are playable in a standard dvd player.

What I did was capture to .avi with 3 different programs, encode with TMPGenc using both noninterlaced and interlaced_bff modes, author a dvd with TMPG dvd author, then get my friends to sit through all 6 versions of the same clip playing the DVDr on a HDTV/dvdplayer.

Any thoughts why the Scenealyzer and WinDV captures seem like they look different???? I am totally puzzled and would love to know more!

[edDV]

Get a dedicated IEEE-1394 PCI card. Adaptec would be more trustworthy than Dazzle.

A secon drive would solve any disk contention issues.

[gadgetguy]

I have never used Scenalyzer so I can't comment directly on it, but in general the stream of data coming from the camcorder to the PC is the same no matter what program you are using, however once it gets to the computer (and before it's written to a file), a couple things can happen depending on the program being used.

WinDV places the capsferred data into a DV-AVI file in the same format that it was on the tape, but it can store the audio differently depending on whether you tell it to use Type1 or Type2. (Some editing applications only work with one or the other. Some will work with either but prefer one over the other. And some work equally well with either.)

Some programs say they allow you to capsfer directly to DVD format (or some other formats), but what it means is that the program is encoding "on the fly". As the data is coming through, the software encodes it frame by frame so there is no interim DV-AVI file. This usually results in lower quality depending on the capabilities of the computer and encoder used because it has to be able to keep up with the data flow.
I once read (I don't remember where), that some programs actually encode to DV-AVI on the fly, which is unnecessary as the data is already in the DV-AVI format and really only needs to be written to a file, but this could result in some degradation and/or dropped frames.

I always use WinDV for my capsfers because I know it is not alterring the data, and if I ever see dropped frames it's because I did something stupid (like trying to capsfer while encoding another video).

From that point, if it's something I want to archive to DVD-r for future editing, I just use Nero Burning Rom to burn a DATA DVD, keeping the files in DV-AVI. (If I need to split the files to fit, I use VirtualDub in Direct Stream Copy mode). These disks are not playable on a desktop player.
To watch on a desktop player the video/audio needs to be encoded. I always make sure the encoder is set for Interlaced/BFF, as that is the format the camcorder captures in. I usually encode to MPG2 because my destination is nearly always DVD and none of my players support Dixv/Xvid.

If possible I use a constant bitrate of about 8500mbps, but if the duration won't allow that to fit on a SL DVD then I'll adjust to variable bitrate, but if it needs to drop below about 6800mbps avbr, then I'd rather split it across 2 disks. (Alot of this depends on the content and the conditions I was filming under). There are other settings involved in the encoding process, some of which I understand and alter as required per source, some I don't really understand but have found settings that seem to work for me. (I use QuEnc.)

[edDV]

Getting your system to work for the simple WinDV to DV-AVI transfer is the first essential step. WinDV is a user interface over DirectShow which manages the stream transfer to the DV-AVI file.

If you can't get WinDV to work, use DVIO which does the same thing but doesn't try to decode a viewable preview.

If that doesn't work, then your system just isn't up to the task and needs updating.

At the other extreme, if your system is fast enough, you can encode to MPeg2 in software on the fly from the DV stream using encoders with realtime capability. This is an advanced topic.

[newOne]

hi,
I mis-wrote above, actually looks like I had already changed my capture to be from the Adaptec firewire card (actually it's firewire/usb but the usb doesn't work).

For these particular tapes, my biggest issue is quality. I'm happy to sacrifice time, extra disks, etc. So I wanted to capture as well as possible. In TMPGenc I'm using interlace-bff, on highest quality mode, constant bit rate 8000mbps I think? which fits a one-hour mini-DV tape on a single-layer DVD. So it actually works out pretty well. Definitely I wouldn't want to encode these on the fly. The encoding process takes about 8 hours all told to do at highest quality on my system with these TMPGenc settings.

I didn't have any luck with trying to search what happens in Scenealyzer between the camera and the hard drive, but maybe it does do a bit more alteration than WinDV and hence a potential quality loss in transfer of high-detail images showing motion. I guess that would make sense. WinDV worked perfectly for me, and my system should be fine - big enough hard drive, 2GB RDRAM (yes, my system is old), defragged, Firewire. I was thinking if they were otherwise equal that Scenealyzer has some convenient features - but if they aren't getting the same end result then it's not worth it to me.

Thanks for the advice so far!

[edDV]

hi,
I mis-wrote above, actually looks like I had already changed my capture to be from the Adaptec firewire card (actually it's firewire/usb but the usb doesn't work).

For these particular tapes, my biggest issue is quality. I'm happy to sacrifice time, extra disks, etc. So I wanted to capture as well as possible. In TMPGenc I'm using interlace-bff, on highest quality mode, constant bit rate 8000mbps I think? which fits a one-hour mini-DV tape on a single-layer DVD. So it actually works out pretty well. Definitely I wouldn't want to encode these on the fly. The encoding process takes about 8 hours all told to do at highest quality on my system with these TMPGenc settings.

I didn't have any luck with trying to search what happens in Scenealyzer between the camera and the hard drive, but maybe it does do a bit more alteration than WinDV and hence a potential quality loss in transfer of high-detail images showing motion. I guess that would make sense. WinDV worked perfectly for me, and my system should be fine - big enough hard drive, 2GB RDRAM (yes, my system is old), defragged, Firewire. I was thinking if they were otherwise equal that Scenealyzer has some convenient features - but if they aren't getting the same end result then it's not worth it to me.

Thanks for the advice so far!

I can't tell you how Scenalyzer processes DV but it should be just trasferring to a DV-AVI file like all the others. The claim to fame for Scenalyzer is that it can split scenes based on image analysis. This would offer the advantage of detecting scene splits from VHS or live TV but at the cost of extreme CPU processing for image analysis.

Other capture programs, even WinDV, detect scene changes from record stop - record start metadata embedded in camcorder DV streams.