HDV transfer from camcorder to PC

[bobkart]

Hopefully there is a simple answer to my question which is: what PC applications can capture HDV from a camcorder via IEEE1394?

I'm considering purchasing a Sony HDR-HC3 and want to be sure I'll have no trouble getting the video onto my PC.

I searched this Forum and did not find anything that named an application.

A more general search of the Internet turned up CapDVHS, and I'm not sure if this is for HDV or MPEG Transport Stream (as supplied by HD STB's), or perhaps even both.

I capture DV all the time using WMM2 by the way.

Any light you can shed on this matter would be appreciated.

[Baldrick]

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1538595#1538595

[bobkart]

Thanks Baldrick.

I actually read that Topic in my search. It named several applications that could "handle" HDV:

Any of the newer versions of non linear editors can handle HDV. Avid, Premiere, Ulead, Vegas, Liquid and others. You do need a VERY powerful machine to do it.

which I presumed to mean they could edit HDV and render it in other formats. So you're saying they can also capture HDV? And are there simpler applications, for example that just do the capturing? I realize I will probably want to also edit/render what I capture, and if those above-named applications can do both, then they are probably what I'll eventually need, but if there is a simple, relatively low-cost, application that could just capture HDV, a'la WinDV, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

[BJ_M]

vegas and premiere are the two best - vegas comes with the ciniform codec to work with hdv ... and you can also use it with premiere

[wwaag]

There is a free capture utility HDVSplit ( https://www.videohelp.com/tools?toolsearch=hdvsplit&Submit=Search&s=&orderby=Name&hits=...res=&listuser= ) which many prefer over internal capture routines in that it permits splitting into files according to time code changes. In general, I'd also suggest you check out the HC3 sub-forum at the Sony HDV Forum, http://www.sonyhdvinfo.com/. Although I don't use the HC3, (I use the older HC1), I have noticed a number of posts on the forum about difficulty capturing from the Sony's new camcorder with both Vegas and Premiere. Good luck.

wwaag

[bobkart]

Thank you waagg, HDVSplit is what I was after.

vegas and/or premiere may also be on my list of things to get once I start wanting to do something with the video I transfer.

Also curious what players can play back these HDV files.

And finally, does TMPGEnc handle HDV files?

Thanks for your help.

[wwaag]

I presume you mean players on your PC. Both VLC and Media Player Classic work well if you have a fast machine. I've got an old P4 3.06Ghz and it's too slow for smooth playback.

Since you haven't bought the HC3 yet, suggest you take some time reading the threads on the Sony website I mentioned comparing the HC3 and HC1. I went with the HC1 and have no regrets. It all depends on what you want to do with your camcorder.

Regarding editing, HDV is computationally intensive--be prepared for long rendering times. IMO, TMPGEnc is really not a player. Both Premiere and Vegas use the MainConcept enocder. Since HDV is MPEG-2 with a high bit rate, I really don't see any advantage--plus, it's dreadfully slow.

As an aside, the difference between DV and HDV is like night and day. I've got a 65" Mits HDTV and the HDV imagery is really WOW. Regular DV really looks terrible in comparison. Have fun.

wwaag

[bobkart]

Thanks again wwaag. I'll look into those players and editors. And the HC1/HC3 comparison.

And I have no problem with long rendering times, I will frequently let it run overnight. This is on a dedicated PC hooked up to my 52" HDTV so it doesn't get in the way of my normal PC usage.

[bobkart]

Well I was able to capture (using HDVSplit) a full HDV tape (about 65 minutes) with 52 dropped frames/packets. Looking at the result in TMPGEnc, the audio duration is about 1/4 of a second less than the video duration (xx.168 seconds for the audio and xx.421 seconds for the video). So I guess it dropped more audio information than video? I'd lke to see if I can do the capture with no dropped frames, any suggestions you guys may have would be appreciated. This capture was to C:\. I realize that the better way is to a second internal drive, different from the one the system runs from, but at this time I have no second internal drive. I'm going to try the capture again using an external drive as the destination, to see how that compares. It does not seem to need a lot of CPU cycles, just a lot of disc I/O bandwidth. I seem to be able to capture DV just fine, and that's at pretty much the same bitrate as HDV (25Mb/s). I've had my eye on a 500GB Seagate Barracuda drive as a second internal drive, and if I can't get these captures to happen without dropped frames/packets, I may see if this helps: http://www.buy.com/prod/Seagate_Barracuda_7200_9_500GB_3_5_SATA_3_0Gb_s_Hard_Drive_OEM...201995637.html

Also, I was able to play what I capture back okay using VLC despite only having a 2.8GHz processor. But I must be close to not being able to do it, because as I was trying different deinterlacers, I could get the playback to be choppy.

[edDV]

Second drive will help transfer.

You are lucky the file plays OK in VLC. I've found "Mean" deinterlace takes a bit less CPU power compared to Blend or BOB. Discard is the easiest because it just plays one field.

CPU power will become more of an issue when you do anything with the file especially trying to re-encode. HDV has 4.5x pixels vs. DV to calculate but it seems to take longer than 4.5x the time.

[bobkart]

Okay thanks for the help edDV.

At this point I don't mind how long any re-encoding might take, although that may change if it stretches into days. Also, I have no clear direction to go regarding what to re-encode to, the state of HD recordings being what it is. My first desktop HD player may be a PS3 so going to HD-DVD might not be preferable.

[bobkart]

I see now after reading more posts in this subform (mostly by waagg) that the HD MPEG-2 format of these HDV files is suitable for authoring with no re-encoding to either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs (although there are only standalone players for HD-DVD so far?). So maybe I don't need to render these files any further if all I want is to put them on a standalone-playable DVD. But I'll probably wait until both the price of the standalone players goes (way!) down and I can write to a suitable HD disc instead of being limited to 20-40 minutes of material per disc. I hear that there are HD disc writers available now, for a price, same with the blank media, so I guess I am just waiting for it to become more reasonably-priced (another year?)

[wwaag]

bobkart

For captures, I would also recommend a 2nd drive and probably not an external. $300 for a 500GB HD seems a bit pricey. I just picked up 400GB Western Digital Drive at Costco for $99 that also included a raid controller card. For $200, you could have an 800GB raid 0 array that would be far superior to any single drive. During captures, you should also try to shut down all unnecessary processes. E.g., I've dropped frames as a result of an incoming fax to my modem.

For playback, you might also consider a high-def networked player. I recently purchased the Zensonic Z500 and am quite happy for the most part. Just change the file extension from m2t to mpg and you're ready to watch. Really is a time-saver for previewing--no more writing to tape or burning to DVD. Others have bought the Avel Linkplayer, although the networking performance is limited to 19MB/s and thus too slow for viewing m2t files without re-encoding. Again, suggest you do a lot of reading on some of their forums if you're interested in this approach. Good luck.

wwaag

[bobkart]

Thanks for the information wwaag. The appeal of the 500GB was not so much it's size but the speed of the Barracuda line. Moving multi-GB files around a lot takes time and if such a drive could reduce that time it'd be worth it. The smaller capacity models are more cost-effective by the way. But your RAID0 idea sounds like it would also alleviate copy times (and dropped frames). I'll look into that, but I'm not sure if the RAID controller you mention is compatible with my motherboard, I've little experience with them, do they just plug into a PCI slot or how does that work?

Oh and as a second data point, I did a second capture of that nearly-65-minute tape to an external drive and got just 3 dropped frames (one at around 5 minutes, the second at around 10 minutes, and the third around 55 minutes). For the first two, I happened to see the taskmanager load meter momentarily increase from ~5% to 10-15% right as the dropped frame happened. But I have no idea if this was cause or effect. It could be some background process kicking in, I'll try to stop as many of those as I can find (I know I don't have many on this machine, after booting I have just 20 processes).

For playback I have the PC I use for video processing hooked up to a 52" HDTV via VGA so I'm fairly happy with that situation for now. A networked player sounds like a good idea and I have been interested in them since first hearing about them, but the technology seems to be still fairly young and in a year or so they should be much less expensive, and I can probably step up to a larger/higher resolution HDTV then also.

Thanks again for your help!

[edDV]

Observations on the recent posts:

The speed of the Barracuda drive is only relevant when installed internally and as a second drive for these purposes. USB2 will limit transfer to ~9-19MB/s and require CPU management of data flow. Dropped frames usually result from CPU interupt by other processes, not because of average data transfer rates.

External Firewire will get somewhat better sustained transfer for file copy but may be problematic as a HDV capture drive*. It would probably work and IEEE-1394 transfer requires less CPU intervention, but the safety margin is less than using an internal PATA/SATA drive connection.

Wwaag's suggestion of external SATA is realistic if your system motherboard and power supply will handle it. That should perform similar to mounting the drive internally.

There is no reason to use RAID zero for HDV other than speeding file copy. If you are working only on the 500GB drive, there is no copy advantage. There are many disadvantages especially setup problems and risk of ALL data loss on both RAID drives. I highly recommend NOT using RAID unless necessary and all data is backed up on an an external server or other medium.

Dropped frames only happen when transferring data as a stream over IEEE-1394. Once the HDV data is in a file, further file copying between drives and over the network is managed by the OS with packet verification. There is no frame loss risk when copying a file. The OS will stop the copy if there are errors.

Your system ( P4 2.8 ) is weak for direct HDV playback over VGA. You don't list your graphics card but we can assume it isn't optimized for HDV decode and deinterlace. In other words, your current system is on the edge of overload for all but VLC software playback in light deinterlace modes.

Few consumer video servers (if any?) will handle raw HDV @ 25 Mb/s. The upper range would expect to handle 14-19Mb/s MPeg2_TS transport streams (ATSC broadcast) as dumped to the hard drive by a typical computer HDTV tuner. Most will want recompression to MPeg4 (below 11 Mb/s).

I hope we can add to this discussion because we are all in the same boat here. Any new product information would be greatly appreciated.


* this depends on how your motherboard and DirectShow handle multiple IEEE-1394 connections (i.e. one receiving and the other sending to a hard drive).

[bobkart]

Thanks edDV, here are some quick responses to your informative post:

I was only considering the Barracuda for an internal installation.

I may try using one of my external drives via FireWire instead of USB2.0 and see how that affects dropped frames.

I do understand the risks of RAID0, although your comments are appropriate for anyone else looking in on this Topic.

And I also realize that dropped frames can only happen during the capture, not when copying. We'd all be in big trouble if simply copying a file could result in a different result than the source!

And yes, I noticed I could bring it to it's knees when I tried the heavier deinterlacing modes.
(EDIT: Almost forgot to add: video card is Intel Extreme Graphics built into motherboard. I found a model number of 82865G.)

Your final comment about video servers pushes me further into a waiting mode, for the technology to advance past it's relatively high-price/low-performance state compared to what we could easily see in another year's time.

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed and hopefully will continue to contribute to this post, I for one am in the early stages of dealing with HDV (and HD video in general) and find it all quite valuable, as I'm sure do those just looking in on this Topic.

[edDV]

Yes sorry, I was adding context for the general reader.

Here is where I see the current consumer level state of the art. The graphics card companies are struggling with MPeg2 hardware decode and deinterlace to HDTV in the latest AVIVO and PureVideo cards. They are only partially into MPeg4 HD hardware decode but that will come in less than a year.

The huge missing link to making all this work is an affordable hardware MPeg2/MPeg4 encoder/transcoder that will give an acceptable quality AVC H.264/VC-1 HD file from ATSC tuners and ATSC/HDV files. This is needed to make both HD/BD DVD recorders and HD HTPC's practical. It will also minimize the long encoding/transcoding times needed for DVD authoring at HD resolutions. Also MPeg4 makes better sense for home network distribution and DVRs.

[wwaag]

Observations on the recent posts:

Few consumer video servers (if any?) will handle raw HDV @ 25 Mb/s. The upper range would expect to handle 14-19Mb/s MPeg2_TS transport streams (ATSC broadcast) as dumped to the hard drive by a typical computer HDTV tuner. Most will want recompression to MPeg4 (below 11 Mb/s).

I hope we can add to this discussion because we are all in the same boat here. Any new product information would be greatly appreciated.

The Z500 I mentioned comes pretty close--in fact, my only reason for purchase was the ability to stream raw m2t files without having to recode. Most of my projects to date have been high def slideshows using HDV since it is compatible with the Sony HC1 I purchased this Spring. One thing I've learned over the years is that you never know what a project looks like until you display it on the big screen--everything's great on a 13" monitor, but at 65" you really have a good idea about the quality of your video. Before the Z500, I would "print to tape" on the HC1 and then connect it to HDTV for preview. Now, it's a matter of changing the extension to "mpg" and hitting "play" on the Z500--a lot, lot quicker.

So, how does it work? In all honesty, the 25MB/s is right on the edge IMO. You have to use a software media server like Windows Media Connect, Twonkyvision, or others. The quality of the displayed imagery is really great--in fact, it looks better to my old eyes than the same imagery from the HC1, although I suspect that it may be due to HDMI vs component for the HC1. The only complaint I have is the occasional video stutter, similar to that I've experienced watching DVDs. E.g., I watched a 15 min program the other evening and counted 3 noiceable "glitches". (This was a slideshow with simulated motion of the still images, which unfortunately makes any momentary pause quite noiceable.) At present, I'm still trying to "tweak" my 4 yr old system in hopes of attaining "stutter-free" serving. Others on the Z500 forum have claimed no problems, although they live in PAL land. Bottom line is that I'm happy with the player "as is" for preview work and hopefully I'll be able to eliminate these few glitches that I'm experiencing. In any case, it more than meets my needs until HD-DVD and BR become mature and a lot less costly.

wwaag

[Rudyard]

wwaag,

Just been browsing this thread and read about the Z500.
Could you just tell me if this is right:

You plug it in to your tv and you can use it like a normal DVD player, however it also has a compnent that plugs into your PC which wirelessly sends and recieves data to the Z500 and you can watch things off your PC on your TV, namely HDV footage (off my Sony HDR HC3) in High Def?

If this is true, are you also able to for example load a game on the PC and should you be able to get mouse and keyboard controls somehow in your living room you could control a PC game (or any PC application) from your living room watching it on your TV???

Coming in at about $450 aussie dollars, it is quite reasonable and it appears to play all sorts of files. Can it play divx files burnt on DVD through the player or only through networking to the PC?

Also have you had any problems playing burnt DVD's?? For some reason the dirt cheap no name brand DVD player I have will play all my DVDs but the more expensive one will quite often skip and stutter and occasionally stall all together if the disc is not a factory pressed copy.

Thanks for any info you could give me.