DV & Windows Movie Maker Problems

[DavidA]

I recently captured six DV tapes into Windows Movie Maker. I notice that they're six big AVI files on the hard disk, but Windows Movie Maker has split them into lots of scenes for easy editing.

When I come to save out a simple movie in DV-AVI, the progress bar gets to 80% or so and then just stops. It saves out fine in WMV but I really wanted to stay away from that format.

Two questions:
1) Anyone know why it might be stalling when trying to save in DV-AVI?
2) Is there any software which will take these big six AVI files and keep a note of the scenes within them?

I'd really like to avoid re-capturing all those tapes in another program.

Thanks!

[aedipuss]

if you captured in DVavi any other program can use them.

the only reason i can think of it might stop at 80% is if you are close to a full hard drive. DVavi requires 13 GB of space per hour of video.

[redwudz]

You can also use a simple program like WinDV to get the DV onto your hard drive. You can set it to make one continuous recording or split it like WMM apparently does.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'keep a note of the scenes within them?' You can use most any player to make 'thumbnails' of selected scenes to keep track of what you have that way. I believe there are also programs or scripts that can do that automatically at set intervals.

I don't use WMM for much of anything, but there are other video editors that can handle DV. Some here: https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/video-editors-wmv-avi

[edDV]

You didn't provide a computer profile. WMM gives you a choice of all at once capture, scene by scene (detected from time code breaks) or manual cue/start/stop.

This is the XP version.



Scenes detected if box checked.

[DavidA]

Thanks for the responses.

I had WMM capture the whole tape automatically (the first option in edDV's screenshot), and the scenes I mentioned are those automatically created from timecode breaks. As far as I know, the six big AVI files don't contain scene information; they're just long DV-AVI files. I assume the scene information is kept within Windows Movie Maker?

So, on the assumption that I'm unable to solve the issue where I can't save in DV-AVI format in WMM, is there a better DV capture program that automatically splits the tape into separate scenes based on timecodes?

Thanks again.

[edDV]

Thanks for the responses.

I had WMM capture the whole tape automatically (the first option in edDV's screenshot), and the scenes I mentioned are those automatically created from timecode breaks. As far as I know, the six big AVI files don't contain scene information; they're just long DV-AVI files. I assume the scene information is kept within Windows Movie Maker?

So, on the assumption that I'm unable to solve the issue where I can't save in DV-AVI format in WMM, is there a better DV capture program that automatically splits the tape into separate scenes based on timecodes?

Thanks again.

I don't use WMM much but I thought it split the actual files.

Try WinDV. It too can cap the entire tape or split by timecode breaks. WinDV is my most used DV transfer program.

[DavidA]

In case anyone searches this thread, here's the solution I found.

Scenalyzer takes a long AVI file and splits it out into dated scenes. The freeware version works fine. I then used VirtualDub to edit clips together as appropriate.

[edDV]

In case anyone searches this thread, here's the solution I found.

Scenalyzer takes a long AVI file and splits it out into dated scenes. The freeware version works fine. I then used VirtualDub to edit clips together as appropriate.

Some Scenalyzer versions use image processing to detect scene changes even with continuous time code. This works best for dubs or captures where original timecode is lost.