Transer Mini DV to Computer

[Skylark157]

Hello,

I have approximately 40 mini DV cassettes containing home videos. I still have my old camcorder but since I don’t use this camera/media anymore I would like to get all of these videos off of the cassettes and on to my computer. I am not, however, sure of the following:


What is the best program to use to transfer these from the cassettes to computer. Any freeware?
What file format is best for the new files? Memory is cheap but I don’t want to use a TB for each cassette. I have 40+ tapes.



Any other pertinent information or things I should consider would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

David

[hech54]

MiniDV via firewire is actually considered a "data transfer".
WinDV to computer is about 11GB per hour....give or take a few gigabytes.

[aedipuss]

the file format on the tapes and transferred over firewire to your computer is DVavi. make sure you have a firewire port in your computer and a working cable. i seem to recall more like 13GB/hour but who's counting a couple GB. for 40 full tapes i'd get yourself an extra hard drive put in your computer of TB size. don't use an external usb drive, they are cpu controlled and the tape transfers could fail if interrupted. windv is free and used to transfer the tapes.

[Skylark157]

Great, thanks for the good info guys!

So I guess my real question is, what is the best format to convert the DVavi files to? MP4? Also, what is the best program to convert them with. I assume it would be best to convert the files to file format that is more widely recognized and I could so with little quality loss, does that sound like a good assumption?

I didn't realize it would be two step process, I thought I go right from the date transfer from my camcorder to my computer in the new file format.

Thanks again!

[Bernix]

Hi,
MP4 isn't "format" it is container. Format is more codec used for video and audio that is inside this container. You can use x264 or x265 for video and AAC for audio in MP4 or MKV container. Biggest problem that has to be solved seems to me be deinterlacing or leave it interlaced. Also suggest you to use Constant rate factor, on some short example to see what number is for you good. It is different from person to person. Higher CRF lower quality lower filesize. If you decided to deinterlace video I suggest you to use Yadif with bob and temporal spatial check. So you get 50p if your cassettes are PAL.
And you are not in PAL so result will be progressive 2xframerate.

Bernix

[aedipuss]

the miniDV tapes will be transferred as DVavi to the computer, it will be 720x480 30i. since it's interlaced and the proper size for dvd i'd create dvd spec mpeg-2 from it and if at some point you wanted to you could author the mpgs and create dvds. if you want more modern type video you will not only have to de-interlace it but also resize it. DVavi doesn't have square pixels so you need to make it something like 640x480 as it's normally 4:3 an easy to use converter program that can easily handle it is the free vidcoder.

[Bernix]

If you decide to resize and deinterlace video, don't forget to deinterlace first, but in this case it shouldn't be problem what you will do first, since you do not change number of lines (480). But is it good (habit, manner, routine) not know right word for it. Also avidemux isn't bad choice, it has also yadif (easily configuration of it) but lack of batch processing.

Bernix

[Skylark157]

Hello,


Wow, there is a lot I will have to understand for format, coding and or interlacing. I think I will do that during the summer. For now, is it safe for me to say there isn't anything I need to worry about in the way of settings to simple transfer these videos off of the tapes and onto my computer, in DVavi format? I can simply start to transfer these videos now then I can worry about how to (format, coding, interlaced etc..) store them long term once I have them off of the tapes? Or are there settings I need to worry about to transfer these videos.

Thanks again.

[Bernix]

Hi,
IMO is best to keep them just transferred, if space is not problem. And best is to keep the tapes too as archive, so not overwrite them if possible. But if you want burnt them on DVD or something, so more compression is needed, to have some reasonable time on DVD (as medium, not dvd format). Nowadays codecs like x264 or x265 can compress it in big ratio with not noticeable quality loss.
But of course you can also Author them to DVD format if you need to be playable on ordinary standalone DVD. I prefer way to compress them more (x264+aac) and have them playable on PC and also some standalone DVD supports it, but not all of course.

Bernix

[johnmeyer]

I have been doing this for twenty years. As others have said, since the video is stored on the tapes in digital format, the transfer is just that: the video is transferred and NOT re-encoded. You get a perfect, bit-for-bit identical, copy of the original video.

To do this, you connect the 1394 (a.k.a., "Firewire") cable from your old camera to a 1394 connection on your computer. The best software to use is Scenalyzer. This used to be shareware, but because no one uses DV anymore Andreas, the author, switched it over to freeware. You can download it if you click on the link above. The download is actually called "SCLive" (long story about how it started out as Scenalyzer and then got enhanced to SCLive).

The DV video that ends up on your computer will take up 13 GB per hour. This is a constant amount and will not be larger or smaller: that is how it is stored on the tape. You can choose to mess around with it, but unless you are planning to enhance it (noise reduction, color correction, gamma correction, etc.) I would keep it in DV AVI format. 13 GB/hour used to be a huge amount of data to store, but if you have 20 one-hour tapes, and they are all full, that will only be 260 GB, which will get lost in the corner of any 2-5 TB disk drive.

DV is a joy to edit (fast on the timeline), the best of any video format ever invented. Also, most NLEs can easily do "smart rendering." What this means is that if you simply want to transfer the video and then edit out all the blank spots, bad sections, goofs, and other junk that you'll never want to watch, you can do a "cuts-only" edit (i.e., not changes to the video itself, other than cutting) and the NLE will not re-render. This means you will end up with precisely the same exact video as was on the tape, but with the bad sections removed.

Have fun!

[JVRaines]

Indeed, DV is an intraframe codec so it's easy to edit. However, it is a misconception that a transfer from MiniDV will be a perfect copy of the original. Dropouts, which worsen over time and can vary from playback to playback, are concealed by flags in the data stream. Here is a visualization of missing and concealed data in a DV frame:

[braveheart3158]

I have been doing this for twenty years. As others have said, since the video is stored on the tapes in digital format, the transfer is just that: the video is transferred and NOT re-encoded. You get a perfect, bit-for-bit identical, copy of the original video.

To do this, you connect the 1394 (a.k.a., "Firewire") cable from your old camera to a 1394 connection on your computer. The best software to use is Scenalyzer. This used to be shareware, but because no one uses DV anymore Andreas, the author, switched it over to freeware. You can download it if you click on the link above. The download is actually called "SCLive" (long story about how it started out as Scenalyzer and then got enhanced to SCLive).

The DV video that ends up on your computer will take up 13 GB per hour. This is a constant amount and will not be larger or smaller: that is how it is stored on the tape. You can choose to mess around with it, but unless you are planning to enhance it (noise reduction, color correction, gamma correction, etc.) I would keep it in DV AVI format. 13 GB/hour used to be a huge amount of data to store, but if you have 20 one-hour tapes, and they are all full, that will only be 260 GB, which will get lost in the corner of any 2-5 TB disk drive.

DV is a joy to edit (fast on the timeline), the best of any video format ever invented. Also, most NLEs can easily do "smart rendering." What this means is that if you simply want to transfer the video and then edit out all the blank spots, bad sections, goofs, and other junk that you'll never want to watch, you can do a "cuts-only" edit (i.e., not changes to the video itself, other than cutting) and the NLE will not re-render. This means you will end up with precisely the same exact video as was on the tape, but with the bad sections removed.

Have fun!

Great advice. I FIND IT AMAZING HOW YOU ABLE to understand, simplify and answer novice questions that they can understand.
I transferred my DV tapes directly from the camaera via fiewire and they were automatically AVI files, which I understand was the best at the time for archiving home video. Mine just show up on the PC as AVI. Is DV AVI different?

What is NLF?
TM

[Cornucopia]

NLE = Non-Linear Editor. Aka graphical video editing app with a timeline, layers, ClipBin, etc. E.g. Premiere, Avid MC, Vegas, Edius, but also Shotcut, WMM, VideoStudio, Resolve...
NLF is either a typo, or your misunderstanding.

AVI is a standard multimedia container file format (based on MS take on RIFF family of media organizing) which usually includes separated, but interleaved/alternating audio & video streams, encapsulated with headers to describe & delimit the data. DV-AVI is an avi file, but is slightly special, in that if you look inside the encapsulation, you will see either
1. A "multiplexed dv stream"
Or
2. A "multiplexed dv stream" masquerading as a video stream, along with an extracted copy of the dv's audio, interleaved together like a standard avi stream.

This is the difference between a type 1 and a type 2 dv-avi file.

But what is a "multiplexed dv stream"?
That is the stream that has come from straight off the tape, and it is also in itself interleaved (multiplexed), using the dv video, the lpcm audio, and some additional metadata (user info, timecode, captioning, etc).

Note: it is possible, though rarer, to have a multiplexed dv stream that is not encapsulated in a container. They usually have the *.dv or *.diff extension. Almost no apps beyond certain editing apps support them.
I've discussed all this and more about dv in previous threads...

Hope that answers your questions. But please, do NOT reopen old threads - start up your own new threads!

Scott

[lordsmurf]

"multiplexed dv stream"?
That is the stream that has come from straight off the tape, and it is also in itself interleaved (multiplexed), using the dv video, the lpcm audio, and some additional metadata (user info, timecode, captioning, etc).

MXF were made to contain multiple whatever. I hated those files, a studio task I don't miss.