Capturing Digital onto MiniDV

[lordomega]

Hey,

I'm looking to record some footage I've made onto a blank MiniDV tape. I've looked into MiniDV decks etc, however these are all out of my price range.

I've achieved this in the past with VHS, however I'm looking to now do it with MiniDV.

Would it be possible to use firewire and record onto a blank tape with a camcorder? I'm a little confused on how to approach this.

Many Thanks

[DB83]

WinDV can record from a computer file back to a DV camera as long as the computer file is already a DV.avi file.


The question is tho why you want to do this. DV is 720*576 whether 16:9 or 4:3. Your 'footage' will have to be converted unless it is already DV which will mean a higher bitrate than you already have, I would guess, and a smaller frame size.

[lordomega]

Hey, thanks for this link.

I'm wanting to experiment with the lo-fi texture of MiniDV, without having to record natively onto one. I have some footage I shot on a Black Magic Pocket Camera.

So, would I essentially need to down-res my 1080p footage to 720x576, then convert the .mov/mp4 into a .avi before using this program?

Thanks

[Pinto007]

It is without a sense at all. Simply convert 1080p footage to DV file in a media converter and that's all.

[DB83]

A little move complex than that. You need a DV codec installed so you can convert your footage. A simple .avi will not suffice. And recording to a camera actually records natively which somewhat defeats your goal.


DV gives you approx. 13 gb per hour of video much larger than your 1080p source not forgetting that DV is also interlaced. But when it is on MiniDV what are you gonna do with it ? You would have to re-import that back to the PC for any 'experimentation' which you can glean from a PC conversion without any export/import

[Cornucopia]

Also note, in concert with what others have been saying:

Part of your "Lo-Fi' experiment rests on losses due to the chosen medium. But while VHS is analog, and thus will naturally incur loss from use as well as from the lower specs and the A<-->D conversion, DV is already digital, doesn't really have loss from use (it has error correction, like most digital mediums), and you aren't cross-converting multiple times - whether in actuality or virtually.

Personally, I think LoFi as an effect is vastly overrated and a bit silly. But if your desire is to truly muck it up, I would think the DV blockiness, bitrate starvation, 4:1:1 subsampling, and potential oversharpening, along with losses due to interlacing, ought to be enough to get the point across. No need to actually put it onto physical tape as intermediary.


Scott

[dellsam34]

Recording a DV file to a camcorder is the easiest part, just use ScenlyserLive and drop the files into the tape, The hard part is authoring a video file into a DV format, Adobe premiere and Sony Vegas can do this and can even print to tape and control your camcorder operation just like ScenlyserLive. I'm not aware of a free software that can write DV compliant files.

If your sources are HD you can use HDV format since it uses the same tape, I've asked about it before here, it was a headache but I managed to get it to work back then:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/382419-Printing-to-HDV-tape-as-1080-24p-30p