A big thank-you to this site and all the members

[ozymango]

Greetings, all. I signed on to Videohelp many years ago, when trying to figure out how to turn a video tape into a VCD (yes that long ago!) and no matter what video issue or project I worked on, I could always find somebody here who could help me. I started with VHS, then updated to DV, and started rolling my own DVDs, and learned all about (well maybe not all about) various codecs and formats and what the heck MPEG2 was and Xvid and Divx and ... well, much more more.

Anyway many years have passed and I must admit that I don't do nearly as much video stuff as I used to, got lots of other stuff going on in my life, plus I tend to do the same video stuff over and over again so I've got my routine down, don't really have many esoteric video challenges anymore.

Except recently a friend was asking if I could record a certain event using a big old cool looking vintage video camera I've got, a Canon XH A1 that uses a HD DV tape, it's not that it's better than a small HD camcorder these days that use an SD card, it's more that we want to make it look "professional" to the audience. Also we don't really need to use the XH A1 for much, we can use smaller newer camcorders for the bulk of the actual recording -- but still I didn't want our setup to be fake, I want it to really work. And I only have one DV tape I can record on, and I don't really wanna use it because it's my only tape and also I don't want to take a risk on clogging the camera tape recording heads. The XH A1 does have a 4-pin firewire output for both tape output and "real-time" video output, and I've got an old Dell Precision laptop with a 4-pin firewire input, so I wondered, "Can I connect the camera to the laptop and record the video directly this way?"

So I turned to VideoHelp for help, and looked through a few forums, and checked out the software section, and you know what -- I found out how to do it, and it WORKS! Basically all I needed was to install the HDVSplit program on my laptop, and of course the HDVSplit software is available here -- and then when I go to install the software, I see someone -- if "Alwyn" is still out there and reading this, THANKS, ALWYN!!! -- has made a comment that if I want to preview the camera on my computer screen, then just install ffdshow and configure the audio and video codecs in a certain way, and then the preview works. So I followed his instructions and whaddya know, it worked perfectly. It WORKS perfectly. And there is no way in heck I would have ever figured this out for myself. Now maybe if I spent a few hours searching the web and YouTube maybe, just maybe I would have found a guide on how to do it -- but I found the correct information on VideoHelp in about ten minutes. Now granted I'm an old guy who is familiar with this site so I knew (approximately) where to look for help, but even a complete amateur could use the same search terms I used and maybe it would take them half an hour at most to find the answers.
But still, they would find the answers and the answers would WORK!

Anyway thanks to everybody who posts and reads and experiments and complains and just keeps plugging away at all this crazy video stuff! And may VideoHelp still be helping video people for many, many years to come!

[lordsmurf]

Hello old-timer, nice to see you again.

[Alwyn]

if "Alwyn" is still out there and reading this, THANKS, ALWYN!!! --

Thanks Mango. Pleased I could help.

[dannyboy48888]

Small things like this keep me coming back. Don't have many questions now and days but when I do seeing familiar faces like lordsmurf etc let me know it's good advice as they been around a long time. Know all good things come to a end, but I'm glad that day ain't soon.

[Darryl In Canada]

I first found this website because of VCDs as well. The idea that once could export my Pinnacle Studio video to a disc instead of VHS blew my mind. In fact, I think I had this site bookmarked as VCDhelp.com for many years as that was/is one of the domains that leads here.

[fooledagain]

It's a great site for help and information. my go to resource whenever I have a problem or question.