Important question about making VCDS from digital camera...

[Nikos]

I use a portable Sony Vaio that holds about 6GB of space...

I have a firewire and all the neccasary tools to import movies from my digital camera into my cpu, now the question is how to get it on VCD as an MPEG.

Everyone makes it seem easy like you just import it in as an MPEG but I have been experimenting for hours and I have not been able to save a whole movie about 50min or as an MPEG....cause when I save them as AVI or DV (which it seems to only want to allow me to capture in tese formats)...thus I cannot save a whole movie at once and make it an MPEG because it only captures as DV or AVI and lets me do the conversion after using MOVIE SHAKER PROGRAM....I cant save a 60min tape off my digital cam cause if i did in the DV format the file would be like 100GB....

so my question is...being the fact I use DV Gate motion PROGRAM and MOVIE SHAKER, how can I capture an entire movie as an MPEG rather than making several small DV files and combining them as one and THEN converting them to MPEG..??

someone please help...I have been frustatring for hours trying to figure this out...

thanx

[Nikos]

anyone have any idea? please help

thanks

[Beretta]

Import the video onto your computer as a DV (digital video) .avi via your firewire. Then use any one of the numerous avi->mpeg tools here to convert it to mpeg (I recommend tmpgenc)

I also suggest you read the "CONVERT" HowTo in the left hand table of contents. That's why they are here.

[Nikos]

I already know how to import it as DV or AVI but the files are too big for me to put the whole video tape of 60 min on there.....In other words I wont be able to convert cause dv and avi files are too large to hold in the first place, my question is how do i capture it as mpeg rather than avu or dv??

[jtor]

...comment on your very first post, 60min of DV video IS NOT 100GB. it would be safe to give an estimate of 13GB, as the basis would be 3.6MB/sec.

On your current setup, I don't think there's a work-around, but to buy a second harddrive for capture.

sorry.

[Nikos]

hey JTOR, if 60min of DV is 13GB, how could I capture that on a CD? The thing is I want the best possible quality without much loss of the original on a CD, is this possible??

Whats the best I can do without sacrificing noticable quality while fitting it all on a cd?

[T-rad]

at dvd quality 60 min of video is only 1.3gig
if you write it as a xsvcd with nero5 (svcd non compliant) u can only fit 22min on a 700mb cd
thats about as close to original as ur gonna get

[kitty]

The last post is wrong. 2 GB of DV capture (AVI limit without tricks like AVI_IO) is about 18 minutes.

So with a 6 GB disk you are not going to do what you want. You'll need more space.

I think the thing the original poster wants is to capture the video, encode to VCD and have it disk ready to CD size. (650MB). Your computer won't do it. The easierst way would be hook your camcorder to a Terapin VCD recorder or some such.

[T-rad]

so DV is NOT digital but avi format???
most dvds have a 2 hour movie and a bunch of other stuff in about 4.7ghhz
making 60min of dvd quality about 1.9ghz... (sorry had to re caculte)

vcd = 10mb / min
svcd = 15mb / min
dvd = 30mb / min
avi = 100mb / min

this is a rough translation, but good for fast calculations

[jtor]

Nikos,

I think most would agree that the best quality can be obtained by going the AVI->encoder->MPEG route. By doing that, you WILL need a big harddrive. but...you're using a portable, and I'm not sure how easy it would be to add a harddrive.

On your original post, you were asking for a way of going straight MPEG (without doing AVIs first) "ON YOUR SETUP". I suggest you do more research on your hardware, as I am not very familiar with VAIO. But assuming there's no way to go straight MPEG, then your next opt would be to go with MPEG capture boards/devices like DVC/II (which again I'm not very familiar with). But keep in mind that you'll be giving off quality with this approach; but then again, you asked the question.

good luck...

[k man]

I also am trying to make SVCD's from my Minidv.
One solution is to take a chunk of video convert it and then get rid of the original
AVI file ( making more room ).
After you have converted the whole film you can edit the mpeg and put it all back together.

[ashtones]

I too have a Sony Vaio with their crappy Movie Shaker software. Ever since I have had this set up I realized that anything I want to do is going to take forever. Everything I capture I immediately convert from DV to avi. Then I use Premeir to edit with. Then depending on the length I either encode to avi using premeir or go back to my camera then back to movie shaker for avi. I use TMPGEnc for mpegs. I am thinking of getting the Dazzle mpeg2 real time card but I haven't heard any feedback???