Capturing a whole tape with splits?

[Nathan Quattrini]

I just read this about Final Cut

"I have the machine capture the full tapes, splitting them to clips....With cheap HDDs this is convenient, no need to sit around and choose which takes to capture etc.
"

How does that work exactly...and can CS3 do that?

[Bill Hamell]

I am using PP2 not CS3, however as far as I know it is the same in all versions.

File > Capture

With your capture device connected, you select Scene Detect and click on Tape in the Capture section of the Capture window.

You can determine the location of the files that are captured either in the project preferences or from the Settings tab in the Capture window.

Bill

[Mike McCarthy]

Yes CS3 can do that, but it handles the timecode breaks a little differently I believe. There is an auto scene detect option, but I prefer to capture entire tapes as single clips. Either option is available in any Premiere Pro version.

[Brian Brown]

IIRC, CS3 will do scene-detect on DV but not HDV. I use the wonderful (and free) HDVSplit to capture entire HDV tapes to the HDD and delete the bad ones later. Seems to save a lot of time/wear on my playheads. On a tape with dozens/hundreds of scene changes, this makes sense. On longer form projects/takes, probably not.

HTH,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

[Nathan Quattrini]

so HDV Split you just push play and it records everything splitting the file every time pause was hit?

ARG thats PC only...any program for the Mac?

[Mike McCarthy]

Uhm...Final Cut. (As you pointed out)

[Nathan Quattrini]

any others....I only just got the CS 3 suite

[Brian Brown]

Originally Posted by Nathan Quattrini

so HDV Split you just push play and it records everything splitting the file every time pause was hit?

ARG thats PC only...any program for the Mac?

Yes, HDVSplit will scene detect from the camera or from existing files on the computer. It's awesome. I can do capture/split while I'm editing video in PPro.

Yep, it's for XP/Vista only.

So, do you have a Mac and the CS3 suite?

-bb

[Nathan Quattrini]

CS3 suite on the mac yea

[Ervin Farkas]

What version Mac? The newer ones can operate as Windows machies as well... Option two: any old, unused PC with firewire can do it, the spec requirements are very low with HDVSplit.

[Nathan Quattrini]

but does HDV split act as its own capture device? I do have a PC as well, but no software that can capture or edit HDV....

I do have a new mac as well with the intel chips...so i could use HDV Split on that if I bought another copy of windows huh?

Does it save as m2t? Also is that better or worse than cineform making 10 bit editing files?

[Ervin Farkas]

You don't need anything else, HDV Split IS ALL THE SOFTWARE you need, it will make a perfect copy of what's on the tape, absolutely no processing, no alteration, just a plain and simple file transfer.

And yes, it saves as .m2t. It's neither better or worse than anything else since it's a perfect copy of your tape - you can take it from there and work with it natively or via CineForm.

[Nathan Quattrini]

ahh great to hear. Looks like I`ll while waiting to install my new OS on the Mac i can get started using my PC first for capturing. Any idea how many gigs 1 hour of footage will take up in m2t format?

[Ervin Farkas]

HDV file size is exact same as standard definition video: ~12-13 GB per hour.

[Ian G. Thompson]

Originally Posted by Nathan Quattrini

so HDV Split you just push play and it records everything splitting the file every time pause was hit?

ARG thats PC only...any program for the Mac?

By the way...you don't have to hit pause everytime....just let the tape run itself out....once the tape is done you will find all of your clips neatly clipped and ready for use.