Transfer Captured DV footage to a DVD at DVinfo.net

Bob McKelvy · August 2nd, 2004, 12:56 PM

Howdy Folks,
Somewhere awhile back, someone wanted to know how to transfer raw DV footage to a DVD for long term storage instead of tape. I don't know if his question was ever answered. It faded out with time. I also had the same question. Didn't like the idea of keeping a lot of stock footage stored on 4 dollar DV tapes when I could keep them stored on a 29 cent DVD.

Through trial and error, I found a way to do this.

I use the Pinnacle 9 for capture. Will be moving up to Pinnacle Liquid later this year, not unless I come across something better. Open to suggestions for that.... Someone on this site suggested Vegas.

All of my captures go to my Maxtor 160 GB external HD and end up there as an avi file after the capture.

I reformat a blank DVD using Roxio Platinum. Heard that Nero works too, and I know there are a few others. Still a rank newbie in this dept.

I tried to drag and drop the freshly captured footage from the external hard drive to the freshly formatted DVD. Didn't work.

Created a file on my desk top, copied the footage from the external drive to it, from there to the DVD. It worked !! I don't know why. I'll leave that to the experts. Tested it by using the captured footage on the DVD to edit the video with Pinnacle studio 9. I could also transfer all of the video back to my exernal drive if I wanted to work with it there. Tried that too.

Also found a cheap source for blank DVD's 29 cents each and
CD's 17 cents each. http://www.meritline.com/

I am seeing a lot of horror stories on some of the problems that you all have been having with DV tapes. Been using Panasonic tapes for almost a year. No idea what quality they are. It says Panasonic DVC on them. No problems with them except for an occasional drop out that I can live with.

I know this is long. Thanks for taking the time to read it.

Bob :-)

Jim OMalley · August 2nd, 2004, 01:21 PM

Not trying to be a killjoy, but . . .

- Since I rarely (if ever) re-record over my DV tapes, I don't mind that my stock footage stays on them. (Re-recording over tapes can lead to clogs and jams.)

- DVDs have a 4.7GB capacity, so that means they can only hold approx. 20 minutes of video in .avi format. Not bad for archiving short clips, but not all that handy for storing large amounts of footage.

- I wouldn't necessarily shop for the cheapest possible sources of DVD blanks. There are lots of horror stories about people having trouble with "no-name" discs.

Bob McKelvy · August 2nd, 2004, 01:40 PM

Hi Jim,
Thanks for the feedback. Still at an entry hobby level on this.
Have heard of the blank DVD horror stories you mentioned. Been super lucky on this end. I know you are limited by the space on the DVD's. I split mine with cut and paste from the raw capture to divvy them up. Getting ready to move up to the dual layer DVD burner later on since they have gone way down in price.

I had a lot of prime analog and DVD footage that I recently lost when a lot of small ants built a nest in my file cabinet where the tapes were stored and ruined most of them. Made sure that will never happen again by being more careful where I store them.

Bob :-)

Jim OMalley · August 2nd, 2004, 01:50 PM

Hi Bob --

Best of luck as you make your way through the wonderful world of digital video production. Small bumps in the road are part of the process -- and good learning experience. Have fun!

Thomas Smith Jr · August 2nd, 2004, 02:26 PM

Storing raw dv files on data DVDs would be acceptable but space would be limited. Under no circumstances would I recommend you actually creating video DVDs (playable in a home dvd player) as archives. Because of the compression, a video DVD is not really a decent archival medium for video.

Also, don't tape over you dv tapes. Just don't. If cost of tape is an issue, buy the cheap ones and buy 'em in bulk. I bought twenty 60-minute Panasonic tapes wrapped/new in box for $60 last year sometime.

Roger Golub · August 2nd, 2004, 04:23 PM

No No! Don't go there.....

While your cheapie .29 DVD disks are working <now>, you don't know what will happen next month, next year, next 5 years.....

I originally started down your path, burned the .avi files onto DVD and stuffed them in a file cabinet. Used several different brands of DVD including Maxell, Sony, etc.

After a year of storage (upright, in DVD case in a cool, dry place) about 20% of the DVDs are unreadable. Even some of the branded ones although the no name ones tend to fail more often. Fortunately, I have my original tapes to fall back on.

Now, I'm archiving to a huge hard disk. Clips that I think I'll want to use in the future (as opposed to all of the horrid stuff I shoot that likely won't ever see the light of day or the dark of night again) stay on the HD. THe rest get stuck on the tape. When the disk gets full, I'll buy another, again, look to see what I want to keep in active storage, and archive the old disk.

For my still photos (about 200 gigs now - these darn multi megapixel cameras...) I keep active copies of the files on two separate hard drives - one at home, one at work. Don't quite have enough storage to do that to my video.

Since mag tapes have been around for some time, we have a pretty good idea on their archival stability. THe same isn't true for DVDs and what limited information we have ain't terribly comforting.

I'm still trying to figure out how to archive my projects - probably will use a combination of the HD stratgety and (gasp) DVDs - but I'll use branded disks and make several.

And cross my fingers. I'm waiting for the perfect holographic memory storage modules that have been promised Real Soon Now since, oh, about 1985.

Good luck...

Ken Wagner · August 3rd, 2004, 12:04 AM

No matter what kind of horror story you've heard about tape, I truly believe that it would be much worse to trust it to recordable optical media of any kind (including Mitsui Gold). It's not to say that I don't have DV stuff on DVD-R, but I only keep it there for transportation reasons. My main storage location is to firewire HDs (but I still keep about half the tapes). More expensive than tape, but the ease of access and lack of need to re-capture out weight the cost IMHO. In the five years I've been collecting video on HDs, I've never had one fail and I attribute that to the fact that they are so seldom used. I'm certainly no expert on the shelf life of whats recorded on a HD, but I have a 700MB Quantum SCSI HD that's 11 years old that I recently pulled to get some home footage and it checked out just fine. I think the last time it saw a "spin up" was about 8 years ago.

Alan Craven · August 3rd, 2004, 03:09 AM

I use interchangeable disk caddies and archive onto 250GB HDDs - both video clips and digital still images. I am currently working my way through just over 30,000 35mm colour slides using a Nikon Coolscan V. This will need 8 250GB Drives as the files, scanned at the maximum resolution of 4000 ppi, are 53MB each! As has been said earlier, don't use an archival maethod which reduces image quality or has suspect durability, particularly if you are going to discard the originals.

August 2nd, 2004, 12:56 PM	#1
Bob McKelvy New Boot Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Rockport Texas Posts: 6	Transfer Captured DV footage to a DVD Howdy Folks, Somewhere awhile back, someone wanted to know how to transfer raw DV footage to a DVD for long term storage instead of tape. I don't know if his question was ever answered. It faded out with time. I also had the same question. Didn't like the idea of keeping a lot of stock footage stored on 4 dollar DV tapes when I could keep them stored on a 29 cent DVD. Through trial and error, I found a way to do this. I use the Pinnacle 9 for capture. Will be moving up to Pinnacle Liquid later this year, not unless I come across something better. Open to suggestions for that.... Someone on this site suggested Vegas. All of my captures go to my Maxtor 160 GB external HD and end up there as an avi file after the capture. I reformat a blank DVD using Roxio Platinum. Heard that Nero works too, and I know there are a few others. Still a rank newbie in this dept. I tried to drag and drop the freshly captured footage from the external hard drive to the freshly formatted DVD. Didn't work. Created a file on my desk top, copied the footage from the external drive to it, from there to the DVD. It worked !! I don't know why. I'll leave that to the experts. Tested it by using the captured footage on the DVD to edit the video with Pinnacle studio 9. I could also transfer all of the video back to my exernal drive if I wanted to work with it there. Tried that too. Also found a cheap source for blank DVD's 29 cents each and CD's 17 cents each. http://www.meritline.com/ I am seeing a lot of horror stories on some of the problems that you all have been having with DV tapes. Been using Panasonic tapes for almost a year. No idea what quality they are. It says Panasonic DVC on them. No problems with them except for an occasional drop out that I can live with. I know this is long. Thanks for taking the time to read it. Bob :-) __________________ Bob McKelvy

August 2nd, 2004, 01:40 PM	#3
Bob McKelvy New Boot Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Rockport Texas Posts: 6	Hi Jim, Thanks for the feedback. Still at an entry hobby level on this. Have heard of the blank DVD horror stories you mentioned. Been super lucky on this end. I know you are limited by the space on the DVD's. I split mine with cut and paste from the raw capture to divvy them up. Getting ready to move up to the dual layer DVD burner later on since they have gone way down in price. I had a lot of prime analog and DVD footage that I recently lost when a lot of small ants built a nest in my file cabinet where the tapes were stored and ruined most of them. Made sure that will never happen again by being more careful where I store them. Bob :-) __________________ Bob McKelvy

August 2nd, 2004, 01:21 PM	#2
Jim OMalley Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: New Jersey Posts: 81	Not trying to be a killjoy, but . . . - Since I rarely (if ever) re-record over my DV tapes, I don't mind that my stock footage stays on them. (Re-recording over tapes can lead to clogs and jams.) - DVDs have a 4.7GB capacity, so that means they can only hold approx. 20 minutes of video in .avi format. Not bad for archiving short clips, but not all that handy for storing large amounts of footage. - I wouldn't necessarily shop for the cheapest possible sources of DVD blanks. There are lots of horror stories about people having trouble with "no-name" discs.

August 2nd, 2004, 01:50 PM	#4
Jim OMalley Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: New Jersey Posts: 81	Hi Bob -- Best of luck as you make your way through the wonderful world of digital video production. Small bumps in the road are part of the process -- and good learning experience. Have fun!

August 2nd, 2004, 02:26 PM	#5
Thomas Smith Jr Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Oxnard, CA Posts: 26	Storing raw dv files on data DVDs would be acceptable but space would be limited. Under no circumstances would I recommend you actually creating video DVDs (playable in a home dvd player) as archives. Because of the compression, a video DVD is not really a decent archival medium for video. Also, don't tape over you dv tapes. Just don't. If cost of tape is an issue, buy the cheap ones and buy 'em in bulk. I bought twenty 60-minute Panasonic tapes wrapped/new in box for $60 last year sometime.

August 2nd, 2004, 04:23 PM	#6
Roger Golub Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Sitka, AK Posts: 46	No No! Don't go there..... While your cheapie .29 DVD disks are working <now>, you don't know what will happen next month, next year, next 5 years..... I originally started down your path, burned the .avi files onto DVD and stuffed them in a file cabinet. Used several different brands of DVD including Maxell, Sony, etc. After a year of storage (upright, in DVD case in a cool, dry place) about 20% of the DVDs are unreadable. Even some of the branded ones although the no name ones tend to fail more often. Fortunately, I have my original tapes to fall back on. Now, I'm archiving to a huge hard disk. Clips that I think I'll want to use in the future (as opposed to all of the horrid stuff I shoot that likely won't ever see the light of day or the dark of night again) stay on the HD. THe rest get stuck on the tape. When the disk gets full, I'll buy another, again, look to see what I want to keep in active storage, and archive the old disk. For my still photos (about 200 gigs now - these darn multi megapixel cameras...) I keep active copies of the files on two separate hard drives - one at home, one at work. Don't quite have enough storage to do that to my video. Since mag tapes have been around for some time, we have a pretty good idea on their archival stability. THe same isn't true for DVDs and what limited information we have ain't terribly comforting. I'm still trying to figure out how to archive my projects - probably will use a combination of the HD stratgety and (gasp) DVDs - but I'll use branded disks and make several. And cross my fingers. I'm waiting for the perfect holographic memory storage modules that have been promised Real Soon Now since, oh, about 1985. Good luck...

August 3rd, 2004, 12:04 AM	#7
Ken Wagner New Boot Join Date: May 2004 Location: Seven Valleys, PA Posts: 9	No matter what kind of horror story you've heard about tape, I truly believe that it would be much worse to trust it to recordable optical media of any kind (including Mitsui Gold). It's not to say that I don't have DV stuff on DVD-R, but I only keep it there for transportation reasons. My main storage location is to firewire HDs (but I still keep about half the tapes). More expensive than tape, but the ease of access and lack of need to re-capture out weight the cost IMHO. In the five years I've been collecting video on HDs, I've never had one fail and I attribute that to the fact that they are so seldom used. I'm certainly no expert on the shelf life of whats recorded on a HD, but I have a 700MB Quantum SCSI HD that's 11 years old that I recently pulled to get some home footage and it checked out just fine. I think the last time it saw a "spin up" was about 8 years ago.

August 3rd, 2004, 03:09 AM	#8
Alan Craven Major Player Join Date: May 2003 Location: York, England Posts: 518	I use interchangeable disk caddies and archive onto 250GB HDDs - both video clips and digital still images. I am currently working my way through just over 30,000 35mm colour slides using a Nikon Coolscan V. This will need 8 250GB Drives as the files, scanned at the maximum resolution of 4000 ppi, are 53MB each! As has been said earlier, don't use an archival maethod which reduces image quality or has suspect durability, particularly if you are going to discard the originals.