Dvd transfer to Camcorder

[Tony Marino]

I have mini dv tapes from my Gl-2 that I transfer to dvd. I keep a copy of the mini dv tape incase the dvd gets damaged or lost. I have lost some of the mini dv tapes that I already transfered to dvd. If I hook the firewire, can I transfer the dvd back to a blank mini dv tape without losing any quality or lines of resolution?

The dvd recorder I am using is one that is hooked to the TV.

Thank you,
Tony

[Rob Lohman]

I don't see how you are going to use the firewire in this scenario.

There are two things you can do in my mind:

1. copy the contents from the DVD to your computer and extract the individual audio and video streams and convert these back into DV

2. hook the DVD player up with an s-video connection (also connect audio seperately!) and record it to DV tape with your GL2

How did you loose the tape? (wondering since mine are all nicely
put away and I don't see how I could loose them)

[A. J. deLange]

Your success will depend on what you actually did. I do the same thing but I transfer DV from the camera to DV ROM i.e. the raw DV gets recorded on the disc and is just like any other .dv file. To get this back to tape I could copy the DV files back to the hard disc, open in FCP or some other NLE and set playback to put the video out through fire wire which would be connected to a fire wire camera. I'm assuming cameras like the XL2 can record fire wire input but I have never actually tried to do this. Just remembered that the XL2 manual is on-line. Yes, you can do this with an XL2 and I'd guess other fire wire cameras would allow it as well.

If you have gone to DVD you will have compressed the original DV by an additional 15:1 so there will be lots more compression artifacts than in your original. You can still mount the DVD on your desktop, kill the DVD player software which will doubtless kick in, open the disk like any other volume and look for the video files. These will be MPEG-2 and what I am not sure of here is whether FCP or other NLE's can open them. If not, you may need to convert back to DV with another application. If they can, then just do the same thing - play back through fire wire and record to tape.

Why not just make a backup copy of the DVD?

[Brandon Greenlee]

I would probably attempt to hook a MiniDV camera straight in to the back of the dvd player and play the dvd. That way your recording it back to DV at the highest quality possible (now) and it will be easy to get back into an NLE timeline.

It won't be of the original quality, but it will be good enough for most things.

[Tony Marino]

Thank you for the replys but I am not using my computer to try and transfer the dvd back to mini dv. I am trying to find out if I can use my phillips dvdr 7517 connected to the Tv via component cables to transfer a dvd back to mini dv using my GL-2 via firewire and not lose any quality.

Thank you,
Tony

[Les Wilson]

I am unfamiliar with that model but I assume that it does not have a Firewire output as that would have been the easy way for uncopyprotected material. Going out the component ports of the DVD player results in an digital to analog conversion. Converting the component to firewire involves re-encoding the analog signal into DV format another conversion. Your camera will do this from s-video or composite video inputs I believe. Either way, you are looking at two conversions. If the material is copy protected, then you may hit some snags.

[Tony Marino]

The Phillips dvdr 7517 does have a firewire. If the firewire is used will I lose any quality going from the dvd to the camcorder? I will then be able to record a dvd from the mini dv tape.

Thanks

[Rob Lohman]

Tony: I've merged your new thread with your old thread

[A. J. deLange]

Recording from the firewire will give you better quality than methods involving composite or S video but you will not get the quality of the original because of the additional compression (15:1) done when the DVD was made.

[David Kennett]

Tony,

VLC, a freeware program, can convert the VOB files on your DVD to MPG (no re-encoding). These can then be converted to DV by putting them on the timeline of an editor (Ulead MSP works), and define the output as DV. You still take the hit of conversion, but it's all digital. Actually, if you didn't compress the MPG too much, they'll still look pretty good.

[Thomas Berg Petersen]

Tony,
I had a job recently where I needed to convert a DVD into MiniDV. I successfully used the program DVDxDV. You can go to http://www.dvdxdv.com/ for more information.