Transfering miniDV to PC - Best Software(s) to do the trick right now is....?

[Ronald Lee]

Hi there. I'm looking to transfer the footage from my miniDV tapes to my computer. The tapes are all SD. There may be one or two DVCAM in there as well.

I have an older computer here that has a firewire port on it, so I'm thinking I can try to clean up the old software (Windows is running sluggish) and then get a new/recent video capture software and then transfer the footage in real time playing (1 hour of tape must be played to get the full 60 minutes).

For this transfer, I'd like to ask THREE QUESTIONS:

1) What is the best format to save it as for best quality and future editing? Is it the normal AVI file that I used to capture the transfer in? Or MP4?

2) What software(s) available today is the easiest and best one to do the trick? I don't mean an NLE editing software, but a simple one is fine.

Links?

3) Its not possible to save in HD....like there isn't software that will upconvert is there?

Thanks for your feedback.

Ronald

[Pete Cofrancesco]

1. Premiere subscribe for one month for $20 guaranteed to work. HitFilm Express it’s got ads and isn’t as robust but it’s FREE (not sure if it can import via firewire/tape.) There are many other software choices out there.

2. Export it as Mpg4/H264 or Mpg2 for dvd. Any software will import it as dv format that you will export to mpeg2/4 to be able play on other devices.

3. There is no point upscaling to HD waste of time and space.

[Vince Pachiano]

2) WinDV Super small footprint, and its free. I've transferred hundreds of tapes with it.

[Ken Plotin]

Originally Posted by Ronald Lee

Hi there. I'm looking to transfer the footage from my miniDV tapes to my computer. The tapes are all SD. There may be one or two DVCAM in there as well.

I have an older computer here that has a firewire port on it, so I'm thinking I can try to clean up the old software (Windows is running sluggish) and then get a new/recent video capture software and then transfer the footage in real time playing (1 hour of tape must be played to get the full 60 minutes).

For this transfer, I'd like to ask THREE QUESTIONS:

1) What is the best format to save it as for best quality and future editing? Is it the normal AVI file that I used to capture the transfer in? Or MP4?

2) What software(s) available today is the easiest and best one to do the trick? I don't mean an NLE editing software, but a simple one is fine.

Links?

3) Its not possible to save in HD....like there isn't software that will upconvert is there?

Thanks for your feedback.

Ronald

I save the captured .avi files; they are basically bit for bit copies of the DV tape and are the best quality before further recompression to MP4 or MPEG2 (DVD). A one hour file is about 13GB, so it's possible to "archive" over 70 1hour DV tapes on a 1TB hard drive.
Ken

[Christopher Young]

Captured countless hours of DV with Scenalyzerlive. Andreas Winter now makes this program freely available since he is no longer developing it. You can capture entire tapes regardless of broken time code or or CTL troubles. If you select the "Scene Detection" method it will capture the tape as single scenes as it detects every camera stop / start. While capturing you can if you wish split files, rename files etc. You can also do still grabs with it. Scenalyzer can also capture live streams from a DV source. Used to capture live feeds in lengthy legal court judiciary hearings. Converting them to DVDs on the fly for court records. Great little program with a decent interface. Still use it on occasions when needed.

Chris Young

[Marcel Dubovsky]

Originally Posted by Vince Pachiano

2) WinDV Super small footprint, and its free. I've transferred hundreds of tapes with it.

I give my vote to WinDV as well.
It's dead simple to use, works well even on very old computer and creates perfect digital copy of your video.

[Don Palomaki]

As noted above the DV AVI captured via IEEE1394 (aka: FireWire and iLink) should be an exact copy of the information on the tape. If doing serious image restoration work you may want to use a lossless intermediate codec to minimize encoding/decoding losses.

If you already have NLE software it may be able to capture the video via IEEE1394 already.

There is no reason to upscale the DV file to HD. You gain no resolution, just a larger file. In general the best upscale results for viewing on a HDTV will come from the media player, e.g., a DVD played on a BluRay player.



.

[Brian Dollemore]

Originally Posted by Marcel Dubovsky

I give my vote to WinDV as well.
It's dead simple to use, works well even on very old computer and creates perfect digital copy of your video.

Another vote for WinDV. Never failed me, anyway, and a new .avi file for each time you pull the trigger.