Tweak my workflow before I begin at DVinfo.net

Paul Sisson · April 15th, 2019, 06:06 PM

I’m embarking on a typical DV copy, process and transcode project where I need to transfer the contents of 27 mini DV tapes from my old Panasonic GS39 to a 2011 iMac with firewire.
Back when this was our main video camera, I liked WinDV for capturing clips based on timecode and VirtualDub for doing basic processing such as deinterlacing, brightness and contrast adjustment and denoising.
These two Windows programs allowed a quick processing workflow without having to mess around with NLE timelines, etc. I just want to get all of this footage of my kids when they were little off tapes before they start to fail.
Problem is, I don’t currently own a PC, and I’m not finding any equivalents that run natively on the Mac. That’s fine, I can always just run them in a VM or through Boot Camp, but I thought I should ask: Are there any Mac equivalents to WinDV and Virtualdub out there that I missed Googling around?
Also, when I was last working with files from this camera, I was transcoding to Divx or Xvid after copy and process steps. I suppose now I should be trying for h.264 or h.265? I know I don’t want to leave them in .DV. It’s so large that modern players struggle to deal with so much data, even streaming over gigabit Ethernet. I will definitely keep the original files though. Ideally, it would be great to be able to transfer from the cam, do adjustments, then write to a .DV file at full rez and to another, more efficiently-compressed, format. That way, if I had to come back in 10 years and transcode to whatever the new format is then, I won’t have to re-do all of the processing work.
Also, I wonder if anyone has any advice on what I should do to the camera itself before I start capturing 27 tapes? I’ve googled around on this topic, and it seems like advice to to leave the heads alone unless you’re getting dropped frames. Is that the right approach, or should I clean the heads first? I’ve seen some youtube vids that recommend taking camcorders apart to expose and clean the head, but I think that would be pretty delicate surgery on a GS39 which is pretty compact.

April 15th, 2019, 06:06 PM	#1
Paul Sisson Tourist Join Date: Apr 2019 Location: OCEANSIDE, CA Posts: 1	Tweak my workflow before I begin I’m embarking on a typical DV copy, process and transcode project where I need to transfer the contents of 27 mini DV tapes from my old Panasonic GS39 to a 2011 iMac with firewire. Back when this was our main video camera, I liked WinDV for capturing clips based on timecode and VirtualDub for doing basic processing such as deinterlacing, brightness and contrast adjustment and denoising. These two Windows programs allowed a quick processing workflow without having to mess around with NLE timelines, etc. I just want to get all of this footage of my kids when they were little off tapes before they start to fail. Problem is, I don’t currently own a PC, and I’m not finding any equivalents that run natively on the Mac. That’s fine, I can always just run them in a VM or through Boot Camp, but I thought I should ask: Are there any Mac equivalents to WinDV and Virtualdub out there that I missed Googling around? Also, when I was last working with files from this camera, I was transcoding to Divx or Xvid after copy and process steps. I suppose now I should be trying for h.264 or h.265? I know I don’t want to leave them in .DV. It’s so large that modern players struggle to deal with so much data, even streaming over gigabit Ethernet. I will definitely keep the original files though. Ideally, it would be great to be able to transfer from the cam, do adjustments, then write to a .DV file at full rez and to another, more efficiently-compressed, format. That way, if I had to come back in 10 years and transcode to whatever the new format is then, I won’t have to re-do all of the processing work. Also, I wonder if anyone has any advice on what I should do to the camera itself before I start capturing 27 tapes? I’ve googled around on this topic, and it seems like advice to to leave the heads alone unless you’re getting dropped frames. Is that the right approach, or should I clean the heads first? I’ve seen some youtube vids that recommend taking camcorders apart to expose and clean the head, but I think that would be pretty delicate surgery on a GS39 which is pretty compact.