anybody have exprience with a digital camcorder?

R

RD_151

New Member
I'm trying to "move" the video from the camcorder to my hdd. I'm not sure how this works with a digital camcorder. Is it like a digital camera, only using firewire instead of USB? I don't think its this simple, but I'm not sure exactly how to do it either. Do I need to use Adobe Premier or Ulead Video studio to do this, or is there something like the USB Mass Storage drive that appears when you connect a digital camera? I think not, but I guess it can't hurt to ask. I tried it yesterday. I connected the camcorder to a my laptop via firewire, but nothing popped up, so I'm assuming I need to have something like premier runing, then play the video "over" the firewire connection and capture it to the hdd. Is this the idea, or am I missing something. I must admit, I'm completely guessing when it comes to this. This is my first attempt with the digital camcorder. Do have to encode the captured video into some format, mpeg 2, avi, mpeg4 etc etc? Or can I just transfer it. I'm guessing it must be encoded, but again, I'm just guessing. I haven't used Premier before, or Ulead Video Studio, so I'm not sure what to expect here. I haven't bother to install either yet, maybe that would be a good place to start ;)

Well any insight into this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your help in advance!
 
I am not sure if you need drivers (other than the IEEE1394 controller ones) but you can check if you cam is detected by running Premiere, then going to File -> Capture -> Capture Movie and run the preferences. Select DV Device Control and choose your brand/model of camcorder. If everything is OK it should appear Online (before or after you press the Check Status button)
If it is detected correctly you should be able to control your cam and capture from Premiere.


For encoding settings (high quality) I'd recommend using DV compression at 720x480, slider at high quality, then after you could compress further the movie with a DivX/MPEG encoder. Note that those capture settings are for very good quality captures (DVD/SVCD) and it takes a hell of a lot of disk space. For transfer to VHS you could trim the resolution/quality a bit more :) Those settings can all be found under the Capture Settings.
 
Nothing to do with the camera thing, but I really love your av, equinoxe! Very cool!:headbang:
 
equinoxe3d,

Thanks so much for the most excellent explaination. I'm gonna have to give this a try tonight. I have only recorded about 10 minutes so far, so i should be good hdd space, I hope. I have a little over 10gb free on my laptop, that hopefully will be plenty. I guess if I go with a full 2 hour tape i may need to use my desktop. Maybe i need to anyway, I read that you need an extremely fast hdd, and I'm pretty sure a notebook hdd isn't. I'm gonna give it a try anyway. That way I can give it a try at work tonight. Its so wasteful to have to do things at home. Its always better to do it at work ;)

Thanks again for all the suggestions. I'm probably gonna encode it in divx 5 and throw it on a disk. I was looking for an economical way to send videos from the US to my wifes parents in Europe, so my thought divx on a cdr is the cheapest way to go. We will no doubt send a lot of them over the years.
 
RD_151 said:
equinoxe3d,
I read that you need an extremely fast hdd, and I'm pretty sure a notebook hdd isn't. I'm gonna give it a try anyway.
Click to expand...

When you capture, just take a look at the number of dropped frames on the capture window while capturing. If your system struggles, you'll see this number go up quite quickly and you'll lose big parts in your sequences. Dropping 1 frame every 10-20 seconds isn't that big of a deal though.
 
Thanks, I'll have to pay close attention to that. Im sure its not gonna be good with a notebook, but maybe it will be acceptable at least. If not, my desktop could be ok with a 7200 rpm drive, but it seems even this is a little slow for this type of application. I didn't get a chance to try it tonight. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Thanks again
 
A decent 7200rpm drive should be pretty adequate, anyways if your system still can't keep up, you can drop the capture resolution a little bit, that is, if your parents are going to watch the clips on their computer.

Just don't ever apply any CPU-heavy software compression (Cinepak, Sorenson) when capturing, so your CPU can rely on the capture. Using no compressor at all is also a definite no-no since the data output can be so big at 720x480 that you will drop 85% of the frames (and yes I tried this, on a dual-CPU Mac :D)

Full resolution DV capture shouldn't put much strain on the processor if it's at 700+ MHz
 
thanks again equinoxe3d. I haven't had a chance to give it a try yet. Between my wife complaining about me spending too much time on computers and christmas shopping I just didn't get around to it yet. I think I need to do this at work. The problem is I know my laptop hdd is gonna be really slow. its a pIII 700, and I even added another 128mb of ram, but the hdd is gonna be an issue, I know. The desktop should be fine (its got a 20 and an 80gb hdd both running at 7200rpms, but only a duron 600, I know, its time to upgrade), if not, I'll use the xp 1700 I just built my mom for christmas before i give it to her ;) And after too when I go to visit.

Hopefully I will get a chance to try this this weekend. Unfortunately I have been waiting almost a month to set up my new wireless network, and still I don't seem to be getting any closer to finding time for that. We need more hours in the day, we should protest. I need a 30 hour day. I wonder how we can go about changing this ;) Either that, or we need a shorter work week :D Better yet, I want both!
 
Ok, I finally managed to give it a try the other day. I wish I had tried sooner, it wasn't so bad. But man, you were right, the file was huge!!! I think I ended up with 3.7gb with only 10 minutes enoded!!! Wow, that's enormous. I guess I will have to use the desktop for larger files. It was fine with the notebook actually, it droped some frames but not many. This was with no compression. I haven't really had a chance to do much with it. I tried to capture it in a few different formats, but it seems no compression was working the best for me, even though the file size was enormous. I guess I need to find something to encode it to divx now and it should be good.

Thanks again for your help with this equinoxe3d. I just have to find some more time to play around with it and maybe find away to encode it into a compressed format that can easily be enoded to divx. Well, maybe over christmas I'll have more time.
 
Glad the "no compression" settings worked well for you :). It wasn't very cooperative with the system I tried it on (mind you, it's a Mac running a dirty install of OS 9.2). Anyways, dropping the resolution a little might always help to reduce sizes and even boost the quality a bit if the source isn't very good, 720x480 is only really needed if you intend to burn a DVD/SVCD or maybe a DivX CD to be played on set-top players, otherwise 512x384 or any 4:3 resolution should do the trick.

In the meantime, merry christmas and happy celebrations :headbang:
 
can you play divx in a set-top player? Or does it have to be mpeg? That would be great if they play divx too. I didn't think they could.

I guess I'll have to look into this as well.

Thanks again for all your help.

Happy celebrations and new year to you as well (I guess christmas is already passed though:(.
 
I've heard about a very few set-tops that are able play DivX (I can't give brand names though), but more players supports VCD/SVCD formats.

I have to admit I'm not "at home" in this particular field of video (DivX/SVCD making, especially for set-top players), but I remember there was pretty good threads at HwC about this, with links to guides and tools.
 
Ok, thanks. I'm guessing it will take a while and it will become standard like MP3 decoders are in most dvd players. I guess i will be patient. I found a few that play them already, but the price was a bit extreme. I could just build a pc dedicated to playing them a hell of a lot cheaper!!! Oh well, it was a thought. Thanks for all your help with this stuff. Its not an area I have much experience with either. Although, it is interesting, and maybe some day i will have some more time to look into it. Thanks again for all your help.
 
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