Questions and Answers

Table of Contents

Question 1: I have just purchased a DV Camcorder. What sort of Hardware and Software do I need to start editing my videos?

Answer :

The process for editing videos, using a PC, is in 3 steps. Firstly you need to "Capture" your video from the Camcorder to the PC. Secondly you need to "Edit" your captured video with software that can adjust sound volumes, insert fades and dissolves etc. Third and last you need to "Print" your edited Video back to the Camcorder, on a new tape, for further copying to the final VHS tape.

As you have a DV Camcorder, the type of "Capture" card that you need in your PC is a "Firewire" card, sometimes known as an IEEE1394 card. Microsoft have built in some "IEEE1394 Plug & Play" capability into Windows Me and Windows XP, under "Accessories", "Windows Movie Maker". So in theory if you are buying a new machine you will only have to ask the supplier to install a "firewire" card . There are many makers of these, including some of the motherboard manufacturers.. However in practice there are some limitations to the output capabilities of Windows Movie Maker so most people choose to buy a "Firewire Card/Editing Software" bundle such as the Australian Swann Videoworks Starter Kit . See details at:

http://www.swann.com.au/show_item.php?item=36

There are similar kits available from U.S. manufacturers such as Pinnacle Systems. See link at:

http://www.pinnaclesys.com

This has its own "Studio" software which tends to be slightly easier to use, but again it is a little "proprietary". You should be able to find both products at most computer retailers.

The main requirement for a computer to do the capturing and editing is to have a very large and fast Disk Drive which should be "dedicated" to video i.e. it should not be your "C" drive but should be a physically separate "D" drive to avoid System interrupts which will cause "jitters" in the video capture. A fairly typical system would be a PIII 800 MHz with 128mb RAM and 2 fast "Ultra DMA" Disk Drives as big as you can afford, say "C"= 60Gb and "D" = 80 Gb.

Question 2: I have an older "Analog" video camera. How do I transfer video to my PC for editing, and recording back to Videotape?

Answer :

As your video was recorded with an older "Analog" type camera VHS-C or Hi-8 it has to be "digitised" before it can be stored on the Computer's hard disk. The cards required for the conversion from analog to digital are more expensive than the multi purpose firewire cards and usually compress the incoming signal into MJPEG format. MJPEG, or "Motion - JPEG" as it's name implies, requires one JPEG image for each frame of video. At 25 frames a second this requires very fast data compression by the card and an extremely fast disk drive to be able to capture the data coming from the card. A few years ago this required an expensive "AV Rated" SCSI disk drive but with the advent of "Ultra DMA" IDE cards, IDE hard disk drives can now be used. This drive must be dedicated to video only and regularly "defragmented" to ensure that no frames are dropped during video capture or playback.
In all other respects the PC must be configured as per the minimum DV recording requirements. see Question 1 above. The most popular card for capturing MJPEG is the Pinnacle Systems DC10 Plus. See link at:

http://www.pinnaclesys.com

A slightly more "professional" solution is the Canopus DV Storm package. See the link at:

http://www.canopus-aust.com/AU/products/dvstorm_2/pm_dvstorm_2.asp

Question 3 - Transfer VHS Video to VCD, SVCD and DVD

Hi John ,
As you may know I am reasonably new to the video game so don't mind if the question is a little silly . If I make an mpeg movie on cd from a video on digital tape ,on a later occasion can I then use the cd a source of material to make another video but convert it back to tape as an avi file or for that matter any other file type that I might incorporate to make another movie .I look forward to your reply .
Kevin Sanders

Answer:

Hi Kevin,
No it's not a "silly" question but the answer is rather complicated.

The short answer is "Yes you can", BUT there are a lot of things to consider.

Firstly, - if you copy to a CD and want that CD to be able to play on a stand alone DVD player then the highest "standard" resolution available is SVCD which is 480 x 576 pixels (against the original 720 x 576). Also the video will be "compressed" as MPEG which means that some frames will be "thrown away" and only the differences between certain "Key" frames will be kept - this is called a "lossy" compression method and means that you cannot get back to your original 720 x 576 at 25 frames per second if you want to edit it further.

In spite of this "lossy" compression you can still only get about 25 minutes of SVCD on to a CD. You can get about an hour of VCD quality video but this compresses the data even further to 360 x 288 pixels (a quarter of the data that is in the original, which although watchable on a TV - has a problem of "blockiness" due to the compression factor and again cannot get back to your original 720 x 576 at 25 frames per second if you want to edit it further).

However, if you put the video onto a DVD -although it is still compressed as MPEG - it is MPEG2 rather than the VCD's MPEG1 which is less "lossy" and is the full 720 x 576 pixel size. Also, there are editing programs which can use MPEG files to re-edit the video and put it back out to tape (Pinnacle Studio 9 can do this but I have found it very slow compared to editing AVI because it needs to calculate all the "lost frames" if you want to put an edit point between the "Key" frames (known as "I-frames").

In short, I would not recommend CD's as a long term storage solution but I would recommend DVD's as (in theory) they should have a longer shelf life than magnetic tape. However, I am going to keep my DV tapes as "originals" and not record over them in case the "theory" is wrong!!!!

Hope this answers your questions but if not, have a look for more help at:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/

Cheers,

John Hall
SIG Convenor,