digital video questions?

toddsmack2k · Jan 4, 2003, 01:58 PM

my brother is wanting to get into puting digital video from a camcorder onto his pc then to a cdr. so i have a couple of questions i would like you guys advice on.

1. what is the breakdown for video conversion
ie. 1 min of dig video = how many megs or gigs or whatever

2. he currently has a 80 gig hard drive and runs xp home, prob has about 50-60 gigs free. i have recommended he get another hard drive just for storing his movies and pictures while working on them. does this sound alright?

3. from what i can tell from looking online the pinnacle deluxe version 8 is what he might like as far as an easy prog to work on the movies with. he is wanting a program that will do digital and analog conversion.any thoughts?

his computer is a sony viao with a 1.8 p4, 80 gig 7200 rpm hd with 8 mg buffer, 512 memory

thanks for any help

ToshiroOC · Jan 4, 2003, 04:10 PM

1 hour of digital video from a miniDV (or any DV standard) camcorder will be around 12 gigabytes. Getting a second hard drive would only be necesary if he is going to need more than 2 hours of video edited at the same time (2 hours = 24 gb before edit, then 2 hours after edit for 48gb...). I couldn't help you on programs - sorry. I just use Adobe Premiere 5.1 that I bought off of my school, and though it works wonderfully, it isn't an easy program or a beginners program by a long shot.

toddsmack2k · Jan 5, 2003, 10:42 PM

does that size conversion also work for analog video. he will mostly be using it for analog right now, but me thinks he might as well get something for digital also so in the near future he does not have to buy another prog. thanks for your help

ToshiroOC · Jan 5, 2003, 11:02 PM

It's hard to say - it depends on what format the video is saved in. It will run maybe 3gb/hour or so if it is saved in mpeg2 at s-video resolution, or significantly less if it is in standard RCA resolution (and is saved in an appropriately small and space-saving format)...

toddsmack2k · Jan 5, 2003, 11:15 PM

until he gets dvd burner he will mostly be taking old home movies and burning them to vcd or svcd format. so he will want the best picture he can get i think the better progs usually compress it to 640 resolution. do you mess with stuff much?

ToshiroOC · Jan 5, 2003, 11:20 PM

I do very little analog->digital conversion myself, but if you are going to be transferring VHS to cvd/svcd, then it will be 650mb per (unit of time), where smaller units of time mean higher quality (to a point), and svcd having a lower amount of time by a lot. I don't do the whole VCD/SVCD thing as I always use my personal comptuter and it's DVD player to watch DVD/VCD/SVCD stuffs, and so it is much more convenient to just store that sort of stuff divxed on some of my 320gb of hard drive space

Vampyromaniac · Jan 5, 2003, 11:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by toddsmack2k
burning them to vcd or svcd format. so he will want the best picture he can get i think the better progs usually compress it to 640 resolution. do you mess with stuff much?

SVCD is better quality than VCD.
The resolution has to be 480x480, though, or it's not in the SVCD format, and won't play in DVD players.
It runs about 1 GB per hour of video, and the quality is good for a VHS source.

toddsmack2k · Jan 5, 2003, 11:48 PM

320 gig NICE!! basically i think what he is wanting is a breakout box or capture card so he can hook up his vcr or analog comcorder and put the movies on his computer and edit them , then put them on cd. for x mas me and my brother bought our parents a dvd player that plays all formats or at least vcd and svcd and taking their old movies and putting them on cd is on of the big reasons he wants one. keep a lot longer that way.

Vampyromaniac · Jan 6, 2003, 01:51 AM

I've used my All-In-Wonder video card for analog-to-digital capture, and it worked great.
There are a few products by Dazzle (www.dazzle.com) that are for Video capture, and I think they work well, too.

From an analog camcorder or VHS tape, I think SVCD is the way to go. It looks pretty good, and the DVD player can play it, so I'd recommend it. But you can fit less than 40 min on a 700MB SVCD.

VCD format is 352x240 (compared to SVCD's 480x480), and it shows . . . looks noticeably worse than SVCD. But, you can fit about 75 min on a 700MB VCD.

Just depends on what he needs more on one CD, better quality video, or more minutes of video

toddsmack2k · Jan 6, 2003, 07:58 AM

i believe that something from dazzle or pinnacle will be exactly what he is looking for. like i said it will mostly be used for analog but he also wants the option for digital so he doesnt have to upgrade again and something from either of those 2 companies will fix him up

thanks very much for you guys help and info