getting some dv footage onto my computer

[Tom]

Right. When I bought my house, I borrowed my mate's video camera and recorded the rooms, just as a before/after type thing (because it was a shithole).

So, I have a firewire socket, as does the camera. How do I get it onto my computer, and make it into an avi or something?


PS The house is no longer a shithole.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

I believe you will need some "movie" authoring software. From there you can do an "acquire" in the same way you would with a scanner. I think XP has some stuff that does this. I've done it with some sw that came with an old fw card I had but I'm at work and can't remember the app I used. It's a piece of piss though tbh, have a poke around windows for "movie".

edit/
It just occured to me that plugging in the cam will give you a "new hardware etc" message. Just plug the cam in and see what happens.

 

[smurkin]

yep...yucks spot on...XP has capture software...and if the camcorder is fully DV compliant (which it will be), you shouldn't need drivers beyond those that windows already has...however, if there are some with the camcorder...they may come in handy.

There are two appraches I have tried...first is to capture as a max detail avi...then convert using TMPGenc (which comes in a free flavour) to mpeg (vcd) or mpeg2 (DVD). This conversion is really slow (I think you have to pay for the mpeg2 version) but gives really top notch quality - use interlaced for tv use, non-interlaced for pc use.

The second apporach is to use Sonic myDVD to capture directly to mpeg2 - I got this bundled, but it is a pay item. This is the easiest and gives pretty good results.

As for editing - I havent had any sucess editing and dubbing - when the software I have recodes the video, it always makes a pigs ear of the video ...I might have to invest in adobe premier to get round this one