hey guys
just wondering what program i should use to
capture my video for editing later
i couldnt be bothered opening up studio or premiere
it just needs to be quick and simple
im capturing full PAL DV

any ideas?

WinDV is about as cheap (free) quick and easy as it gets.
http://windv.mourek.cz

Rich

Carr Engineering's DVIO is simpler.... one button for "copy to computer" and another for "send to camcorder". But it lacks WinDV's monitoring window and the ability to use both Type1 and Type2.

WinDV does everything a transfer program should do, and nothing else unnecessarily (nor taking up computer resources).

Either of these (free) very small and well behaved utilities should work well for you - in NTSC or PAL.

http://windv.mourek.cz/
http://www.carr-engineering.com/dvio.htm

__________________
Sony HDV camcorder info (FX1, CX7, HC3 HC5, SR1/3/5/10, SR11, SR12, TG1, UX1, Z1) -> http://www.SonyHDVinfo.com

I'll add a vote for WinDV. One of its nicest features is the ability to have it name captured files with the date and timecode for the video clip. This provides a more permanent time stamp than Windows file dates and times which can change with copy and move operations.

If you prefer to name your clips with descriptive names this won't interest you. But I like to keep track of when the clips were made and log descriptive info elsewhere.

Good luck.

Dennis Vogel

thanks for the quick feedback
ill give this one a go
it looks pretty basic which i what i need
it will save me a heap of resources

Yes: " DVIO.exe " Google for it. It's free. And for me (slow-ish computer) it captures FAR more reliable than most 'proper' expensive software!

You have to see it to believe it, the total size of this tool is 32kB Yes: kB, not MB!!! It also doesn't show you the czptured image in a window and does not include on-screen controls for starting or rewinding your tape but guess what: your camera already has a screen and has those controls!!

It produces raw DV .avi, ready to be used in just about any software for editing or conversion.

Cheers,
Chanchao

I've used both DVIO and WinDV for months. Note that DVIO will only make one "type" of AVI, and not the one used by some editing software. WinDV does everything, including the monitoring window, and isn't much larger than DVIO. DVIO excells in a limited computing power environment.

__________________
Sony HDV camcorder info (FX1, CX7, HC3 HC5, SR1/3/5/10, SR11, SR12, TG1, UX1, Z1) -> http://www.SonyHDVinfo.com

Link to http://windv.mourek.cz seems to be down ?

Ive tried it for last couple of hours.

Anyone able to email to a___@web___.com the zip of it ?

http://windv.mourek.cz/ is up for me as of this posting. (no, not from a cache)

I'll email it to you, and remove the link in your email - just don't want you to pick up any spam from here! Google and other spiders crawl these boards.

__________________
Sony HDV camcorder info (FX1, CX7, HC3 HC5, SR1/3/5/10, SR11, SR12, TG1, UX1, Z1) -> http://www.SonyHDVinfo.com

Thanks - working for me too. Ive had that email address for 5+ years so I already get a ton of spam. A little more wouldnt even make a dent

If you need to post an email address spell it out like

my-name
at
host-name
dot
com

Skip lines, put () around things, etc. to make it hard for it to be harvested.

Good luck.

Dennis

I think I understand what is being said about WinDV, but let me clarify. I can use this to download from my camcorder to my PC, correct? Can I also use it when I convert from analog VHS through my digital camcorder to my PC? Some capturing software only captures from the tape in a camcorder.

Once captured, I then use other software to edit, add titles, music and effects before burning to a DVD. Hopefully I can open this downloaded file in programs like PowerDirector and such? (My next project is finding the right software to do all those funcitons I just mentioned but that's another topic.)
Frank

>>I think I understand what is being said about WinDV, but let me clarify. I can use this to download from my camcorder to my PC, correct?

Correct. WinDV and DVIO are free utilities that run on the PC which "manage" the Firewire/i.Link/IEEE1394 transfer. They will let you receive DV from the camcorder and save it on the PC in an AVI file. The data in that AVI file will be video data in standard DV. Don't confuse it with hundreds of other ways video can be encoded and saved in an AVI file. You can also send DV (from an AVI file with DV in it) to the camcorder to write a backup onto a tape.

>>Can I also use it when I convert from analog VHS through my digital camcorder to my PC?

If your camcorder has analogue inputs, and "pass-thru" feature, then yes you can. With other camcorders, they don't "pass-thru" the analogue to Firewire so you MUST record from analogue input to tape, then rewind, then PLAY the tape out over Firewire to transfer the DV to the computer.

>>Some capturing software only captures from the tape in a camcorder.

Sometimes this works best if the camcorder has pass-thru to REMOVE the tape from the camcorder! Or, you can manually control the camcorder and set it to be streaming the DV over i.Link, then start your transfer program on the PC. WinDV and DVIO will pick it up if it is running. Other utilities (particulalry if part of a video editing suite bundle) seem to send "resets" to the camcorder and then insist upon trying to control the camcorder for you. The free simple utilites work better in many cases!

>>Once captured, I then use other software to edit, add titles, music and effects before burning to a DVD.

Correct. VirtualDub is a nice free editor, or there are many other cheap to expensive editors and video suites. Even with fancy ones that have a built-in transfer/capture, I'd use WinDV to get my video into a file and then open the file in my editor.

The nice thing about capturing analogue video THRU a MinIDV camcorder with analogue inputs is the quality and resolution will be "DV" and much better than an "all in one capture video card that encodes to MPEG1 or MPEG2 simultaneously."

After editing, you will probably want to encode the video to convert it to MPEG2 (for DVDs or SVCDs) or DivX or whatever is appropriate. Many video suites contain an encoder also. Or you can use a seperate one like TMPGEnc or CinieCraftEncoder

Finally, you need an "authoring" module or program to "lay out" the video onto a media and burn it. (Eg. MPEG2 into VOBs and burn to a blank DVD).

Many Video Suites contain these 4 parts. You can often "mix and match" and use whatever YOU CHOOSE to use for each step and feed it into the next step. There is no one "best" overall package just as there is no one overall "best" program to use for each step. But I sumbit that WinDV and DVIO are the two best choices for the 1st transfer to PC step.

__________________
Sony HDV camcorder info (FX1, CX7, HC3 HC5, SR1/3/5/10, SR11, SR12, TG1, UX1, Z1) -> http://www.SonyHDVinfo.com

Thanks for your response. I appreciate it.
Frank

OK, what did I do wrong with WinDV? I let it capture a 28 minute tape. It seemed to work quite automatically after I set up the parameters to put the capture in the right file. However, instead of one recording, there seems to be 40 different clips rather than one. It seems like it detected everytime I stopped or paused the camera and made it into another clip. It will take so much longer now to import this into an authoring program. What did I do wrong?

Another thing I noticed. When I was capturing the video from the tape, I maximized the picture. It was a poor picture. The focus seemed to be off and there was a small wavy affect like liquid would do. However, when I click on one of the saved clips that plays in Windows Media, the picture seems clearer and there is no wavy effect. The picture is smaller in Windows Media and I wonder if that is making the difference? My concern is that I'll eventually be burning this to a DVD that will be viewed on a large screen TV and the reason I went with a digital camera was due to the impression that I'd have better final product. I won't know until I do a burn and view it but I'm getting a little discouraged.
Frank