-
VHS to Final cut pro…HELP
Hi there,
we have recently “re-dubbed” a small portion of “The Lord Of the Rings” for a friend’s birthday gift.
Basically, we put our voices saying funny and silly things over the images of the real movie.Don’t know why but we have done this in vhs… 🙁
My friend’s birthday is very soon and i need to put the parody on DVD.
I was pretty sure i could do that with my elgato eyetv+ and then export to Final Cut Pro for editing, but i’m experiencing some problems (probably due to copy protection system):
While capturing video, images show artifacts, flashes and generally bad quality.
I know i could redo everything digitally, but that would be a long process, since we have also edited the sequence of the images and i have no time.PLEASE NOTE: this has nothing to do with piracy…we own the original dvd of the movie (i’m a big fan!)…this is just a funny parody for a birthday, but is still very important to us!
Do you have any suggestion?
Thanks to anyone would help me. -
7 Replies
-
Since quality isn’t paramount here, could you shoot it off the TV screen and ingest it that way?
-
yes, i could, but the quality is already “crappy” so i’d like not to lose more quality…
Anyway i’ll keep this as the last extreme solution.
thanks
-
-
A consumer camera will react to the MacroVision on the VHS tape too. The OP either needs a higher-end prosumer, or professional level, piece of recording gear (or TBC) that doesn’t recognize macrovision. A DVD version of the movie would be much easier to work w/than a VHS version.
-A
-
Rafael and Andrew, thanks for replying.
I know that working with digital source such as DVD would be much easier, but in this case I have no other option than VHS.
What I have is a more than decent camera (Panasonic ag-hvx200) that has video input. Don’t know if it has TBC though…anyay i’ll give it a shot.
If it doesn’t work, I was thinking that i could try this way:Use 2 VCR and my Mac.
First VCR would play the movie and will be connected to the second VCR wich will do nothing other than pass through the signal to my Mac.
My mac would record the signal that comes indirectly from the second VCR and not directly from the first VCR that’s playing the VHS. Maybe this way my video adquisition card would not receive any macrovision signal since it’s basically recording from a “stand by” VCR.What do you think?
-
Probably won’t work but will look worse because macrovision already messes with the stability of the signal to do the anti-piracy protection you’re trying to evade, and this just gets worse the more analog devices you put into the chain. There is no time base corrector in the HVX200 that you can control, AFAIK. A TBC, proc-amp, and genlock is what a pro might use to ingest a VHS into an editing system. That’s still expensive stuff. The cheap answer is to play it in the dark on someone’s large flat-screen TV, or play a DVd of the movie off a laptop, and DV tape it off the screen using manual iris control. .
Your problem is easily solved by throwing money at it: for around $200 you can get either a Dv camcorder that has composite or s-video inputs, which would accept your VHS playback and convert to DV. The you’d ingest the DV tape to FCP in a normal manner thru firewire cable. Or you could get a Canopus ADVC-100 or better, on ebay or the like, and these do cross-conversion pretty well. I could not afford both, so I went with a nice little JVC consumer camcorder, the gr-df450u, to use as a deck, a Dv pass-thru converter, and oh yes, to shoot video with:-) This particular model won out because it also has a mic input, which the comparable -priced Panasonic did not. I’m surprised the HVX didn’t work out for you though.
By the way, you’re explanation of your “right” to use this footage use is flawed: ownership of a copy of the movie gives you no right to do what you’re doing, several court cases have ruled as much. A guy was re-editing movies for a Christian market, removing the swears and any “questionable” scenes, and charging money for it. His excuse was that each customer bought a legit copy of the movie and simply brought it to him to “modify”. Well the court didn’t buy it First, because the guy was taking money to modify copyrighted footage without permission of the copyright owner. Second, the excuse didn’t hold up because the DVD or VHS the customer brought was not itself modified by the editing process: a copy of it was. That boils down to piracy, plus bad editing.
While you have every right to do what this guy did in the privacy of your own home for your own fun and that of your family, you can’t have money change hands over any part of this prank usage or you’re technically in violation. I’m always interested in discussions about copyrights, because one of the reasons for having them is to protect an artist’s work from being “vandalized” in such a way without their consent. I think it’s little different than adding arms to the Venus De Milo statue. We can argue all day about what is “art”, but the courts have it laid out. If somebody can’t handle the the standard movie house cut of “Blazing Saddles”, then perhaps they should just forget about watching it, because believe me, the WGNTV family friendly cut of it is a crime… it certainly bears little resemblance to the original.
Since this is just you making a party video for a friend and not putting it up on the net, don’t sweat it, but when you have some free time, you might want to look up the “fair use” rules to get a better understanding of how and when they apply. Particularly the section on “parody”. Remember fair use is not a license to do anything you want, it’s an excuse to be forgiven and avoid a punishment after being found guilty, because the usage served a recognized public good. Better not to have to rely on it for that reason.
-
Hi Mark,
thanks for replying.i’m agree that copyright discussion is pretty interesting…however, i was not “legally” justifying myself…It was just an explanation for forum’s users to understand why I was doing all this.
Believe me, if i really wanted to break some kind of copyright law I would not bother copying a VHS…DVDs are better quality and more easily “rippable”…don’t you think?
but that’s not what i’m doing.
I’m just doing a party “parody film”. I’m not asking ANY money for ANYTHING.
Don’t know if it will be put on the web, but being so, again,it would just be something to laugh at few minutes and nothing more.
No money ASKING, no money EARNING from anybody…Moving to my original question…i don’t understand why i have to buy a videocamera with video-input, since I already have one. My HVX200 is pretty good even if it doesn’t work as a solution for this problem because has no TBC.
Are you suggesting to buy a camera with TBC? Wouldn’t that cost too much for a single work to do?
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up