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Extracting footage from DVD camcorder
It had to happen, sooner or later…
A group of people I know approached me about capturing some video footage and posting it on the web, probably YouTube to start with, and maybe other places as well. None of these people have access to broadband; they are all on dial-up. There are about 10-20 minutes of footage. Since I’m the video man, I was approached to handle the matter.
The camcorder is an Hitachi DZ-HS300A camcorder, and it contains both a hard disk and a mini-DVD drive; the footage is on a mini-DVD disc. They gave me the camcorder, owner’s manual, power cords, USB cable, the footage disc, and a Hitachi software disc that apparently contains software for both Windows and MacOS X. I’ve been leafing through the manual already. None of my computers has an optical drive capable of handling the mini-disc. This means I’ll have to connect the camcorder via USB (no FireWire anywhere to be found) to my MacBook Pro. I’m thinking about calling Hitachi. Does anyone have any feedback on handling an unusual consumer format like this? The only thing I’ve ever worked with in NLE is DV.
I’d like to be able to import this into Final Cut to edit it and then transcode to whatever formats are necessary.
TIA,
–WA
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2 Replies
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Most DVD players nowadays can play mini-DVDs–that’s why they have the depression in the middle of the tray. You might have to lose a generation, but could you go out from a DVD player to something more usable? I usually end up dubbing mini-DVDs to Mini-DV so at least I have timecode.
My Weekly Comic for TV Techs: https://fpscomic.blogspot.com
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I had the same problem. My friend who knew more about it solved the problem by converting the dvd tf files to avi or mov. He had to use the program TOAST with JAM. I think it was Toast version 9.
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