Digitizing analog footage

[Craig Seeman]

While most any dub house could handle this, the key may be what format you want. You may need to decide that FIRST. For example if you want Apple ProRes files that would pretty much eliminate Windows only houses (while both Mac and Windows can play ProRes, only Macs or certain recording devices can encode to ProRes).

[Rafael Amador]

[Bob Tompkins] “I have hundreds of hours of DV tape that I may need to have made into a yet undetermined digital format.”
Bob,
DV is DIGITAL.
What you have to do is just get a desk or cheap camcorder and download to a HD.
You don’t gonna win nothing converting that to any other digital format, but bigger files.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Bob Tompkins]

Thanks Rafael. I guess what I really mean is that I want them from tape to a computer based format and I don’t want to do them myself. I have a Sony DV deck and multiple DV cameras but I am looking for a service I can pay to transfer them for me.

[Don Greening]

Just check in your area for a post house that does this sort of thing. It’s really more time consuming than anything else, as you’ve probably discovered by now. Since the skill level to do this isn’t very advanced you could post your request on your local film school’s job board. I’m sure there would be someone there willing to do the job at a much lower rate than a post house. Give them access to your tapes, DV deck and a computer and let them go at it.

There’s no reason to archive to a different recording format because all you’ll be left with are files that take up more hard drive space with absolutely no improvement in quality. keep in mind that your DV tapes are already digital so the quality will be constant during a transfer. Only when you start manipulating your DV footage (colour correction and/or other filters) should you be concerned with a drop in quality. Mini DV footage requires about 1 Gbyte of storage for every 5 minutes of tape. Any other codec better than DV will have a corresponding increase in storage space.

– Don

Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com

[Bob Tompkins]

Thanks Don. I am interested in making this historic footage available to my researchers in Final Cut Server. I am concerned that someone is going to ask me for it and expect me to do it. I want to be able to say that for 100 hours of DV footage it will cost you such and such and I can have it done for you. I will call some dupe houses in Boston and see what they are charging.

Thanks for everyone’s suggestions.