Ken Jones
Forum Replies Created
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I assumed you had a miniDV camcorder when your original post stated:
“My plan was to dub them onto miniDV, going from my old Digital 8 Handycam to a miniDV camcorder, through the yellow/white/red RCA connectors, and then Log and Capture the miniDV tape. “
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You will need a firewire cable with a 4-pin connector on both ends. Generally, camcorders have a 4-pin connector while desktop computers have 6-pin connectors.
When I transferred my 10-12, 60 minute 8mm and Hi8 tapes, I knew that I did not want to capture everything. I also had to give the digital8 camcorder back to my friend. MiniDV tapes cost about $3 each, so for an investment of $30-$40 I now had new digital masters I could capture with my own miniDV camcorder at my leisure. I ultimately decided to only capture two of the tapes and the rest of the new minDV tapes have sat on a shelf. These days I don’t have any way of playing an 8mm or Hi8 tape, but I have several options for capturing from a miniDV tape. On top of that, my 8mm and Hi8 tapes were starting to degrade, so I figured it best transfer everything to a new digital tape.
I am a BIG proponent of batch capturing with time code. I hardly ever transfer anything as an uncontrollable device because sometimes I will want to recapture a tape. You can’t do that if you don’t capture it with time code. If I am in a hurry and working on a deadline and the client doesn’t want to pay for the the extra time to transfer the footage that is their decision. But for my own personal projects I will go ahead and transfer everything over to a tape with time code.
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Doesn’t your Digital 8 camcorder have a firewire jack? A few years ago I borrowed a Digital 8 camcorder and dubbed all of my 8mm and Hi8 to MiniDV over a firewire cable. The dubs looked perfect. I then captured the MiniDV tapes to FCP.
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[Chris Tompkins] “Also, I find when you have many interviews in a short time, Using a boom is easier b/c there is no fussing around with them and the lav.”
My thoughts exactly!
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I map my keyboard out the same as Shane. I use zoom in & zoom out constantly. Another timeline favorite is “Shift Z”.
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Is the network drive you are using for your scratch disk formatted as FAT32? FAT32 can only capture 2GB at a time.
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I will second the Canon VIXIA cameras. I own a HF100 and I am continually amazed at the image quality.
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I had a hard drive with about 200GB of P2 files sent over from Norway a few months ago. I asked them to send it the fastest way possible. They sent it using DHL’s fastest, most expensive service and it still took 3 days. It sat in U.S. customs for over 24 hours.
I am used to FedEx Priority Overnight with delivery the next day before before 10:30 AM so I was quite surprised when it took THREE DAYS from Europe!
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Leave the interlacing as it is. It’s the scaling that causes HD footage to look bad on an SD DVD. Set the Resize filter to “Best”.
Frame Controls: “On”
Resize Filter: “Best” (this is the most important setting IMO)
Output fields: Same As Source
Deinterlace: “Fast” (this actually won’t be doing anything but no reason to slow it down by selecting “Best”)
Rate Conversion: “Fast”Adjust your bit rate to as high as you can go and still fit it all on a dual-layer DVD. Your total media size should be no more than around 8GB. Save yourself some time and use a One Pass CBR.
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If you play back the the tape in the HVR-V1U it should show all that info on the flip-out display.