[Hinson]

Hi all...

So here's my situation: I have a Hi8 camcorder and a Canopus ADVC100 video converter that I'm using to convert the tapes to DV format via iMovie. I want to do two things: First, I want to keep a DVD record of the original, raw footage (with chapter marks and a nice iDVD theme added, of course). Second, I want to eventually re-mix various pieces of the tapes into nice DVD features with titles, effects, background music, etc. etc. Ultimately the movies are meant to be played on a standard TV with a DVD player.

Obviously I can't keep all the raw footage on my drives because of the size of the DV files, but I don't want to have to go through the process of taking the video off the tape again.

So, my original idea was to convert the video from the tapes, save the raw footage to DVD's, then, when I'm ready, place various scenes I select from the raw DVD's back to my hard drive as DV files again for further editing, etc.

Thus, here are my questions:

(1) Is there a better way for me to save the raw footage to a reasonable number of DVDs for later retrieval into iMovie? (Obvious concerns are file size and quality loss if I'm converting to another format.)

(2) If saving the raw footage as a video DVD is the way to go, what's the best way to read an iDVD-created DVD onto my Mac as DV formatted video (preferably using my superdrive)?

Thanks for any help!!!


-Jason

[Hinson]

Answering my own questions (or one of them)...

After searching for and trying a few options, I found what I believe is the best option so far. I like using MPEG Streamclip (free from http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html) to convert video from a DVD to a DV format file. You can select a specific section of the DVD to convert and MPEG Streamclip creates the DV file with video and audio. The quality looked quite acceptable as well.

So, I'd love to hear from others about what they recommend, but at least I have a decent option if nothing else comes long.


-Jason

[chabig]

Well I just used Quicktime to compress a 13GB DV file to just under 4GB, which happens to fit onto a single DVD. I'm next going to use Final Cut Express to edit the Quicktime file, before transferring to iDVD for the final product.

Chris

[k_munic]

my thoughts:

yes, mpeg to streamclip is the no1 choice for re-importing dvds into edit apps.

BUT:
time.
you play (realtime) your movies into your mac; you're authering a dvd; you burn a dvd; you re-import the dvd (lots of computation; loss of quality!) - even on a fast Mac you spend hours for every single tape…-

1h dv = ~12Gb, which means on a standard drive of 120Gb you have around 12 hours of video…- (= 12 dvd-rs + importing + authoring + de-rendering… ?)

fw cases around 60$, 120Gb hd around 80$ ? correct? you don't need a case for every drive, to build it into the fw case is done within minutes…-
I "collect" some raw footage on drives (without fw case); as said, it's done in a few minutes, to use them in my edit app - high quality, and in the right format…-

for me, this is another option

[grovberg]

Personally, I don't think it's worth it. I keep all my archive video on DV tape. Think about all the time you're going to spend converting, burning, recompressing or whatnot in order to save yourself an hour or so of reimporting. Doesn't seem worth it to me.

And if you're worried about the tape failing physically from wear and tear, from what I've seen, DVD-R is not really a great archive format either.

Just my $0.02.
-Grover