[Bluebomber21XX]

I have a client of mine that would like to go about converting his miniDV tapes of his vacations onto some DVDs. I was curious how this can be done, as I have never tried it. It's a Sony camera with a firewire hookup to it.

What is the best application to use for this type of thing? Also, what is the method one should use?

My apologies if this has been discussed already.

Cody

[SWFan]

You should be able to just hook up the Sony DV camera via Firewire to any Firewire equipped Mac with 10.4 installed on it and have iMovie/FCE/FCP recognize it natively. Nothing special you have to do.

[kinglou]

Exactly. You'll need iMovie to import and iDVD to export. I assume you don't have FCP since you've never done it before.

Once you capture it you drag those files to iDVD. It's not too hard. Dive right in. IKeep in mind that DV video is around 12gb an hour so watch your HD space.

Good luck

[stevesnj]

You can also use Quicktime Pro to import and Toast Titanium to burn to DVD

[sonicularulus]

cant you also just use toast to import and burn?

[iomatic]

I had a very similar question. What's the best method to import the DV footage and archive it, "raw", onto DVD? That is, not make a sequence, but have the clips available for later editing (to avoid tape capture again). I don't know if capturing from disc would be all that smart either, but it's just something I thought might or might not be smart.

iMovie capture --> copy to DVD --> burn? Best way?

Thanks.

[stevesnj]

iDVD has a camera to dvd feature but its encoded I beleive not raw footage. RAW DV footage won't fit on your hard drive. Camera footage is formatted in .dv format to save to a computer when imported. Though once catured to a DVD sometimes you can just change the .vob file extension to .mpeg and if your lucky the sound will save also.

[iomatic]

So no one has a methodology that's simple to use for archiving DV tapes (at least the captured computer dv) onto DVD-R? I would think this would make a good backup. Maybe, Toast has some feature? Once that source tape is gone, it's gone!

I did, however, find that I can save an iMovie project (which appears like one file, though it's probably .bundled or something) onto DVD, and copy the iDVD project file (which turns out a lot smaller than trying to archive out of iDVD.

If you want good results, you can't avoid the editing step. Capturing raw footage to DVD yields pretty bad results, even for the best camera-person.

[k_munic]

Originally Posted by iomatic

So no one has a methodology that's simple to use for archiving DV tapes (at least the captured computer dv) onto DVD-R? I would think this would make a good backup. Maybe, Toast has some feature? Once that source tape is gone, it's gone!

I did, however, find that I can save an iMovie project (which appears like one file, though it's probably .bundled or something) onto DVD, and copy the iDVD project file (which turns out a lot smaller than trying to archive out of iDVD.

If you want good results, you can't avoid the editing step. Capturing raw footage to DVD yields pretty bad results, even for the best camera-person.

one hour DV = 13GB, so back-up on 4.4GB media is a pain... Toast7 supports socalled data-spanning, easiely drop your folders onto Toast, it will ask for another dvd-r, and another, and another.......

backing-up DV best practice: copy onto another tape, second best practice: copy onto an external fw-connected drive

[iomatic]

That's nice for those who have a VTR