Getting DV footage onto PC?
RWB
Icrontian
I can't seem to figure out how to get the stuff I have filmed onto my PC, it has FireWire(i.Link) and USB2.0 and it was shown as connected, but I couldn't figure out how to get the stuff onto my PC.
It's a Sony MiniDV cam and it came with some appearently ****ty software called Picture Package, and I am familiar with most this type of software, but I couldn't get anything copied over.
Any ideas? It's like there is nothing in the camera or omething and the USB streaming won't even see the device??? I am confused!
It's a Sony MiniDV cam and it came with some appearently ****ty software called Picture Package, and I am familiar with most this type of software, but I couldn't get anything copied over.
Any ideas? It's like there is nothing in the camera or omething and the USB streaming won't even see the device??? I am confused!
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My response will not really help you, but I did want to say that when I borrowed a sony minidv from the university I go to, I found that I could not download to my pc, but it would download fine to an iBook no problem. They do not provide software, of course, but you have that---so I am not sure what the problem is.
I have issues of my own with trying out the sony and canon mini dvs. When I figure out my way around here, I will post some questions and gripes of my own.
Good luck with figuring out your problem!
Software to do the capture. You can't really "download" from the camera. It needs to be captured through the firewire(I-Link) and if the software isn't up to much (or you have none at all), then you are not going to get very far
So why does the I-Book work? I _believe_ (don't quote me) that that notebook comes with capture & processing software
Best start looking for some decent software, Pinnacle make some reasonable capture and processing software
It is that or install Windows XP and use Windows movie maker 2 but your mileage may vary with that...
I am hoping to get my own mini Dv in the near future (as in this NEXT MONTH!) and now am having the jitters over having to read reviews and weigh all the options.
Can you point me in any directions for help in buying a mini dv?
My husband seems to like Canon (he recently got a Canon digital camera...likes the manual features), but I kind of liked the Sony with the compact-ness of it all. A steady-shot feature would be nice.
Thanks again.
I figured out how to capture finnallly. Windows Movie Maker 2 for XP can do it just fine now. Just use the "Digital Device Format, and it sends the footage through completly uncompressed, the file sizes reach beyond 2GB, unless you have it set to split the files.
Canon Camera's REQUIRE lots of light, as in any shots at night or indoors WILL come out grainy/noisey. Sony's have a Carl Ziess Lens, very nice... Plus this HC30 is very small, TINY... damn I love this camera!
Look for one
I have got a Sony DCR PC101 DV camcorder. I have had it for over a year now and I have still not managed to get it to transfer video to my PC via firewire. I have tried the bundled Sony software, Pinnacle studio 8 and the PC wont even recognise the camera is connected. I have e-mailed Sony and they say it is not their problem, it must be a windows/PC problem. However a couple of days ago I borrowed a JVC GR DVL 100 (sommat like that) and it instantly connected to my PC and within a few hours I had some footage on a DVD.
Therefore:
I know the PC is set up right.
I know the Sony cam is working coz the Sony shop got it to work on a Sony PC.
It doesn't make sense. If Sony are using firewire (they call it i-link) they must have a different protocol to other cameras (at least JVC). I really do like Sony gear and the camera in itself is fantastic, great quality video, small, all the gadgets, but it won't f'ing connect to my PC.
If you search other DV forums it is all over like a rash. I really am pushed to the limit with Sony coz I have spent £900 on a camera when I could have spent half that and had it work with my PC.
PS I am running XP Pro, Asus A7N8X-E mobo, AMD 2600+ Barton, 1Gig crucial RAM, Maxtor 160GB SATA video editing drive.
Windows Movie Maker 2 in XP does it, in fact when I plug in the Camera it pops up asking me how I want to transferr the Video, either through Movie Maker 2 or through Windows Encoder.
Other programs too, but none of them are free. But my ASUS MB came with bundled software that did the job as well.
I
ll do a quick Tutorial on what to do if you want? Do you have Winders XP?
But I can't even get XP to "bing bong" when I plug the camera in. It just doesn't see it.
Yes turned on and in play or rec.
That would be great
As I already said, the method I'll be showing in this tutorial will use Windows Movie Maker 2 in Windows XP. There are some free programs out there that will allow you capture DV tape and may have even come with your DV Cam.
In my case I am using a Sony DCR-HC30 which came with some very awful software that I refuse to reinstall. But the camcorder takes good clean video, and I of course want that good clean video on my PC to edit;and I want that good clean video on my computer uncompressed. So this can take up several gigabytes of your hard drive space depending on how much you want to capture. Capturing an hour of DV can take up over 10GB of space, in fact the last tape I imported was just a couple minutes over an hour and took up 12.6GB. So be sure you have plenty of hard drive space allocated.
For my system setup, I have my 120GB hard drive partitioned as the following:
-6GB for Windows XP Pro Partition with 1GB of space for my Page File
-10GB Games Partition for all my Games
-10GB Programs Partition for all my Programs
-85GB Digital Media Partition for EVERYTHING else.
My Digital Media Partition is where I keep all my personal stuff including any captured DV. Depending on your own hard drive setup, the partition you want to capture the DV to will vary.
So what you're going to be needing for this tutorial is of course your DV Camcorder, a FireWire Cable, and Windows Movie Maker 2 which, unfortunately, further requires Windows XP Home/Pro. You should also have a large hard drive, and a decent computer of around 1GHz to 1.5GHz and I would say 256MB of memory should cut it, but I wouldn't be doing this on an old Pentium 133 even if the software allowed it.
So, now let's get started shall we?
So you start off here, at the windows desktop.
Yeah, my system is nice and clean, ain't it beautiful? The document “DV.sxw” is my OpenOffice document for this tutorial. So just ignore it from now on.
Go ahead and plug in the DV Cam to your PC via the FireWire cable and you should get a pop up message like the one below.
Go ahead and double click or highlight Capture Video and hit OK.
NOTE If you don't get this message, I don't know what to tell you. But if I were you I would see if the DV Cam has a special setting you must work with, or RTFM. I can't troubleshoot what I can't see. Quit that job long ago, or got laid off, whatever.
OK, so now you should be seeing this.
Go ahead and put in the file name and where you want the Captured DV to to be placed. Remember, you want to put it somewhere you have plenty of space. If you haven't altered where your “My Documents” or the “My Videos” folder is placed, then it is probably still on your (C:) drive, which if you have your HDD partitioned, it may not have enough space. Hit next when you're done.
So now your on this screen.
I know what your thinking, “I'm gonna hit 'Best quality for playback on my computer” which actually has “recommended” between parenthesis. NO! You're not, it is NOT the best, and in fact, it's pretty lame. You're going to want to use 'Digital Device format (DV-AVI)'. You can even use the “Custom” one and choose “DV-AVI (NTSC)” which is the same thing. This is for uncompressed, unaltered 720x480 video.
When you hit next, you should be looking at this.
At the bottom for the only 3 options you really have at this point, I don't have any of them checked, because I can create clips on my own if I want, and the rest is self explanatory. When you create clips, it will create clips where it has seen it turned off or stopped recording. So just click “Start Capture” and it will automatically playback from your DV Cam and you watch the progress and even see how much it has already taken up on your hard drive.
When you click “Stop Capture” it will go through an “Import” phase like this.
Once it is all done, you will see the clip in the window, and can play it back within Windows Movie Maker 2 or you can go to that folder and open it up in Windows Media Player or which ever player you use for av i's.
So now you should have yourself fully uncompressed video from your DV Camcorder, which you may have gotten at a wedding, party, or even from your TV or Computer. I will be working on more tutorials similar to this one using other programs and other techniques and showing you how to create clean compressed videos to play from your PC or DVD Player onto your TV using the proper methods.
I hope this helped you, and if you are wanting to edit this video, other tutorials are on the way.
EDIT!/
I fixed it, I capitolized some stuff I shouldn't have, I think my server is UNIX based, and that's the way I like it
I am looking at either a Canon ZR-70mc or a Canon ZR-90.
Of course it hasn't worked with Image Mixer. But with Adobe, my camera isn't listed in the list of devices. I just kinda looked at the Windows Movie Maker (I don't think it's version 2), but couldn't find anything that actually worked.
Do you know if there's a way to do it with the software I have right now, without paying any money? (Since I just spent about $950 on the camera and accessories) I guess I wouldn't mind spending a few extra bucks on the i.link if it's a necessity.
Thanks
James, I think you are writing to RWB, not me, correct? Anyway, to put my little two cents in, from what I know (which is not much) you only use the USB to transfer photos, not video. Is that what you are doing?
I am trying out the Canon ZR-70 and I bought a Monster Firelink AV (IEEE 1394 Digital AV cable) 4-pin to 4-pin so I could get video onto the pc. Using Windows moviemaker.
Okay, so I'm new at all of this, don't know if it helps any! Good luck. I'm sure someone else will respond.
Firewire Cables don't cost too much, like $10 give or take. You may want to look around, BestBuy is a bit tOO damned expencive for cables, I think Radio Shack may be much cheaper.
Guess I need to go spend more money! Why can't they just put all the cables you need in one big box?
It kinda pisses me off that Sony never explains how to do anything except what is worthless to know. Their actual products are good, but they should definately fire the guy who writes their manuals.
edit: Okay, I was able to capture the video i wanted from the camera using Windows Movie Maker, but it only captured at like a 320 by 240 resolution. I'm pretty sure it is capable of doing 640 by 480 or maybe higher, I can't remember. Is it that the firewire cord can do the same as USB, but at better quality or something?
One more question, if I do buy the firewire thing, do I need to get any kind of card so that I can plug it into my computer, or is there already a port for it (im using a GeForce 4 Ti-4400).
I am guessing you used USB 2.0 for Capturing the DV thatw as only 320x240? And you made sure you used "DV-AVI" for when you captured? Doesn't make too much since too me that it captured at such a small size, but I'll see what happens when I capture through USB2.0 real quick for ya.
You did capture through USB and not FireWire? Just curious, cuase I never tried Capturing through USB
I didn't get a pop-up asking for what I wanted tod o with the device after I changed the setting within my DV Cam to accept this type of transfer, and the memory stick is not showing up either, which leads me to beleive even more that doing this through USB is more of a hassle then anything cuase now if I wanted to use the memory stick, I'd have to unplug, reset the settings I changed, then replug and do whatever.
So I went into Windows Movie Maker, clicked on Capture From Video Device
*Note, I had to install the driver before it would let me do the above.
It gave me the "Video Capture Wizard" I didn't change any settings here, no need from what I saw. But you do need to click on "Configure" then "Video Settings" and change the resolution to 640x480 there, you can even change other settings, but for USB I wouldn't the other stuff is more for Pro stuff, which I find odd that Movie Maker even had at all...
So then it let me capture the video. but here is the bad part of the USB thing I have found sofar, it won't let you capture in DV-AVI mode... too much bandwidth I suppose. The best I could do is to choose "Other" and NOT "Best Quality for playback on my Computer" as that would just capture to your PC as 320x240.
Choose "Other" then "High quality video (large)" and you should be set...
Now the compression was odd to me, but I doubt it would be too noticible on a TV, but on a PC or HDTV you would see the ****tiness of the USB Capture. Although for the filesize it was.. not that bad.
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=161
It's the realime editing hardware support I like though the breakout cable doesn't have firewire.
ahaha! Premier is nice too, all that bundled together is a good deal I would say.
You want the hardware acceleration for transitions etc. That way you don't have to render to disk before you output or have to render complete clips. You only render the transition itself.
Both Dexter and I have putzed around with various non-linear edit suites over the years. There was one for Windows he's looking at right now which I'm going to take a peek at. Forget the name but I'll find it.
Just asked MATROX for the RTX.100...let's see what that offers.
OK, I followed every step and it still does not work. I bought a Sony HC40 and so far I have not been able to capture the video from the tape onto my PC. The Camcorder is connected using a firewire port. Windows XP Pro finds the cam as soon as I turn it on and asks if I want to capture using movie maker. However, when I get to the "capture video" part the camera will start playing the tape, but I cannot preview the video nor does it capture. the error message I get is "video not captures correctly. Verify that your video camera and capture device are configured properly"...I am stuck.. :banghead: I don't know what to do to make this work and I am getting pretty frustrated. Does that mean I have to buy a seperate software (i.e. Pinnacle) to make this work? Any help is appreciated.