I've recently considered getting a DV camcorder and a IEEE 1394 Fire wire card. If I used these items to digitize the video from a vhs tape would it be better quality then using a analog card and vcr to digitize the same video. I guess I'm trying to get by on one card instead of spending money on two.

Thanks

-- may (mlea@uswest.net), March 16, 2000

Answers

With most DV camera/firewire systems you must record your vhs tape material onto the DV camera first and then capture it to the hard drive for processing. This will not be necessary if the camera is capable of doing an on-the-fly conversion to DV from the input connections to the camera. The Sony cameras will not do that but do it only for the output/transmission process so you can actually transmit directly to vhs tape using the camera as a converter. Current DV cameras probably have a tape limit of 1 hour which depending on what your needs are may have some effect on your funal choice. The DV based system will provide a very high class of output but it will need high capacity hard drives since captures take up about 216Megs/minute of video and unless your using W2000 the limit will be about 18 minutes in one capture and 9 minutes with "old" software.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), March 16, 2000.

It's not all true. Actually, with ulead videostudio4 and win2k. I capture a whole D8 tape 55 min at once 11 gb. One huge avi file and encoded with panasonic encoder.

-- digital (digital@usa.net), March 17, 2000.

Thanks mr digital that is exactly what I said, unless your using Win 2K you will have those other limits of 9 & 18 minutes with W98SE.

Guess your using a type 1 avi and not type 2 which has a higher data rate of capture from the same source material and therefore takes more disk space for the same video time (55 minutes in 11.7G). Hope your not editing and doing tapes as a final or the 11G you mention or my 11.7G becomes 22G or 23.4G to get an edited version back to the camera or out to a vcr.

The hidden aspects are only in the small print if your lucky, I do not think Ulead actually tells us of the need for twice the original capture space to get out an EDITED version of the video to tape because in digital you cannot go direct from the timeline you must re- render first, hence the disk capacity must be twice the capture size.

Unless you accept the mickeymouse performance of the LSX mpeg encoders in VS4 or MS6 then you will have a real problem getting a high quality VCD out by using a stand alone encoder which in the case of the Panasonic will not accept a type 1 DV avi and therefore you are forced to resize into another codec to meet the maximum 2G limit for any source file for the encoder. Anyone who takes the trouble to test the two options will see the difference and wonder what Ulead/LSX are up to in VS6 because it is advertised as a professional level tool that ends all of our problems. Well ........!

If your succeeding in using the standalone encoder with your type 1 files as input at over 2G I would be interested in hearing the details of your get around - thanks.

May: just a few more home truths about DV and associated problems when you want the best possible from your system.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), March 19, 2000.

Perhaps I should explain what happened in my Panasonic encoder when I tried to encode a full frame size type 1 DV avi from my 1394 firewire card. The encoder accepted it and read the frame rate as 0.303 fps instead of 25 and as a result said it was going to take the equivalent of - wait for it - 1 hour 16 minutes for each second of video.

Surprised? So was I.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), March 19, 2000.