Hello,
Can anyone help a technical dullard who is very new to all this? Am keen to do some video editing, but get more confused the more I try and find out.
I have Hi-8 camcorder tapes, and would like to transfer them onto my PC, edit them (including adding soundracks), and then burn them to DVD (the software that came with my DVD burner is called something like MyDVD, but I’m not sure what it does!). I also have a Phillips DVD recorder, so I could record my tapes directly to DVD if this would make it easier to transfer to the PC.
I’ve looked at numerous video editing software boxes (which all say they’re great but don’t make much sense to me – so many products!), read a few magazine pieces, done some web searching, and perused these message boards, but I don’t think I’m very much the wiser, as everything assumes a certain level of knowledge – all I seem to have learnt is that I’m a bit of an idiot.
However I have learnt that I need to ‘capture’ the video and must buy a capture card, but not sure what this is. If I have already copied my tapes to DVD (using my standard DVD recorder), is it not possible to simply transfer the video data from the DVD to the PC without a capture card? Is software needed for this? Is different software needed for capture, editing, and burning? Will I be able to add and edit my MP3 audio files to the video? What's the difference between 'editing' and 'authoring'? In short, what do I need to buy?!! Is there a software package that will solve all my problems?!
Sorry for so many questions, but I’m a bit lost. Many thanks for any help any of you kind people can offer.
[This message has been edited by guarro (edited 14 November 2003).]
I don`t blame you for being confused because ther are so many routes you could go with a PC.
If I were you.
1.Buy a Digital 8 camcorder. One that can be or already is digital out via the iee1394 port on the camera.This will allow you to play your hi 8 tapes and capture direct to the PC and if the iee1394 port on your camera is enabled - record back to your camera.
2. Does your PC have a "Firewire" card which is essentially a iee1394 input to the PC. these are cheap enough to buy. Have a Look at : lynxdv.com who have a "Pyro" card that comes complete with editing software that is easy to use.
Once you have done an edit which is an .avi you need to encode it to an MPEG2 format.
That is change it from an avi to mpeg 2. Ther are plenty of software encoders to choose from. Tmpeg is reckoned to be the best.
I take it you have a DVD writer that came with my dvd.- Mydvd is an authoring programme so that you navigate you way around the disc once it`s made.
Now visit the faq section of this forum
there is a "help me I`m new" this should help big time.
Don't worry! Most of us know exactly how you feel. Although starting out in the world of PC Editing now is probably harder than it was a few years ago due to it being so popular now - too much choice and alot of rubbish out there!
The best bit of advice is TAKE YOUR TIME.
Sort out one bit at a time.
Camera, PC, any needed hardware and cables, software.
You don't say what PC setup you have. If it is a relatively fast XP system then with the right software and a bit of patience you should be well on the road to burning your first DVD.
Good luck
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Spready
2000+ Athlon XP, MSI KT3V Motherboard, 728Mb DDR Ram, 10gb Boot & 80Gb video drives, Sony DRU500 DVD/RW.
Win XP Pro, Premiere 6.5, Scenalyzer Live, OHCI Firewire, DVD Workshop, Sony TRV80 Camera
Thanks for these prompt replies. My PC set up (sorry, hadn't realised this is important!) is:
P4 2.5Ghz, 512Mb Ram, Gigabyte GA 8PE667 Ultra Motherboard, 80Gb hard disk + 180Gb second (slave?) disk, Sony DRU510A DVD+-RW, running Win XP home. I have a Sony Hi-8 Camcorder (model TRV something?)
John: I really don't want to buy a new digital camera! Are there any other options?
Not sure what a firewire card is, therefore pretty sure I haven't got one.
Spready: I seems that the more time I take the more baffled I get! Am prepared to be patient (though hopefully not as patient as I had to be when trying to use a Pinacle product called Studio 400 a few years ago - nightmare!)
PS: for a perfect example of my imbecility, I can't even find the "help me I'm new" thread on the FAQ forum - perhaps I'm just a lost cause!
quote:Originally posted by guarro:
PS: for a perfect example of my imbecility, I can't even find the "help me I'm new" thread on the FAQ forum - perhaps I'm just a lost cause!
No, it looks like it's gone 
I just did a search and a title comes up in FAQ "Help I'm New and need Help" but when I click on it a completely different topic comes up.
And, it's not in the FAQ title list.
Something seems screwed somewhere
John
There isn't a, "Help me I'm new!" thread.
What there is, though, is a section with this name on the Computer Video website:
http://www.computervideo.net/new.html
This is an overview of desktop video editing that, in truth, is out of date, and needs a thorough rewrite.
Trouble is, it's around 7,000 words long, so isn't something that can be reworked in five minutes - it was extracted from a 35-page A5 booklet we had on the cover of an early issue.
Still worth looking at, but not the definitive piece of work it once was.
As for the way forward for guarro, these are my thoughts.
First, the PC you have looks plenty good enough in terms of general spec to do what you want to do. The only thing obviously missing is a FireWire (1394) card (more on that in a bit).
If you have analogue footage, you have essentially three ways you can bring it into a PC:
1/ Buy an analogue video capture card that goes into a PCI slot in your PC. This will, typically, come with software - sometimes, not always, including DVD-burning software. You plug the camcorder into the S-video and L/R audio sockets on the card. There are also cards which have digital inputs AND analogue inputs. The best known products are from Pinnacle, Matrox and Canopus.
Look out especially for the Canopus Let's Edit RT and RT +. Both come with editing and burning software - the + version has a card with an analogue output, not just an analogue input, which is nice if, for instance, you want to take an edited project and record it to VHS or S-VHS.
2/ Buy an external USB-2 box that turns analogue video into DVD-standard MPEG-2 video in real-time. To work properly, this will require your PC to have USB 2.0, but I think that your motherboard does have USB 2.0. You connect the camcorder to the S-video and L/R audio sockets on the box and you connect the box to a USB 2.0 socket on the PC. These boxes come with capture software and DVD-burning software.
Available brands include Pinnacle, Snazzi, Adaptec and ADS - and my choice would probably be ADS.
3/ Buy an analogue<>DV converter box. For this you need a FireWire card to go into a PCI slot in your PC. The camcorder connects to the box, the box connects to FireWire card.
Some boxes do come with editing and/or DVD burning software but it's not the norm.
Brands include ADS, Canopus, Datavideo, Dazzle. I'll let someone else give a recommendation, cos I've had little hands on experience.
One thing to know. If you no longer need the product after you have captured your Hi8 footage, you can sell it on our Classified forum.
And, of course, you can also buy it secondhand on that forum and sell it on again after you've captured your footage.
Bob C
As it is, u`re PC is well enough endowed to do almost any type of editing. Exactly what else you`ll need comes down to what you WANT to do. It all comes down to what your expections are.
If you are simply wanting to find the EASIEST route to getting your footage into your PC so as to simply add music, titles etc (in short, jazz your footage up) then all u`ll require is basic software - u already have the neccessary other. There are s/w packages around that`ll allow u to...
bring in footage burned on u`re set-top DVD writer...
edit it (i.e rearrange the bits u want, discard the bits u don`t)...
add u`re Wow! trimmings (trnsistions, music, voice-over, wacky titles etc)...
"author" u`re DVD (add chapter points, scene selection etc)...
burn to disc (i think u`ve got that bit)
Thing is, DVD burners write the data on the disc in the MPEG2 format. Without going into the reasons here, just realise that MPEG is technically more difficult to edit than Digital Video (DV). This will heavily limit your choice over editing software, as most programs are designed for DV editing, & limit your abilities over what u CAN do.
Packages ARE out there however, tho` i couldn`t suggest one over another cos i`ve never had any interest in this way of going about editing.
That`s due to finding the benefits in quality, creativity, convenience (i could go on) of using DV & firewire as utterly compelling. The leap from Hi8 to DV (of any type) is fundamental.
But, as already stated, it comes down to your expectations - & aspirations.
U`ve already seen your footage on DVD - how do u rate it? Are u satisfied? Would u consider a HUGE improvement in all the above area`s worth the cost of somekind of digital device?
Only u can answer for yourself.
regards, josjac
Hi Guarro,
I was in the same position as you a few months back, but I'm getting there now. I bought a new PC (P4 2.8Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 120Gb Hard Disk) and saw that it came with a DVD burner. I thought it would be useful to burn all my Video8 and Hi8 to DVD as an archive before the Hi8 Sony Camcorder gives up. I bought the Pinnacle Studio Moviebox USB, it sits on the desk with phono and S Video in and out, and converts your analogue video to MPEG. You can then edit and burn with the bundled Studio 8. This cost me £135 from Amazon. Since setting this up a couple of months ago, I have learnt a lot from the Pinnacle forums and this one, so take a good look around. A lot of people seem to have trouble with Pinnacle Studio burning to DVD, but the few I have done seem OK. The trick seems to be to try a few brands of blank disk (buy a sample pack) and then burn to RW, test in your set top player, then copy the DVD to R media. Some players play different media better than others.
As I said, reading posts here and at the various support forums you will learn a lot - I have, and also people have been very helpful answering my queries.
Dave
Sorry "G" didn`t know that the "help me I`m new" bit had died. (I didn`t even know it was ill).
Lots of useful advice anyway.
Many thanks for all these helpful replies. I really feel as though it's starting to make some sense now, especially when re-reading some of the stuff that had me completely bewildered before!
I'm thinking of going for the Pinnacle Studio Deluxe product, which seems to be fairly future proof and should do everything I need it to. However, I have a couple of questions (surprise surprise!), which I hope somebody out there might be able to help me with before I fork out my hard earned (or they may just demonstrate that I haven't grasped this quite as well as I thought I had!):
1/ Josjac mentioned that video captured in MPEG2 is more difficult to edit than video captured in DV. Davemitch confirms that the Studio Moviebox USB product captures video on MPEG2. So, does anyone know in which format Studio Deluxe captures the video? If it is in MPEG2, what problems might this cause me?
2/ I have read somewhere (perhaps on 'Sparky's World' web site) that when it comes to buring the edited video to disc, Studio 7 called upon the source tapes in order to compile the final edit (apparently when the original video is captured it is only captured in very low quality just for editing purposes, and then the source tapes are used at the end to regain the image quality). This sounds worrying like the old Studio 400, which I found impossible to get anything like frame accurate editing, as it relied on the accuracy of identifying individual frames on the camcorder cassette while shuttling madly backwards and forwards. Is a similar process involved with Studio 8? If so, I think I'll give it a wide berth!
3/ The specification info on the Pinnacle website says "Import and Edit ....MPEG2 files". Does this mean that I would be able to transfer video recorded on my Philips set-top DVD recorder, much like ripping a CD?
Again, many apologies for so many questions, but I promise if I ever get to master this I'll do my best to put something back into the community! Thanks.
Hi again,
This is my oppinion here and I am no expert but...
I would go down the DV route.
Why?
1. You have a massive slave (Video) drive. You can capture all your filmed footage onto this drive in it's original condition. If you have DV footage it is captured and edited as DV, if you have Hi8 footage you are editing that.
You still keep all the original footage on tape (until you want to wipe over it) but you can edit till your hearts content with the best possible footage.
2. There are now alot of inexpensive editing programs that can edit DV footage. Even if it doesn't capture - you can use other software that are also widely used.
3. DV is a little more future proof. You will probobly end up going down this route if your patience holds out. You will then see how easy scene selection capturing, editing, authoring and buring really is.
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Spready
2000+ Athlon XP, MSI KT3V Motherboard, 728Mb DDR Ram, 10gb Boot & 80Gb video drives, Sony DRU500 DVD/RW.
Win XP Pro, Premiere 6.5, Scenalyzer Live, OHCI Firewire, DVD Workshop, Sony TRV80 Camera
MPEG is a distribution format - Unsuitable for editing.
The main compression scheme in MPEG is the interframe compression. MPEG video frames are of three types:
I. P. and B.
I (intra-frame) frames are only intra-frame compressed, and can be decompressed alone.
P (preceding) frames are predicted from the preceding I frame, and B (bi-directional) frames are compressed using both the preceding and the following frames. Naturally, P and B frames are much smaller in size than I frames.
This heavy dependence on interframe compression means that MPEG suffers from drawbacks with frame drops.
If an I frame is dropped, all frames will be unreadable until next I frame. If you want to deliberately drop frames to decrease the bit rate, you can only choose to drop B and P frames.
Basically, you can only edit MPEG video at each I frame, as the rest of the video is created using predictions.
My advice is to stick to capturing in DV mode if you want to be able to edit the video.
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Mike
Thank guys - I now feel educated and persuaded!