digital video production - HELP me figure what I need to record VHS to cd/DVD :30,:60

[J.J.]

Have my back up against the production wall, and the biggest drag on my client's willingness to spend more money advertising is the difficulty and wait to get thier commercials shot. Scheduling is almost out a month (ONE production person for the entire state!) and mailing tapes back and forth by pony express can make a spot out of date almost b4 it can run. I know I need a digital video camera that is super-hi8 or mini-DV format to match the production system signal feed.

A computer with at least 1.8 ghz, and something like adobe premier movie 'ware.

in the meantime, with my crappy old amd k6 500mgz and voodoo5 agp, what could I do to get set up to at least start converting vhs tapes to a form that I can burn to a cdrom and take along with me to show people? - it's pretty hard to talk about thier commercial when they do not have a tv/vcr in their office, and I have even lugged my own vcr/tv to clients business' so they can see the spot.

Well, everyone of them has a computer with a cdrom drive, soooooo, you see where I am going with this.....

If anyone out there has some pithy and cogent opining/experience, puh-leeeeze don't be bashful about sharing what U know.... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Luvian]

Well... I would just get a video card with a tv in/out ports, and then connect it to my vcr, play the tape, and record it on my computer.

[The Hunter of Jahanna]

There is Luvians suggestion , or you could go to radio shack and get a "dazzle box" for $20. It has 3 inputs that come from a VCR and 1 out put that goes into a usb slot on the comp. It lets you copy vhs movies and things onto your computer.

[J.J.]

Can it be that easy? a $20 box at radioshaq? I will be enquiring about that today, there is a radio shack that I have been calling on right next to the car dealer I am presenting to this morning.

What form does that box put the video into? MPEG2?

at least I dont have to worry too much about file size, since I am dealing mainly with 30 second spots. My longest tape is the first q promo reel from ESPN, weighs in at all of 8 minutes.

USA net is 4 and 1/2 minutes. so, space is not a critical factor.

the other half of this problem is what it takes to play the video from the cdrom
I know they all have windows systems, will that box convert to something simple that windows media can play, without having to download a bunch of quicktime type media plug ins.

thankx for the help, I'll let you know what radioshack has to say 4 themselves.

It isn't quite THAT easy... you have to render the video, and with an AMD K series CPU you are looking at a sloooooow process.
I have been converting my VHS tape collection to DVD format for a while. I use an A to D conversion box to convert the analog signal from the VCR to a digital stream, then use software to turn that into a DVD format...I don't have the details in front of me at the moment, but I do know that converting a 45 minute tape to DVD takes about 15 minutes on my 2.2GHz Intel box, the AMD chip is lacking the horsepower you need to conver due to the poor floating point capabilities of the chip.

[J.J.]

Magik, thanks for the info. I do not need to deal with more than 60 seconds of video at any one time, and once it is on a disc, then copying becomes much faster.

Is there anything I can do with my little pny processor right now? and what about the digital outputs on my vcr? does that make the process possible with my system?

I also have the s-video output on a camcorder with vcr mode - would that send a more easily convertable input?

I appreciate your help

You have digital outputs on your VCR? What kind (make and model) of vcr do you have? Even with the S-VHS connector you still need to convert the analog signal. My converter is a bit better than the Radio Shack Dazzle variety but they work the same way....RCA out or S-VHS out of the VCR to the converter, then from the converter via firewire to the computer, where I use Studio 7 or some other video software to convert the stream to the proper DVD format (MPEG2 I think). Some video cards have tv in ports and may be able to do the a to d conversion for you...but Im not up on those

[Thoran]

the biggest problem you'll have with your rig is going to be getting a decent quality cap. Unless you spend a lot on a dedicated card you'll be limited to less than 320x200 at 20-30 fps (possibly less). If that quality is ok then all I'd suggest is not to bother with premeire, get one of the less expensive editing packages.

I run Premiere on a liquid cooled Athlon XP 2000+ with a gig of DDR333, a firewire interface to a JVC GR-DVM50U Cybercam, and a DVD+RW... I can get to 640x480, but I have trouble getting a full 30fps capture.

I'm unfamiliar with the USB based device, but you need to keep in mind that a 320x200 x 24bit Color x 30fps image is about 6 megabytes/s of uncompressed data... USB will not transfer at even this rate (limited to about 1.5MB/s unless it's USB version 2.0 - which is still rare) and I doubt and inexpensive device is capable of encoding the stream on the fly. 640x480 x 24bit Color x 30fps is almost 40 megabytes/s... most hard drives will barf on this stream and I have to encode it on the fly to run it at all.

SO... if you can keep the frame size small you should be able to do it with an inexpensive capture card and the software that comes with it... if you want enough quality to justify Premeire or some other high end editing software then IMO you should spend the cash and get a box capable of doing decent work.

[ 02-28-2003, 12:31 PM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

[J.J.]

Originally posted by Thoran: the biggest problem you'll have with your rig is going to be getting a decent quality cap. Unless you spend a lot on a dedicated card you'll be limited to less than 320x200 at 20-30 fps (possibly less). If that quality is ok then all I'd suggest is not to bother with premeire, get one of the less expensive editing packages. I run Premiere on a liquid cooled Athlon XP 2000+ with a gig of DDR333, a firewire interface to a JVC GR-DVM50U Cybercam, and a DVD+RW... I can get to 640x480, but I have trouble getting a full 30fps capture. I'm unfamiliar with the USB based device, but you need to keep in mind that a 320x200 x 24bit Color x 30fps image is about 6 megabytes/s of uncompressed data... USB will not transfer at even this rate (limited to about 1.5MB/s unless it's USB version 2.0 - which is still rare) and I doubt and inexpensive device is capable of encoding the stream on the fly. 640x480 x 24bit Color x 30fps is almost 40 megabytes/s... most hard drives will barf on this stream and I have to encode it on the fly to run it at all. SO... if you can keep the frame size small you should be able to do it with an inexpensive capture card and the software that comes with it... if you want enough quality to justify Premeire or some other high end editing software then IMO you should spend the cash and get a box capable of doing decent work.

Thoran, thanks for the info, but I am afraid that I am unfamiliar with the value x value x fps ratio. I do know that broadcast quality (400 lines per inch) is wya out of my reach now, but what I need to accomplish is to take the vhs dub I get from our production dept. and play/convert it to a digital format - I have several cd and dvd copying programs that I collected off the net that purport to do this and convert to mpeg2 or 4 format. all I need is to make a cdrom with my client's commercial on it in a format that their office computer with a cdrom drive can play. hopefully, something that windows media can play, since I don't want to have to mess around with them having to sownload flash player or some other video/media player plug-in.

with an 80g HD as storage and only 30 or 60 second length of video to convert at any one time, space is not one of my worries (right?) - just getting their spot on a disc so they can look at it right then and there, and not having to leave a tape behind, then calling to ask "have you watched it yet? have you watched it yet?"

with that in mind, and my puny processor, do you think i can do it, and what do i need to do it? - btw, sorry, NOT digital out on my vcr. I wonder if i could hook up my vcr as input to my digital cable box, then would I have a digital out signal if I hooked up to the digital outs that thing DOES have?? ever hear of anyone trying that? - I don't know how or what I could hook up to the dig outs on my cable box to see if it was actually doing it, but that is why you have a set-top converter box in your house when you get digital cable - is that not just one big a to d converter, kinda like that dazzle box???

......darn it, every answer leads to three more q's...

[J.J.]

Bump for some techno help...