VHS editing on iMac

[AndyWatkins]

Hi,

I live in the UK and have an iMac DV and a digital camcorder. I am happily editing my new movies with iMovie and think it's a superb package, no grumbles about anything, (that's a first!)

HOWEVER

I also have loads of old VHS videos which I would like to edit to a simillar standard as the DV videos, (OK I know source quality is a little lower).

My Camcorder does not have a composite VHS input and nor does the iMAC.....

I have had USB devices offered to me that will feed the video in at 384 X 260ish as a quick time movie, and then I use QT Pro to export this as a DV feed apparently.

Now I had a couple of queries about this, I was uncertain how much quality I would lose doing this, most people have assured me the loss would be minimal.

Next BIG problem is rendering times, when I input my DV video into iMovie, I tried exporting it as a high quality QT format video, it was taking 5-10 seconds real time to render every FRAME of the video, IF it will take QT Pro the same amount of time to convert the input VHS video images to a DV feed then the sun will probably have imploded before the iMac finished rendering the 10+ hours of tape I have to do (OK I know I have to do it in 20 minute chunks because of small iMac hard disk)

Could someone comment on whether this rendering would in fact take for ever?

These machines cost about £110 in the UK.

I have also been offered 2 much more powerful machines, one not yet released yet called a Dazzler Hollywood (i think) for about £300 that can take composite VHS video and translate it into DV feed in real time and feed it into the iMac firewire card.

My ASSUMPTION is that this will provide a slightly better quality image, and be enormously faster?

I forget the name of the other machine DAC1 or something like that?

Andy Watkins

[s.hood]

Andy
those little USB converters are only good for repurposing analogue video for the web or CD-rom. A 384x288 pixel size captured video is half the resolution of PAL 768x576. So if you capture using one of those babies with the intention of going back to fullscreen video tape, you will loose at least half the quality - resulting in severe pixelation of the image. Sure if you keep the image 384x288 you will have a nice little picture - but play that full screen size and you will cry! Whoever told you the image quality would be the same is - well - ignorant.

The only hope for converters are the few in development that offer a live conversion of analogue (like VHS) source to firewire.

Your best bet is going to be to connect a DV cam/deck with analogue-IN to a VHS deck and record onto a DV tape for capture via firewire to your iMac. As far as I know the Sony GVD300 VTR has this ability for about £700. You may also be able to rent a deck from someone.

The "rendering" that you speak of is merely using QTpro to convert from one codec/format to another. A much better option is MediaCleaner - it has many more options and is significantly faster for converting codecs (ie DV-PAL to Cinepak or Sorenson.). A free, trimmed down version of this piece of software is available with EditDV unplugged from DigitalOrigin.com.

------------------
regards
Steve

[ O U T L A W : S D G ]

[iMike]

A sony Digital8 with inputs enabled would also do the job, for about £500. The DAC1 you mentioned I believe is a Sony converter, which I believe is still NTSC only.

[Neil B]

iMike is right, Digital8 is about your best bet. I have a TRV110, DVin enabled and I can even record programs off the telly and then edit them with iMovie.
Just imagine your own episode of Coronation Street with Pat from Eastenders and Jimmy from Brookside.

[AndyWatkins]

Mike,

Thanks, you are probably right, I chased up the Sony product and that was deffinitely NSTC only, I did find another that was PAL but that cost £500. This Dazzler Hollywood product which comes out in the states late November and UK in January does the same thing and should cost £300, I'll probably buy one of them.

Unfortunately I have only just bought my Panasonic DS8 for about £400, which was a bargain, excellent camera, superb picture quality, can't beat DV for £400 ! However it doesn't have VHS in capability, hadn't realised I would need it at the time, with hindsight I should have bought a slightly more expensive camera that did, hindsight is a wonderful thing like that!

Only problem with my Panasonic is sound, sometimes it's fine and sometimes it's all distorted and dodgy, I can think of two things that may be causing it.

1) Before I knew what I was doing I set the sound to 12 bit quality rather than 16bit so I could add another sound track. (Didn't realise you didn't need this if you did the editing on an iMac.

2) Strange sounds are often caused when there is little foreground talking etc but strong background noise, (small waterfall etc), seems as though the camera thinks things are quite so magnifies the volume, and then gets carried away with the background??

Never had this problem on my old JVC VHS-C video camera.

Andy


[B]A sony Digital8 with inputs enabled would also do the job, for about £500. The DAC1 you mentioned I believe is a Sony converter, which I believe is still NTSC only.

[AndyWatkins]

Neil,

Thanks for reply, please seem my reply to Mike.

Andy


iMike is right, Digital8 is about your best bet. I have a TRV110, DVin enabled and I can even record programs off the telly and then edit them with iMovie.
Just imagine your own episode of Coronation Street with Pat from Eastenders and Jimmy from Brookside.[/QUOTE]

[AndyWatkins]

Steve,

Very pleased to get your reply before I wasted over £100. Didn't sound right to me.

Presumably if I wait to get one of these devices that take data direct from VHS to DV in real time such as the forthcoming Dazzler Hollywood, then I don't need a product like media cleaner to convert the codecs for me, as it will be going straight into the imac in a DV stream format that imovie can read.

I don't really have any interest in converting any of my movies to computer format to save to CD, or put on webs etc, they are all far to large and too poor quality to bother with.

When we get writtable DVD's that I can output my DV feed directly to, so I get the same quality as my digital camcorder, and the disc can hold a sensible amount (greater than 30 minutes) THEN I will computerise my videos, until then I just want to computerise the editing, and store them on DV and VHS cassettes.

I was planning to keep them on DV ready to feed out to writtable DVD when it's around, and stash copies on VHS cassettes until then to play on my tele!

Andy
PS Thanks very much again, you save me some money and a very depressing Christmas day when I realised the USB thingy was cack!


Andy
those little USB converters are only good for repurposing analogue video for the web or CD-rom. A 384x288 pixel size captured video is half the resolution of PAL 768x576. So if you capture using one of those babies with the intention of going back to fullscreen video tape, you will loose at least half the quality - resulting in severe pixelation of the image. Sure if you keep the image 384x288 you will have a nice little picture - but play that full screen size and you will cry! Whoever told you the image quality would be the same is - well - ignorant.

The only hope for converters are the few in development that offer a live conversion of analogue (like VHS) source to firewire.

Your best bet is going to be to connect a DV cam/deck with analogue-IN to a VHS deck and record onto a DV tape for capture via firewire to your iMac. As far as I know the Sony GVD300 VTR has this ability for about £700. You may also be able to rent a deck from someone.

The "rendering" that you speak of is merely using QTpro to convert from one codec/format to another. A much better option is MediaCleaner - it has many more options and is significantly faster for converting codecs (ie DV-PAL to Cinepak or Sorenson.). A free, trimmed down version of this piece of software is available with EditDV unplugged from DigitalOrigin.com.

[/QUOTE]