On Wed, 20 Mar 2002 20:15:07 GMT, Harold wrote:

>I have a JVC GR-DVF-31 miniDV camcorder that I transfer to my computer
>by firewire. The computer is a 1.33ghz, 256ram, with 2 30gb. hard
>drives and GForce2, GTS video card. I use the Pinnacle StudioDV ver.
>1.05 to transfer the tape to computer. I have been capturing the
>mninDV image as 4gb. size AVI's, which usaully takes 4 of them to pull
>the entire tape onto the computer. I have been combining all 4 of the
>18min and some secs. captures into one edit stream, then editing out
>and rearranging for the final edit. I try to end up with about 430mb
>or so of mpeg2 VideoCD at 352x240, 1150kbits/sec. This usually takes
>around 7 hrs. to render and increases the file size to around 510mb,
>still small enough to fit onto a cd-r. The purpose of all this is two
>fold: first, to create a cd that will hold an hours worth or one full
>minidv tape. Second, it is to archive the tape info to avoid
>degradation and other type losses to the tapes, in the future, by
>getting the info. onto and into digital form. I haven't the money now
>to upgrade to dvd-r so must make the best of what i have.
>
>Now for the questions:

No, wait! ;-)
The basic premise is wrong...!
If you are trying to preserve the Mini-DV by "archiving the
tape info to avoid degradation and other type losses to the
tapes, in the future, by getting the info. onto and into
digital form", this is not the best way to do it. First, the
video has been digitized already by the camera (the computer
"capture" is just a transfer of that digital data stream...).
Second, the best way to preserve it is in its original form,
by copying it onto another DV tape (the copy is essentially
exact, unlike the much-reduced quality of the VCD). With two
copies, even with considerable damage to one or both tapes,
it is likely you would be able to recover the information
in the future...

>Is there a better way I can be doing this? Different codex, file
>types, resolution, bitrates, etc? I have a poor understanding of the
>relationship between al of them.
>Software is the only thing I can change in the mix now, is there
>anything better than what I have?
>Given my goal of archiving my tapes to prevent loss, should I be
>spending this amount of time in digitalizing the tapes onto computer
>or cd, or should I just be making a copy of the miniDV tapes and
>storing somewhere, until such time as I can do it correctly?

Copying the tapes to other tapes digitally, in the original
format, is the very best method likely to be available for
a long time...

>Using the sytem I am now, am I making cd's that can be viewed (VideoCD
>mpeg2) on current dvd players to be seen on tv's? If not, what do I
>need to be doing?
>
>Thanks for any and all answers that you may want to give to these
>questions.