Capturing Analog

raltizer wrote on 2/13/2004, 11:31 AM

I'm a beginner, so go easy on me. When I capture video from an analog source, should I go ahead and capture it as an MPEG-2 file or as DV? It's my understanding that DV takes up a lot of room, but I don't know if you can really edit MPEG-2 files much. The problem is, I will use some digital video and some analog in my projects, so what is recommended to do here? Also, I have a big hard drive, but I still don't want to take up a ton of space with these files. Should I delete the projects after I burn them to DVD, or just keep MPEG-2 versions on my hard drive in case I need to burn more. I'm looking for the basic process of what to do here.

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/13/2004, 6:23 PM

You’re correct that MPEG is not an optimal format for editing (unless you capture all I-Frames but that’s another story). It’s best used as an output format only. I would capture everything as DV AVI files this way you can mix your digital and analog footage easily because its all in the same format.

Once a project is complete, I usually print it to DV tape (i.e., back to my camera as a master copy) and render an MPEG2 copy to burn to DVD. Then I can delete all the DV AVI and MPEG files freeing up space on my hard drive knowing that I can always just capture the whole project in final form from the DV tape master if I ever need it again.

I also backup and VF files, PNG files, JPG files, or other files I used as menus or DVD labels, etc. to CD. I create each new project in a new directory so I only have to backup that one directory after the AVI and MPEG files are cleaned out. This way I could rebuild the project if I needed to by copying over that directory from CD and recapturing the source tapes.

~jr

Roadkyng wrote on 2/16/2004, 7:14 AM

I am new at this as well but have been doing a ton of research. one site I really like is www.lordsmurf.com. Has a wealth of information including a statement that editing MPEG-2 files is fine if all you are doing is cutting commercials and other unwanted material. If you wish to add pics, different audio, multiple clips then working with an uncompressed format is the way to go.
I capture TV programs through a hardware MPEG2 encoder then edit the commercials, start and end points, then convert to VCD. Never had a problem.

You have to decide if what you are doing is editing or authoring.