Capturing and Splitting

kjam wrote on 12/28/2006, 1:42 PM
Help!
I am new to this forum, but not to video editing. I have had several different software packages, and I like the features of VMSP7. However, I spent over 100 hours working on a family video that I was showing at a family x-mas party, and I was so upset with the result. (I have been making these movies every year for 7 yrs). I use video and still pictures set to music. In the past, I filmed each picture and just transferred to computer to edit. Now I get my pics on CD, but there were quite a few I still had to film. I used my NEW Sony HD camcorder thinking the quality would be excellent. The pics looked horrible. Version 7 apparently does not have the batch capture scene detection like the old version did. Therefore, when I transferred the video of still pictures, I had to "split" each picture from eachother so I could create tranitions between the pics. I wanted each picture to be separate, and instead it was one long clip. When watching final DVD, some of the pics still had a split second of the next picture shown. The only solution I can think of is to try to remove the excess, but that can take forever. My video is almost 2 hrs long. Plus that would make the music I added not fit with the video! Any suggestions?

Comments

MSmart wrote on 12/28/2006, 5:32 PM
I assume that you "transferred" your video of stills with Video Capture, correct? If so, you have to enable "Enable DV scene detection" Options > Preferences > Capture.

Rather than videoing the pictures that you don't have digital copies of, I would suggest that you use the camera feature of the camcorder and take digital pictures of them on the Memory Stick then transfer the JPEGs to the computer and use those in your video.

Your camcorder should have photo capabilities. The resolution of the pictures it takes will be much better than what you get by videoing them.
kjam wrote on 12/28/2006, 7:27 PM
I did transfer with video capture, but I'm using the Platinum 7.0 HDV editing software, and I can't find anything in preferences for enable DV scene detection.

I wish I would've just taken pictures of the pictures originally, but didn't know 7.0 edition didn't split scenes automatically. I guess I learned the hard way.

With this type of video, what do you think is the best format to render in? I will be making DVD on Architect Studio to play on widescreen HDV TV.

Thank you for your response. !! :)
MSmart wrote on 12/28/2006, 10:45 PM
Oh, now I see. I wasn't sure if HD meant Hard Drive or High Def. If you do a search, I believe you will find threads discussing VidCap not splitting high def video. Sorry.

As for rendering, it's best to render your video in VMS as an AVI file then let AS encode it to mpeg/DVD. This way if you have to optimize the video to fit on the disc it only has to encode once. I think you'll find that most people recommend AVI as the preferred format to render from VMS. Yes it does create a huge file, but you'll end up with better picture quality in the end.
kjam wrote on 12/29/2006, 10:08 AM
Thank you very much for your reply - I always get confused on which format to render the project, and end of wasting time waiting to find out I should have rendered differently. The last time, rendering took 15 hours!!
Thanks again!
Malcolm D wrote on 12/31/2006, 12:18 AM
Hi
THe HDV capture function did not have scene splitting on VMS 6 Platinum and, I am guessing, on 7.
What I do is capture the whole tape or segment and use a free utility called HDV Split v0.75 to split the scenes.
It works well for me.
For your stills I would not video them but take stills using the camera in Memory mode on Widescreen.
They will be clean steady and not need trimming.
You just set the duration of the shot when you drop it on the timeline.
I am sure this would have saved you hours of work.
Regards
Malcolm
ShawnLaraSteele wrote on 2/6/2007, 11:48 PM
Why not scan in the photos with a scanner?