From tape to best quality files

Hurragutten wrote on 3/8/2009, 6:17 AM

Hei
I want to make copies of my old DV tapes and put them on an harddisk for future storage. What is the best quality filetype with no comression loss of quality!

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 3/8/2009, 6:55 AM

You should obtain the hardware necessary to do a firewire transfer from the DV camcorder. If your computer already has a firewire port then all you need is a firewire cable, usually $5 to $15. If you don't have a firewire port then you can get a firewire card for about $10.

Use the VidCap program that comes with Vegas to do the transfer. This will make a bit-for-bit copy of the video on the tape into an AVI file with no additional compression at all. What was on the tape will be exactly what's in the file.

richard-amirault wrote on 3/8/2009, 10:48 AM

Realize that the resulting files will be quite large. Be sure you have enough disk space to store them all.

Hurragutten wrote on 3/9/2009, 8:28 AM

But how do i aksess the WidCap applikation? From within the Vegas application I only find the capture command. And I have not loaded a single application called WidCap. There is a plug-in called WidCap, but how do I aksess the plug-in? The help file do not help me in this matter. I have a Canon DV video camera vith FireWire connection and it works OK vith Vegas. Som of my tapes must be 10 years and I want to make backup to an eksternal HD.

Terry Esslinger wrote on 3/9/2009, 11:24 AM

The VidCap (with a V) program opens automatically when you click on capture video. You do not have to install a separate program.
DV.avi is about 12-13GB per one hour of video. If your intent is just to archive the footage to an external HD then when the capture video (VidCap) starts, direct it to save the captured video directly to the external HD. Name each file so that you recognize which is which.

There is no additional compression, its a bit per bit transfer.

gogiants wrote on 3/9/2009, 12:21 PM

Another thing to consider if you have lots of tapes... once you capture to AVI, you could convert to a range of different formats to save a lot of disk space. While the converted files will not be 100% perfect quality, chances are that you won't notice a huge difference.

Depends on your ultimate goals for this effort... if you simply want to make sure you have backups of your tapes, then converting them to smaller files might make sense. If you want to preserve absolute best quality and don't mind buying disk space, then no need to convert...