Novice importing from and to DV Camcorder

jazz wrote on 4/3/2001, 10:55 PM
I have some questions about my first capture attempts. I
have a Sony Digital8 and am pulling via Firewire. I am
hoping to capture, edit, and then return video to camcorder
with NO loss of quality.

1) New project using NTSV DV template (correct?)
2) I capture 9.29 seconds of DV and it states 0 frames
dropped. (this means I should have no loss of frames or
quality, correct?)
3) The only option I have of saving this footage is
as .avi (correct?)
4) The capture file is 34.4 MB. I once read native DV is
4GB for 20 minutes so this conversion looks good to me.
5) I add a 5 second title to the beginning
6) Now, I can't send this straight back to the camcorder,
because I have have to render it first (correct?)
7) What is the difference between File..Save as and
File...Render as?
8) Now, to maintain my perfect (lossless) DV, the only
option I have is to save it as .avi (correct?)
9) Under template, I use the project default settings
which list the Video as NTSC DV under the custom---video
tab. (If you can tell me what check boxes I should be
using, I would appreciate it. The manual doesn't explain
all the options like "Open DML compatable file".
10) Here is the part that blows me away. I render my 15
second movie in .avi format and it says it is 606 MB! IS
this right?!?! Given the 4 GB limit (win98SE), I can't
save a native DV quality video that is longer than 1.5
minutes! I've got to be screwing something up or unaware
of something. Please help!
11) I now have a rendered .avi and will try to copy it to
my DV camcorder using the VF Capture Program. Will post
more depending on what happens there.

Appreciate the help in trying to understand how all the
pieces fit together.

Marc

Comments

SonyEPM wrote on 4/4/2001, 9:05 AM
First off, lossless DV is only achievable if you don't
recompress the footage. If it's a straight-cuts only
sequence, DV in, DV out, it'll be lossles, just copying
bits. But if you add a title, there is no choice but to
recompress. You are combining images (original video plus
title) and that requires decompressing, combining frames,
and recompressing. The DX8 codec, in conjunction with the
Vegas rendering algorithms, should hold up for several
generations with little noticeable degradation in most
cases.

You should render using the stock NTSC DV avi template, NO
changes. This will result in about 3.8 mb/sec, and your
final 10 sec DV render will be the same length as the 10
sec file you captured. I think you rendered as
uncompressed, which would account for the large file.

Stick with the stock template, no adjustments, and all
should be cool.