Mini DV tape

donnajunkie

if you are like me and have the time and date on your camcorder recordings then you need to know that you will lose the date and time when you transfer to your pc. i personally found it a pain in the behind transfering to pc. so unless you want to do editing i would suggest useing a dvd recorder that is connected to a tv.

msun

But you also lose date/time data using a regular DVD recorder. There is software such as http://dts8888.com/ which can add such data but it seems a bit of unknown quality.

donnajunkie

you only lose date and time if you use a firewire cable. camcorders usually also come with a cable with the red,white and yellow av plugs. i recently transfered all of mine to dvd this way.

weegie.geek

donnajunkie wrote: »

you only lose date and time if you use a firewire cable. camcorders usually also come with a cable with the red,white and yellow av plugs. i recently transfered all of mine to dvd this way.

Composite is a considerable drop in quality.

donnajunkie

yeah, i did read that doing it via firewire was the only way to maintain quality but i must say i cant see any loss of quality in the copies i have done.

Lord_Gardener

Is it worth paying the extra for software such as 'Ulead' or will Windows Movie maker do the job?

OK_Sauce

Windows Movie Maker is very basic, but you can capture footage from your camcorder, very basically edit it, add tiltles and extra an extra sound track. For any serious editing I would suggest something a bit more advanced like Adobe Premiere Elements or the like.

Lord_Gardener

I've ordered up a card which has th ulead software with it. I'll post how it goes - I gather some people have had problems after XP service pack 2 has been installed!

Lord_Gardener

Ok I'm back! I've installed firewire card and can control dv output from camcorder using Windows Moviemaker or the Ulead package. However, I find that when recording (copying from tape?) the playback from this seems jerky/not smooth or the same quality as straight tape playback! I know with both packages there are settings to play with but what is best? I'm looking to record/save to PC in best possible quality then edit and finally burn to DVD. The resultant video will only be about 20mins long. Any guidance will be appreciated on this.

Marty999

Lord_Gardener wrote: »

I find that when recording (copying from tape?) the playback from this seems jerky/not smooth or the same quality as straight tape playback!

Yes I had this on my old PC. It had a basic spec with low end graphics, which could be the same problem as yours? When viewing the footage on my monitor it was not smooth at all, but once I had burnt a DVD this played fine on my DVD player/TV, so I put it down to the graphics on my PC not being up to scratch. I would suggest you burn a simple DVD first (don't bother editing it just in case) and then try playing it on your DVD player/TV. It may well be fine this way and getting you worried unnecessarily.