My Battle to Capture DV

[deco_martini]

I just got back from the Coz where I took 8 tapes worth of DV footage on my new Sony HC42 with Ikelite housing. I am new to underwater video so I didn't realize that capturing would be such a pita.

First I tried the Sony software that came with the camera. It had a 32 bit file size limit and moreover had trouble with with a tape that had many segments on it.

I tried the capture program in Ulead VideoStudio 10 Plus. Ulead didn't like the 16:9 format I recorded in and the DV Quick Scan mandatory step just added more time to the process. I also don't like how it created multiple clips.

I tried using the capture utility in windows movie maker. I really didn't care much for this one either.

I tried WinDV but found it lacking for simply ripping tape.

Finally I tried Sony Vegas. Bundled with Sony Vegas is a "Sony Video Capture" utility (I made a shortcut to the binary to keep from starting Vegas just to rip tapes). This guy is a great product. I didn't have to tell it that I recorded in 16:9. It also had good timestamp clip creation and has a dropped frame counter.

I'm four tapes through my cozumel footage so hopefully I'll be going through the battle of figuring out which editing program ticks me off least soon.

 

[simonspear]

I've never used Vegas, but I've heard a lot of good reports about it. If you've purchased it already then I'd say stick with that for editing!!

If not you may want to consider Premier. The full version is expensive but awesome, and the consumer version Elements is a fantastic bit of software for the price and blows most of its competition away.

I doubt you could go far wrong with either Hope this helps.

Cheers, Simon

 

[PerroneFord]

I have Vegas and Premiere. Both good products. Both will give excellent results. I struggle a bit editing with Vegas because I've used Premiere for years, but I move my cut footage to Vegas for prep to DVD.

 

[JamesD]

I've been using Vegas recently and found it works really well. It's quite a bit cheaper than Premiere (if I recall) but seems a bit more versetile too (my camera records video as .MP4's I found that Premiere didn't like the format so I couldn't use premiere).

The Capture utility works just fine, I've never had a problem (from my old video camera, re-capturing old tapes since my new PC doesn't drop frames, where the old one did).

 

[xSandman3]

I just bought Vegas to capture HD. Haven't received it yet...am really looking forward to shredding all the cds that Pinnacle came on.