FL310
9th Mar 2002, 05:52
This is the "How to get my digital video from the camera on a CD to run on any DVD player" guide.. .. .In the recent weeks there have been many questions about digital video etc. and since I have been approached quiet often as well, here a copy of what I have compiled as some guide or help.. .. .Nothing is perfect and since the development in this area happens at almost the speed of sound, there may be some newer and better software available while you read this text.. .. .1. Capture. .There are many ways to get the movie on your harddrive. You can either use a graphics card with the capture feature built in (i.e. ATI-All in wonder, Dazzle) or a separate little USB device to connect the camera (or VCR or DVD) to the computer (Pinnacle, Dazzle etc), the best way is via a firewire connection.. .. .2. Hardware. .If you still have a PII CPU, do not continue reading, stop here and postpone your thoughts and dreams until you have at least a PIII CPU available. During capturing a dataflow (and a processing) of about 3.5 MB per second is required and the PII will not handle this amount of data, this results in dropping frames, your movie will look like a fast slide show... . .To capture your movie from the camera you want to maintain high quality. A 30 minutes movie will create a 6-7 GigaByte *.AVI file. It is of course up to you, what template you use to capture your video, but don't use 352x240 resolution, also you may use it later, there is the possibility to capture also stills while editing and you want high res for them as well as a good source for your final product (by the way, I use NTSC which gives a higher frame rate and better resolution). .This means, you need a harddrive with at least 3 times the free space of your required space (because of temp-files and further space required during editing) AND !!! a device which can easily handle 3.5 MB transfer per second. . .You can work with smaller harddrives, capture only part of the movie and assemble at a later stage...time-consuming, difficult to handle...don't do it.. .SCSI-harddrives are capable of 10 MB per second dataflow, consider this when dreaming of good quality. 20 GB drives are available for £100 (about 150 U$) and a lot of motherboards have already the controller built-in.. .. .3. Software. .U-Lead, Adobe, Pinnacle...there are plenty of choices available, I prefer U-Lead but, as it is always, everyone has a different taste.. .The software is capable of capturing the video to the harddrive and subsequently used to cut and edit the scenes as well as inserting other sources (pictures, sound, voice, effects, even the webcam can deliver some nice inputs...). .A 30 min camera video often develops into 45 minutes of assembled video (think about your harddisk again).. .. .I am not going to explain how these editing software products work, basically they do all the same: Capture the video, mark and edit scenes, insert pictures, add voice or narrator, add sound, add transition effects, add titles etc...Almost all the capture devices mentioned above are boxed with one of these products, mostly in the "light" version, which is certainly good enough to create the firsty "semi"-professional film. Only one thing I am going to advise here, note down some timespots which you may use later to define chapters on your finished CD version (see further down for explanation). If you do not have a script prepared yet, start at least while editing the movie...note down what and where you want to insert, delete, dub...which transitions, text, pictures...AND NOTE THE TIMES IN SECONDS AND TENTHS.... .. .4. The procedure. .Now that your movie is captured and edited (assembled), you want to have the movie on CD.. .Compile (or make, or export, or however the individual package calls the routine) the movie as MPEG2 version, and since you want a CD, make an SVCD movie. Super-Video-CD provides a better quality compared to the VCD, the price of course is a bigger file. The output size is about 300 MB for 30 minutes.. .Of course it is possible to create also *.AVI files... again, 30 minutes will give you about 6 GB files....and while we are talking about compiling, a 30 minutes high-quality SVCD MPEG2 movie may take 13 hrs on a PIII-400 PC, on a P4-2000 it is just 1.5 hrs....DO NOT DISTURB YOUR PC and give us all a better bandwith on PPRuNe while your PC is busy.... .This file runs perfectly on the computer, if you burn it on CD, most PC will display your movie.. .But not the home-DVD-player.... .. .5. The final product. .Go to <a href="http://www.dvdhelp.com" target="_blank">www.dvdhelp.com</a> and read the instructions about VCDImager and VCDEasy. Both are Free Software (even better than freeware, read the explanation with the software package) and convert and burn your CD with them. You may want to create chapters, the positions your DVD player can jump to, you can split the file over several CDs (if you have more than 650 MB of file assembled) and many more features are possible (like adding pictures in a slide show etc - but they may not show on your DVD-player).. .Only this CD will play as a Video-CD on your DVD player!. .. .Ahh I forgot, if it does not play on your DVD player...check the manual if it is supposed to handle CR-R or CR-R/W..... .. .I did not tell you everything, but there are many good websites around (see the links on VDCHELP.COM) and there is always your fantasy..... .. .Good luck and enjoy.. .. .some links. .. . <a href="http://www.dazzle-europe.com" target="_blank">Dazzle</a> . . <a href="http://www.ati.com" target="_blank">ATI</a> . . <a href="http://www.pinnaclesys.com/" target="_blank">Pinnacle</a> . . <a href="http://www.ulead.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ulead</a> . . <a href="http://www.adobe.com" target="_blank">Adobe</a> . . <a href="http://www.dvdhelp.com" target="_blank">DVD and VCD making software</a>