Please help re. DV format

[maddrummer3301]

.

[Liu]

Dear all the masters above:

So nice of you all to help me out.
Over the past three years, I have tried everything, from Dazzle, to Instant DVD, from Ulead VIdeo Studio to Ulead Movie Factory; the Magic Movie edi....I read all the Camcorder, Computer Video magazines and books...I have wasted three years of my life...on these stuff. But all I have learned or thought I had learned is nothing compared with what you masters have taught me.

I am very grateful. I have gained so much more insight and knolwedge about video technology.

Am I right to summarize you masters' instructions as follows?

1. No particular media is definitely more durable and long lasting than the others. They all have their weakness and in some aspect, the tape could even be better as it has less risk of "lose it all".

2. To be on the safe side, after transferring my native data in the DV-AVI form onto DVDs, I should keep my original video tapes for two reasons: first, as backups, and secondly, to be used as Video technology onday perfects the process and invents something better.

3. DV-AVI is data format and therefore cannot be played. [Yet two masters above said it could].

4. Only PC can capture tape data in DV-AVI format [although one master above said Movie Factory could do it].

5. To have native data backup in a large hard drive may be practical. Yet hard drive could be damanged easily and if it happens, everything is lost. Hence, hard drive is not a safe media.

6. To this date, for the time being, DV-Avi format is the ONLY format that would allow me to save all the original , native, or virgin data on tapes.

There are so much to learn. I hope you masters could continue to help me out. It is amazing that the field of video technology could be so complicated, sophisticated yet fun.
It is a whole new challenge for me..... Looking forward to your comments or corrections on my six tentative conclusions that have derived from your kind advice and explanation.

[I feel extremely humble and ignorant even though I got a MA in the States, a Master of Information Science and a Ph.D. in Canada. I feel very small, humble and naive. Need your help continuously ]

Leo

[skier-hughes]

Briefly....
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No. DV-avi can be played but not on a stand alone dvd player, it can only be played on a pc.
4. I think he may have been mistaken and is checking it out.
5. I would use a hdd as another back up source. If treated well it is a good place to keep data.
6. Yes, at the same high quality.

My preference for back up is.
Keep original tapes.
Keep a tape back up of finished project.
Hard drive.

Another thing to think of, if you had a tape a hdd and a dvd copy of your movie, where do you keep them?

All in your house?

What if you had a fire?

They are all gone.

For best security, keep one back up off site.

[maddrummer3301]

.

[heinz-oz]

Dear Leo,

allow me to point out a few things, in a different color, right in your post.

Dear all the masters above:

So nice of you all to help me out.
Over the past three years, I have tried everything, from Dazzle, to Instant DVD, from Ulead VIdeo Studio to Ulead Movie Factory; the Magic Movie edi....I read all the Camcorder, Computer Video magazines and books...I have wasted three years of my life...on these stuff. But all I have learned or thought I had learned is nothing compared with what you masters have taught me.

I am very grateful. I have gained so much more insight and knolwedge about video technology.

Am I right to summarize you masters' instructions as follows?

1. No particular media is definitely more durable and long lasting than the others. They all have their weakness and in some aspect, the tape could even be better as it has less risk of "lose it all".

Nothing is going to be 100% safe, ever. Everything has it's shortcomings and everyone has his/her own opinion about certain aspects. Tape, IMHO, has the most points against it. It can snap (try to splice one), it will lose some of its magnetic properties over time resulting in clarity loss. Heat and humidity will affect it, magnetic fields will destroy the data, mold can attack it etc.

2. To be on the safe side, after transferring my native data in the DV-AVI form onto DVDs, I should keep my original video tapes for two reasons: first, as backups, and secondly, to be used as Video technology onday perfects the process and invents something better.

Not a bad idea but still not going to give 100% protection (nothing ever will). The sheer number of disks required and their storage is going to be one thing, having the tapes along side at the same time is another. Don't forget, while optical disks are reputed to last a lot longer than tape, some makers claim 99 years, we don't really know because they haven't been around for that long. Because there is no physical contact when playing the disc, they will last a lot longer than tape. Just use a standard VHS tape and play that continiously to find out how long it will take before you get into trouble. I have had tapes fail after a relatively short period of time. If you don't play them very often, they will last longer but never as long as a disk. Disks do need to be stored properly as well though, to give you maximum longevity. Humidity/heat will affect optical disks also.

3. DV-AVI is data format and therefore cannot be played. [Yet two masters above said it could].

Just look at your PC in WIN Explorer and find a "captured" file with the .avi extension. Double click it and your media player will play it. All it needs is the right dcoder to do that. It will get that from the install of your NLE editor like MediaStudio, VideoStudio etc.

4. Only PC can capture tape data in DV-AVI format [although one master above said Movie Factory could do it].

DV-AVI is commonly "captured" on a PC, yes. It is, however, not really a capture. The DV-AVI data is taken from your MiniDV tape and copied to your HDD. All you need is a playback device, commonly the camcorder used to record the video. There are stand alone DV players also. On the PC side you need to have the ability to write the data to the HDD as quickly as it arrives on the firewire cable/port. And you need a software that does the data transfer onto the disk, i.e. VS, MSP, Windows MovieMaker and many more. I have never used MF to "capture" and can't therefore comment on its suitability to capture DV-AVI. The recommended procedure for MF is to bring your already edited video into MF as a DVD compliant mpeg2 file, i.e. render the DV-AVI to mpeg2 in your NLE program like MSP, VS, etc.

5. To have native data backup in a large hard drive may be practical. Yet hard drive could be damanged easily and if it happens, everything is lost. Hence, hard drive is not a safe media.

A hard drive is used day in, day out, to work with data. Read/write operations are performed on a regular basis. Yet, these devices are going to last you for quite a while. If you were to use one, or, in your case rather several, purely as a backup medium, I could not see one fataly failing in a hurry. These things wear out over time and do not often just fall over. The same is true, of course, it's not 100% fail safe but, IMHO, the safest of all the methods discussed here. It would also be one of the quicker ones to implement since you only have to "capture" once. No splitting into DVD sized chunks with subsequent burning to DVD disks. All DVD blanks have errors, some more some less. Often these errors are not fatal but can influence the playback by means of small glitches. These glitches may be tolerated by some players but not by others. Taking this material back into MSP or VS, could potentially corrupt the file, giving you all sort of problems when you work with it again. To make sure the disk plays without glitches, you would have to sit through every disk, in its entirety again and watch it closely. A very time consuming process.

6. To this date, for the time being, DV-Avi format is the ONLY format that would allow me to save all the original , native, or virgin data on tapes.

That is correct.

There are so much to learn. I hope you masters could continue to help me out. It is amazing that the field of video technology could be so complicated, sophisticated yet fun.
It is a whole new challenge for me..... Looking forward to your comments or corrections on my six tentative conclusions that have derived from your kind advice and explanation.

[I feel extremely humble and ignorant even though I got a MA in the States, a Master of Information Science and a Ph.D. in Canada. I feel very small, humble and naive. Need your help continuously ]

Leo

[Liu]

Dear Heinz Oz and the other two masters:

Thanks for your further enlightenments and explanations.

Now, after studying them, I have the following new conclusions. If incorrect, please tell me:

First, HDD is the better storage media by consensus. Of course, I will always keep DVDs, tapes as well. In fact, I always keep an copy of DVDs in my office.

Secondly, extension of my DVD should show what format my stand alone DVD recorders has used. In this respect, I checked my Sony 308 and find something that terrified me. It poped up a "VOB" file name. Further checking the Google said it was some form of "MPeG-2. But then it said it could be converted to AVI etc. Is this true?

Thirdly, I should use a good DVD blank and keep it from humidity and other abuses, heat.. But then, there are so many kinds of DVDs. Which one should I use? SHould I use DVD-Data to save DV-Avi or should I use DVD-Video? Then, the april 2006 issue of CAMCORDER & COMPUTEVIDEO introduced on page 6, TuffCoat DVD with AquaGuard surface!!!!!!! Now, what should I do now?

Fourthly, AVI is the most native and virgin one. But I have yet found a way to transfer my Mini DV tape to transfer it into DV-Avi with PC. I already learned that stand alone DVD recorder could not do it.

I am back to kindergarden. So, would my above masters help me out ?
Thanks, as my life priorities follow this sequence: My family-->my video tapes--> my life. Serioiusly!

Leo with appcieation and thanks

[maddrummer3301]

.

[skier-hughes]

Briefly....
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No. DV-avi can be played but not on a stand alone dvd player, it can only be played on a pc.
4. I think he may have been mistaken and is checking it out.
5. I would use a hdd as another back up source. If treated well it is a good place to keep data.
6. Yes, at the same high quality.

My preference for back up is.
Keep original tapes.
Keep a tape back up of finished project.
Hard drive.

Another thing to think of, if you had a tape a hdd and a dvd copy of your movie, where do you keep them?

All in your house?

What if you had a fire?

They are all gone.

For best security, keep one back up off site.

[heinz-oz]

I feel we are going in circles

Secondly, extension of my DVD should show what format my stand alone DVD recorders has used. In this respect, I checked my Sony 308 and find something that terrified me. It poped up a "VOB" file name. Further checking the Google said it was some form of "MPeG-2. But then it said it could be converted to AVI etc. Is this true?

If you use a stand alone DVD recorder, it will record to some DVD standard format. DVD video files, while these are essentially mpeg2 files, are authored to DVD compliance and will be contained in the Video_TS folder on the DVD. If you use a file manager to view the contents of the Video_TS folder, you will find a number of .VOB, .IFO and .BUP files. That is normal for DVD.

You are still confusing the term DVD as in media with the term DVD as in video.

DVD media can be used to hold DVD compliant video data and play on a stand alone DVD player, i.e. DVD Movies.

DVD media can also be used as a storage medium to hold all types of data including video files in their native state (not converted to DVD standard).

Please try to forget for a moment that we are talking about backing up video. Since it is in digital format it's also data. The PC doesn't make a distinction, neither should you at this stage.

You cannot record data with a stand alone DVD recorder!

Thirdly, I should use a good DVD blank and keep it from humidity and other abuses, heat.. But then, there are so many kinds of DVDs. Which one should I use? SHould I use DVD-Data to save DV-Avi or should I use DVD-Video? Then, the april 2006 issue of CAMCORDER & COMPUTEVIDEO introduced on page 6, TuffCoat DVD with AquaGuard surface!!!!!!! Now, what should I do now?

You could try to not let yourself get confused. Use a good quality disk and store it sensibly. That's all. It doesn't matter what is written on it. The only thing that counts is what's on it If you use a DVD blank that says "Data" on its lable and you author a DVD movie to it, it will still be a movie, play on a DVD player like any other movie, inspite of the manufacturers lable stating "Data". You can also put a 3 hour movie on a DVD blank that states "One hour". What I'm trying to say is this:

A DVD blank is nothing else but a DVD blank. What you put on it determines what it will become.

To back up your precious DV-AVI files in their native state you burn the avi files to DVD blanks as Data

I sincerely hope that we are getting to the bottom of this soon.

[Liu]

Dear My Masters above especially Master Heinz Oz:

From the buttom of my heart, I thank you all very much for your help, patience and professional advice.
I will have them all printed and begin to have them all studied very carefully. I will use a chart to analyze them and make notes.

Since I have already bored two masters, I felt extremely guilty. But my gratitude remain profound.

There are so much to learn and I will continue to study.
I will give you , my kind masters a break, but will be back later with new topics and questions to ask you.
Thank you all again very greatly.
Your humbly,

Leo Y. Liu, LLB, MLS, Ph.D.
Professor of Law
Liu@Brandonu.Ca

With thanks...forever

[skier-hughes]

To be honest, if you spend all this time asking these questions and trying to get to the very bottom of every item there will be no time to watch all your family videos let alone back them up.

My suggestion is to make the most of yor time and enjoy your videos

Not bored, but as Heinz said we do seem to be going round in circles.

If I had a legal rpoblem, I'd come to you for advice and maybe seek a second opinion, but I wouldn't be bothered about all the case law which makes up the basis of your advice

[Liu]

Dear skier-hughes and other masters:

You are right. Indeed, I still have lots of Super8 [yes, those 4-minute large film] tapes that I have not had a chance watch. I had been waiting for the perfect projector and silver screen....

Please allow me to ask one last question before i "rest my case." That is:

What is the best method [or software/wardware if needed] to transfer my Mini DV tapes, thorugh my PC, onto HDDs in DV AVI format?

[I have decided, after studying all you experts' instructions, to do this]

Since you and other masters have always been patient. Please bear with me with this "last question".

Thank you, by Leo

[heinz-oz]

Hardware:

• Digital camcorder or play back device (MiniDV)
  firewire cable
  firewire port on the PC
  extra HDD's for final storage/archiving, either in external cases or fitted to caddies
  enough room on an internal HDD to fit at least one tape (1 hour = 13 GB)

Software:
Any NLE like VideoStudio or MediaStudioPro from Ulead (I'm afraid MovieFactory will not do it) or other NLE program. There is even one that you can get from Microsoft.

Extras:
plenty of coffee, spare time & patience

Capture (copy) the tape contents to the internal HDD. Once that is about to fill up transfer to an external one and clean up the internal. You may even try to capture directly to the external drive but it be better connected via firewire as well. Not sure if USB2 would allow this operation glitch free.

That's it. Enjoy.

[skier-hughes]

Nothing at all to add to that.

Perfect.

[Liu]

Dear Masters Heinz-oz and skier-hughes:

Thank you two masters very kindly.

I promise you that I would not bug you two for the next one full month as I will be busy transfering my precious MINI DV tapes into DV-Avi.....

The only exception is: If after following the procedure and using the sofeware mentioned, I still could not find a way to have my tapes' native data stored in DV-AVI format in my PC's HDDs


Very best wishes, from

Leo