I bought this product to make photo slideshows set to music and have been totally thrilled with it. Couldn't ask for more. My husband wants to go a little further and make a slideshow from video but using footage from an old camcorder. This is what I think I need to do (in non Geek language). If any of you can confirm that this will work (or confirm that it will not) please comment.
We have an old camcorder that records on 8 mm tape that looks like a cassette tape. My husband wants it put onto DVD to watch like a movie. No problem there. I found a company in Arizona which will do this for me. He also wants to have it put on a DVD so he can import it into Ulead and create a slidehow using the video. I'm told by the company in Arizona that the way for him to do that is to take the DVD of the footage and use software from Pinacle to convert it into .mpg format (which will work with my Ulead product).
Thougths? My Ulead booklet says the supported video files are AVI, MOV, MPG and QT. I've been told I shouldn't have my old camcorder footage converted to AVI format because that's a memory hog and I'd have to send a hard drive to the company in Arizona to have that done.
The Leap from Camcorder Video to Ulead
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Ron P.
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What type of capture device do you have? With some capture devices you can capture (transfer) your video to your PC, in DV format, and create your own DVDs. DV does take some room, about 13gig per hour of video, but it is the most recommended format to use for editing. Is your camcorder Hi-8 or Digital-8? Most Digital-8 and mini-DV camcorders use Firewire to transfer video data to a computer. Does your camcorder have a Firewire (Sony calls it i-Link) port?
You can also use MPEG, however since it losses quality when re-encoded, you want to limit the times the video is rendered.
I suggest the above, as it would save the expense (and most are fairly pricey) of having someone else put the video onto DVD for you.
By doing it yourself, you could import/capture the video, edit, and create your DVDs, then also do whatever else you need to with it. Once done with that project, delete it from your PC, and start another. Of course several of us, use external hard-drives to archive video and projects. That way if at a later time we need to pull up on old project or need to re-use some video clips, we have them in there pristine DV format. External drives are not expensive nowadays.
As for capture devices, (if you don't have firewire on your camcorder), you can pickup a good video capture card, or an external capture device. One of the better being made by Canopus. The key is to use one that has it's own hardware encoder. Therefore your computer does not have to deal with that very demanding task. If I didn't have my trusty ol' Sony camcorder that has analog-digital pass-through conversion, I would certainly have one of the Canopus boxes, like this one:
Canopus ADVC300
You can also use MPEG, however since it losses quality when re-encoded, you want to limit the times the video is rendered.
I suggest the above, as it would save the expense (and most are fairly pricey) of having someone else put the video onto DVD for you.
By doing it yourself, you could import/capture the video, edit, and create your DVDs, then also do whatever else you need to with it. Once done with that project, delete it from your PC, and start another. Of course several of us, use external hard-drives to archive video and projects. That way if at a later time we need to pull up on old project or need to re-use some video clips, we have them in there pristine DV format. External drives are not expensive nowadays.
As for capture devices, (if you don't have firewire on your camcorder), you can pickup a good video capture card, or an external capture device. One of the better being made by Canopus. The key is to use one that has it's own hardware encoder. Therefore your computer does not have to deal with that very demanding task. If I didn't have my trusty ol' Sony camcorder that has analog-digital pass-through conversion, I would certainly have one of the Canopus boxes, like this one:
Canopus ADVC300
Ron Petersen, Web Board Administrator
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sjj1805
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Another option is to get a TV Card for your computer. Hook up your playback equipment to the TV card in the same way you hook it up to your TV set and the computer becomes a Video Recorder.
If you find a TV Card that will record in DV (avi) format then that is a better format than the other popular medium MPEG2. If you can only find a TV card that records in MPEG2 make sure it has a hardware MPEG encoder so that the TV card does all of the hard work converting the video rather than your PC.
If you find a TV Card that will record in DV (avi) format then that is a better format than the other popular medium MPEG2. If you can only find a TV card that records in MPEG2 make sure it has a hardware MPEG encoder so that the TV card does all of the hard work converting the video rather than your PC.