I did read your post, and it is great, answered most of my questions.
I would freepmail you but I think lots of people are interested in this.
Like your mention of firewire. What do you use? is the firewire essential to the process?
I remember a few years ago, the price of transfer was exorbitant, like $35 a roll. Times 200 rolls, = heart attack.
I am pleased to hear prices have come down.
I own a "transfer box" I bought many years ago which fits on the front of the projector and the small screen is then copied with a camcorder. I agree that a digital camcorder is best to maintain quality in the editing and copying process. But not necessarily mini-DVD.
Your statement about DVDs lasting 200 years is sadly, probably not true. I would be ecstatic if the "writeable" ones last 10. But I figure I'll let my kids/friends/whoever deal with that when the time comes.
One last comment. A listing of the brand name and model of your equipment and all the softwre plus when you got it would be very useful.
A Firewire video transfer card is one way to quickly transfer video from a digital video (DV) camcorder to your computer without having to adjust color and white balance, change formats, etc. Like I said, I have an analog camcorder with audio and video out jacks, so I used my ATI video card to transfer the video instead. Using DV and a Firewire card is much faster though and lets you omit a LOT of intermediate steps.
I remember a few years ago, the price of transfer was exorbitant, like $35 a roll. Times 200 rolls, = heart attack. I am pleased to hear prices have come down.
The company I used did a great job of transferring my film, even the film that had broken. I'm not allowed to advertise on FreeRepubic, so I can give you their name (with my highest recommendation) and a URL in a Freepmail if you wish. I already had the software (DVD2AVI and TMPGEnc) necessary to convert the video from the .vob format on the DVD to mp2 format.
I own a "transfer box" I bought many years ago which fits on the front of the projector and the small screen is then copied with a camcorder. I agree that a digital camcorder is best to maintain quality in the editing and copying process. But not necessarily mini-DVD.
True. It was recommended to me early in the process that transfer boxes are more trouble than they're worth, and that I should just use a plain piece of white paper to project the image on.
Your statement about DVDs lasting 200 years is sadly, probably not true. I would be ecstatic if the "writeable" ones last 10. But I figure I'll let my kids/friends/whoever deal with that when the time comes.
That was the figure given in promotional literature I saw (and I know, believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see). DVD-Rs are chemical in nature and probably won't last any 200 years. There are archival-quality transfer services available, but the ones I've researched charge a bundle. Like you, I'll allow those who survive me figure out how to save the material on the disk "forever."
I suspect that the easiest way to do "archival" quality storage of my video will be to pick up a cheap, 40 GB hard drive somewhere, copy all the video files to it, uninstall it from the computer, and throw it in a drawer somewhere.
One last comment. A listing of the brand name and model of your equipment and all the softwre plus when you got it would be very useful.
Wow - I'll take a stab at it.
Camcorder - RCA CG6351. Got it from the bargain bin at a pawnshop for $10 - it needed cleaning and a drive gear replaced which I did by parting out another old RCA camcorder. It worked much better than my fancy Sharp LCD display camcorder, which I couldn't stop down enough to remove the flicker from a lot of the projected video.
Video card - ATI All-in-Wonder VE PCI card. Got it at Frye's in Arlington TX - cost a bill and a quarter.
Software:
DVD2AVI - converts the .vob files on DVD disks to a format that can be converted to mp2 by TMPGEnc. Available on the Web - shareware.
TMPGEnc - converts DVD2AVI files to mp2 files that you can edit. Available on the Web - shareware.
Pinnacle Studio 8 - bundled with the AVI video card. Lets you add titles, cutlines, an audio soundtrack, and edit video. You can save the finished product to AVI files, MP2 files, or several other different formats.
For ALL software, be sure to get the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website. I had to replace drivers on all software with the newest available, and the process of updating the crappy drivers that came with the ATI video card with the newest ones has been a little slice of hell so far. (A Windows XP issue I'm afraid - there are numerous FAQs available on the Net showing how to do this exacting process). They're STILL not working quite right, and it is an issue I continue to sweat over.
Also, I have 256 meg of RAM in my computer, but I highly recommend having at least 512 meg (I've eaten bottles of Rolaids trying to troubleshoot software crashes that I've traced to file swapping issues due to not having enough RAM).
Hope this information helps. All in all, I should have just paid the two dollars and had the film transferred directly to DVD by the company I mentioned. But I've learned a bunch about video transfer and about how my computer really works by doing it this way, and no commercial company could have produced the cool opening title I designed for the family video without it costing an arm and a leg ;)