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Cheap Tapeless DV Capture?
K'thardin asks: "Recently I've been chafing under the limitations of mini-DV tapes, as I attend various conventions throughout the year and record certain events and information panels. These limitations include dropped frames, gummed up tape heads (especially prevalent when you spend more than fifteen minutes at a time on pause), and most importantly, time constraints as the largest mini-DV tapes can only hold 83 minutes on SP (a little over 2 hours on EP, with a loss in quality and larger possibility of dropped frames). Several events I attend can run for 4 hours or more, so the time constraint is one of the worst, as it requires me to change tapes several times, thus loosing vital footage." Are there video acquisition devices out there that can record to high density media as well as (or instead of) DV Tapes? If not, how difficult would it be to build a portable one?
"There are several tapeless acquisition systems out there, such as the Firestore FS-4, the QuickStream, and the ADS Pyro drive. The advantages to these solutions are generally longer recording time, elimination of dropped frames, and the ability to record natively in several video formats, removing the need for time-consuming tape capture. The problem with most of these is that they are prohibitively expensive for the larger capacities, require user-built portable power solutions for long duration recording times, are not upgradeable, and have been reported to be buggy by several users.
Considering these devices are little more than specialized computers, I've been considering what sort of devices would be a cheap and more reliable alternative to commercial offerings. An article on DVInfoNet details the creation of a relatively cheap and upgradeable tapeless acquisition system that uses a tablet PC. The problem with this is power and space constraints. There are several existing and upcoming Linux-based devices out there (as well as those that can be made to be Linux devices) that can be made to do what I wish with the capacities I need. The problem there is that none of the ones I've found come with a Firewire port, which is vital for tapeless acquisition on current DV based cameras. Also is the problem that many of these acquisition systems do not have the capability of being upgraded, or simply lack the ability for one to swap out hard drives should it become necessary (such as recording two 4-hour events back to back ... I've done this). The only possible solution I've seen containing a needed Firewire port is the Apple iPod, and it doesn't seem to have the ability to process the information coming in from a camcorder fast enough to prevent jittery video; nor is it upgradeable.
Does anyone else have this complaint? Are there any devices I've overlooked that fit the criteria of small, relatively powerful, cheap, power-efficient, Firewire-enabled devices with upgradeable/swappable hard drives that are able to run Linux?"
Considering these devices are little more than specialized computers, I've been considering what sort of devices would be a cheap and more reliable alternative to commercial offerings. An article on DVInfoNet details the creation of a relatively cheap and upgradeable tapeless acquisition system that uses a tablet PC. The problem with this is power and space constraints. There are several existing and upcoming Linux-based devices out there (as well as those that can be made to be Linux devices) that can be made to do what I wish with the capacities I need. The problem there is that none of the ones I've found come with a Firewire port, which is vital for tapeless acquisition on current DV based cameras. Also is the problem that many of these acquisition systems do not have the capability of being upgraded, or simply lack the ability for one to swap out hard drives should it become necessary (such as recording two 4-hour events back to back ... I've done this). The only possible solution I've seen containing a needed Firewire port is the Apple iPod, and it doesn't seem to have the ability to process the information coming in from a camcorder fast enough to prevent jittery video; nor is it upgradeable.
Does anyone else have this complaint? Are there any devices I've overlooked that fit the criteria of small, relatively powerful, cheap, power-efficient, Firewire-enabled devices with upgradeable/swappable hard drives that are able to run Linux?"
Perhaps an Apple iSight cam and laptop with a large hard drive?
Archos has a video capture device, thast uses a 20Gb hard drive. This should be able to store much more than 4 hours of video.
gummed up tape heads (especially prevalent when you spend more than fifteen minutes at a time on pause),
Let's see: what kind of movie would you pause for 15 minutes? not a football match (you usually re-run an action over and over, not pause), not a regular movie (same thing)... Obviously a movie that you want to freeze a certain scene to marvel at it at length... hmmm, I wonder...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You just need to remember to change tapes after George Takei talkes, and before the costume contest starts.
I use a cheap webcam and do real-time encoding to divx without dropping any frames. Then again, maybe you aren't in the porn industry...
How about... analog? Is digital a requirement? A good quality VHS camcorder (like an old professional model) shoudl be able to tape for quite a long time and give you a great picture. Maybe even beta or VHS-C or 8mm or something. If you go out of the digital realm, you may have better luck. And there must be special VCR type things that can take those tapes and have FireWire to take the video off for you easily.
My other suggestion is more decidedly low tech: 2+ camcorders. Switch one on when the other is about to run out of tape.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Did you by change note that the person was speaking about RECORDING video???
JVC recently announced a new HDD-based digital camcorder, with storage of 20 or 30GB that is good for over 10 hours of video.
D =1 e s-Four-Hard-Drive-Based-Everio-Camcorders.htm
http://www.jvc.com/press/index.jsp?item=461&pageI
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/JVC-Introduc
...method available. According to my math, a single miniDV tape can record nearly 12GB, so obviously affordable solid-state video capture and storage is out for a good while yet.
The actual demand for portable tapeless recording of any kind is still pretty low. The demand is low enough that only the people that absolutely must have it have to pay a lot because it requires a specialized device that would hook to the Firewire or other port on the camera.
I am ashamed to admit
I have a Mini DV camera with a broken tape drive that I bought on eBay to use as a webcam. It captures video to the hard drive in my laptop over the 1394 port with any of your favorite Windows video editing tools in the same way you would copy the contents of a tape to the hard drive. That way you can use any laptop computer as a high capacity video recording device. I use Windows movie maker just because it's what came with my laptop. The controls leave a little to be desired though.
ask xzibit to pimp your ride.
lameness filter thwarted.
Why not stop recording?
FWIW, I do video / film production for a living.. this just doesn't make sense. Consumer DV camcorders switch off automatically after a few minutes for a reason - not to save battery life *tho that's a benefit* but because of the exact 'gumming' thing mentioned. The drum spins and creates a magnetic effect which pulls tiny metallic particles off of the tape. Too much of this and your drum/heads/tape gets messed up.
It seems like the person posting the topic doesn't really understand what they are doing - or rather, they don't have a good foundation on which to improve their problems. So instead they are looking for a product (that's not prohibitively expensive) that caters to the way they think things 'should be done'.
Learn to work how the gear is designed to work. Then start experimenting.
I thought Final Cut HD or some similar product would allow real time recording via firewire? I'd imagine you should be able to just hook up your DV camcorder and record to the HD on your laptop or computer?
"It's better to be a pirate then join the Navy"
I'd hate to have to sit thru your home movie collection.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
might not be quite what you want, but some notebook can be set so they do not sleep when the lids are closed. i only know Mac notebook, and that is a feature of the powerbooks (but not ibooks).
you can carry the notebook in a shoulder bag and hook a DV cam to record straight to the internal drive (bypassing the tape). you would have to offload it later if you want to keep the files at full quality, but that may do it? i do know people do this. it has that 80's camcorder thing going but it may be the cheapest solution.... in the sense that the notebook is not dedicated to this project and you can use any handheld video camera with firewire output (even an apple isight).
Apple powerbooks have had this feature for a few years, and i really doubt they are the only ones. i am not saying they were first either, i just do not follow other notebooks. the only thing to ponder is that it is a software setting that tells the machine if it should sleep or not when the lid is closed. if the notebook was designed to run OS X or Windows, there may not be an easy way to control that from a Linux install.
i would assume there is some other all-in-one option, but it might be prohibitively expensive?
I am hit by this limitation sometimes too, as I frequently record services, special functions, etc., at my church, and many of them run longer than an hour or hour and a half. Lately I've just been bringing my laptop with me (PowerBook G4 12", 80G drive) and recording directly to the hard drive via iMovie. Yeah it's not Linux, but you can get an iBook with 100G hard drive for $1199 from Apple. That will hold a TON of video.
Sony made some Mini DVD Camcorder, so there's no problem with gummed heads or what not.
And you can play your movies directly on your DVD player.
Not exactly what you're asking for, but my Sony DSCP10 does about ~4.5 hours of recording (640 x 480/16 frames per second) a 512MB stick.
0 08O35W/102-3682626-8940135?v=glance
And it's main purpose is as digital camera! USB 2 connectivity and long battery life. Good microphone too.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
I'm pretty sure they can hold more than that, I transferred just under an hour of DV footage to disk the other day and the resulting DV-AVI was 15.0 GB.
You've got two options available in the pro video (non-homebrew) marketplace:
(a) To get less dropped frames, use DVCAM tape in your miniDV camera, not cheap miniDV tape. DVCAM has a much stronger backing, better lubrication and is generally worth the extra money. Better yet, use a Sony DVCAM camera with the DVCAM tape because the track pitch is wider resulting in fewer (if any) lost frames and you get SMPTE timecode instead of lame, broken mini-DV timecode. However, the downside to this solution is that the tape pulls even faster than DV, resulting in 30% less recording time per tape, and you haev to spend $4000 on the camera at minimum. Woe is Pro.
(b) Check out the Panasonic P2 cameras which records onto flash media in a variety of digital codecs including DV-25 (same as mini-DV), DVCProHD, etc. While the most you can get right now is a 12 gig flash, that will change eventually and the media ingest to your computer is much faster than capturing. This is the wave of the future. Within a year there will be a P2 camera that's under $3000.
Slight correction to a common misconeption about MiniDV tape and the DV format:
There is no loss in quality going to LP recording mode compared to SP mode. It is still 25 Mb/sec.
Switching to LP you give up reliable insert editing, recording/playback compatibility with other cameras, and audio dubbing. And you are more likely to have dropouts. But aside from these things, SP and LP produce identical quality video.
And Digital-8 has the same quality as well. Same 25 MB/sec recording rate. The reason Digital 8 is perceived as an inferior format is because it appears on relatively lower quality cameras. You can dub DV digitally to a Digital 8 deck and you will end up with a perfect copy.
alexander sokurov directed the feature film Russian ARk all in ONE *complete* TAKE at 70 odd minutes long.
it was the first feauture film generally released in theatres to be reocrded completely to HardDrive.
bloody fucking amazing it was too.
of course htough us slashdotters and geeks dont know about it. cause you are all too navel gazingly obssessed with micchelle gellar and what brad pitt wears and salivating for firefly than real culture.
only the effete leftist liberals you mock like me obessesed with eurotrash art might know.
just had computer with a multi terabyte hard drive array rigged up to it.
duno the details
though taht shoukld send you jokers goolging for it if you are intersted
Just buy a laptop computer with a firewire port, get a decent video capture program that supports firewire capture, plug in your camera, and record straight to hard disk. No tape needed. If you need lots of storage, get a nice big firewire drive.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
I have never used one, but one of those RCA Lyra may work. They have a composite video in and a recording mode. They record to MPEG-4, however, but you do get up to 80 hours of recorded video.
Use your current camera and hook the AV outputs into the Lyra. Its not DV, but that's what VirtualDub is for.
Step 2: Get a laptop with IEEE1394 and install the biggest hard disk that you can. (External hard disks could also be used here.) Use a program like DVIO to capture the incoming DV frames and dump them to a file on your hard disk.
Presto! DV video capture limited only to the size of your disk partition.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
So, if you are using yourself as the hardware, and you say, "Screw the hardware"...
First, I'm not familiar with DV cameras that can record in SP and EP modes, sounds like this person is actually using an analog camera. But anyway...
Use your firewire cable and record direct to a harddrive on a laptop. Assuming your laptop is powerfull enough you shouldn't have any problems with dropped frames and you can add an external drive if you have space limitations. I've done this in a pinch with Adobe Premier when I was out of tapes before. A 300Gb drive plus external enclosure will run around $250 these days, not to mention you won't have to waste time dumping video set for editing.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
I attended Siggraph in Los Angeles this week, and one company was offering a product that sounds like it would fit the bill per your question.
Supacam is a pocket multicam that captures ditigal movies in mpeg-4 format to industry standard memory card. It can also function as a 6.5 megapixel camera, a stereo mp3 player, a video player, and an audio recorder.
The camera is small enough to fit in your pocket, and with a 1 gig memory card can hold abiut 40 minutes of video, I believe.
Cost at the show was $288, and comes with the camera, strap, case, tranfer cable, case, and software.
More information can be found at http://www.supacam.com/
fuck, i guess i should have paid more attention to what i "read". sorry. you can mod me down.
Depending on how pricey the cameras you're using are, I doubt you'll find a tapeless system that will give you cheaper and more flexible results than simply buying a second camera and mounting it next to the first one. You can switch tapes indefinitely without missing a beat, and if you're at the back of the room the shift in angle should be imperceptible. What's more, you'll always have a backup camera in case of hardware problems - that could save your hiney.
A tapeless system using a hard drive or whatever has its uses but I don't think you'd be solving quite the problem you are facing here.
Perfectly Normal Industries
Just hire an autistic person with the super memory "can't forget anything" function. Then have him or her describe the events later to you. Ultra reliable, lifetime guarunteed. No dropped frames. Quality might suffer a bit though.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
As others have posted these don't go together. I have this problem too, needing to video up to 2 hours of illustrated lectures, where there is no predictable midpoint to change tapes. How fast can you change the tape in a typical mini-dv? Under 90 seconds?
:-(
I'm currently using an iBook with external f/w drive, with the power supplies and cables fit in an old VHS camera carry case. On MacOS 10.3 and iMovie you could run the f/w straight into iMovie with no tape in the camera. The upgrade to 10.4 and iMovieHD 5.02 broke this, it needs a tape in the camera now, carefully nursing thru pauses. Apple claim it should still work, but it broke for other ppl too, and I may be forced to upgrade my camera
If you can afford it, DV Rack is a great software solution for direct-to-disk capture. It has some neato tools to make sure you are getting the best picture you can. It also has this cool feature that constantly buffers video, so when you hit the record button on your camera, it actually records several seconds of video prior to pressing the button. Perfect for those times when something happens real fast and it takes you a second to react.
Every DV camera I have ever used outputs video to the firewire port whenever the camera is on. I don't believe it is common to find one that doesn't.
You can always capture directly into editing software too, but it is a little more cumbersome.
your DV camera and a laptop and record direct to the laptop.
The MCE QuickStream DV comes with its own Lithium Ion battery. The 360 minute device is about $900.
...gummed up tape heads (especially prevalent when you spend more than fifteen minutes at a time on pause)...
;-)
You should leave it on slow motion play or you could repeatedly hit the frame advance button with your non-occupied hand.
Um... Why not just get a second camera, and don't pause? Start the second camera when the first one's (almost) done. Like that.
As you can see from all the posts, it's quite simple to record to a hard drive. Any editing package--from the simple (iMovie, Movie Maker 2, et al) to the complex (Final Cut Pro, Avid, et al) has this function. So, get a good laptop (with firewire), choose the editor of your choice, and you're good to go.
However, there are two things I would recommend based on the school of hard knocks. Don't record to the same drive upon which your operating system is operating. You are asking too much from a laptop drive to run the system, the editing package and write video. Buy a big external firewire drive (200GB+) and write to that. I use Lacie and have had great success, I'm sure others would work great too.
Secondly, you should continue to record to tape too while recording to hard drive. When you are ready to change the tape you can switch it out and your editng system will still keep recording to drive (it's based off the feed, not the camera's start stop). The reason this is important is backup -- while infrequent, drives fail and operating systems hiccup and cause your editing program to freeze/crash, etc.
I do this all the time and you are absolutely right in pursuing this approach -- it dramatically accelerates your workflow once you are done shooting.
What is that supposed to mean? What's the difference between "tight" and "loose" footage? I haven't heard that slang before.
they have FireWire built-in, and if you run OS X you can download Apple's FireWire SDK, which has a pretty functional DVHS application, which might accept DV (it accepts MPEG2-TS with no problem).
I use an ancient blue-and-white G3 to record HD video off my cable box -- it's more than equal to that task, so an older iBook such as you might find on eBay should be sufficient.
Pick any two.
yea.... most people seem to go with a the whole laptop thing, and yea if you have one sitting around its not a bad idea but i wouldn't touch such option with a ten foot pole. a laptop would be cumbersome, and its 5400 rpm drive would drop frames faster than you would probably end up droping the laptop. yea i know most of those recorders have 54oo rpm drives but they are a but more specialized. DV magazine loved the firestorm and the quickstream seems to give a lot for your money.
anyone else read that as topless.. man i need to fix my fonts.
It appears that all Canon camcorders are compatible with the Firestore FS-4.
t andardDisplayAct&fcategoryid=102&keycode=camcorder _accessory
http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=S
If they are some sort of audio-visual event are they not professionally recorded?
If it is just some talking head, wouldn't a few stills and a transcript be better?
I know, it wasn't the question, but who really wants to watch a 4 hour video of most "events"?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
1. LP does NOT decrease quality. Period. Look it up. There are reports that it DOES increase the possibilities of dropped frames but it does NOT decrease recording quality. The original poster is wrong.
h tm
2. a) There are already ways of doing real-time storage... some not so easy. I just did it myself this July for a church conference, with a camcorder connected via firewire to a laptop, connected via firewire to an external drive. Not the best of solutions, and it pretty much eliminated mobility, but it gave me 3 hrs/night uninterrupted recording time.
b) There already is a turn-key solution for this. It's called Firestore. It's a portable hard drive that captures real-time from a camera.
http://www.focusinfo.com/products/firestore/fs-4.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
That DV Rack is a pretty cool!
:(
Under $300 for a copy and the tools it provides could allow an amuater take professional quality video.
Too bad I don't have mod points
DV Rack (http://www.dvrack.com/ by Serious Magic runs on a laptop and was made to do exactly this plus it has automatic quality monitoring that watches video and audio levels in real-time alerting you when thresholds are exceeded. It also turns your laptop screen into a field monitor that lets you compare live camera to recorded clips in split screen (good for checking continuity/framing).
There's an express version that lists for $149.
Disclaimer: Yes, I work at the company but hey someone finally asked a question on Slashdot that requests exactly what a product that I worked on does.
I actually have a similar issue as the root poster and found this solution myself. I hook my laptop up to my DV camers, turn it on and it stays on becuase the firewire is hooked up. Normally it turns off after 15 minutes but I tested it on Friday and captured 3 1/2 hours before the camcorder batter strted running down. This is perfect for long events. On a side note My laptop's HD is 60GB of which 40 are free (I cleared it out for this test) Just for fun, I setup Vegas' capture to use my 40GB USB drive (it's the drive that came in my laptop, only 4200RPM - in a little enclosure it's powerd off the USB) and it worked perfectly, not a dropped frame. Provided your batteried last long enough or you have a power port this should be able to go for 8 or more hours, just get more HD space. Sony Vegas (which is what I was using) can add a dozen or more drives and use them in sequence as they fill up. You can get a bunch of laptop crives and enclosures if you want to use the host battery - or 3.5" enclosures and regular 250-300GB drives if you're doing it with AC.
> conventions
> vital footage
> error, does not compute
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Recently I've been chafing under the limitations of mini-DV tapes
Listen, there's no point blaming the side-effects of your little "habit" on your choice of storage medium (it's for your "conventions"... suuuure).
All you have to do is throw a little vaseline or baby-oil in there and you'll be back "on the road" in no time.
miniDV EP is the same quality as SP. The only difference is the tape speed. The data packets are the same.
Dropouts? I've been using miniDV for years in an industrial environment and I never have dropouts. Your camera is gummed up as you've already explained.
Always use fresh tapes for important events and record them, completely, with the lens cap on then rewind to retension and create a proper timecode on the entire tape. Don't reuse tapes, keep your camcorder clean and stick to one tape manufacturer.
Pause for 15 minutes while recording? Huh?!?! Most camcorders shut themselves off. There's no good reason to be on pause for 15 minutes. Turn it off then back on.
You don't need a HD. What you need is attention to detail and, it seems, a second camcorder and tripod. Record overlapping segments and do post-editing.
The firm I work for does video traffic recordings for counts and analysis. For years, we used Sony Real-Time VCRs, which are capable of a super LP mode of 3x EP. After investigating industrial digital video recorders for over a year, my boss found that they are almost always encrypted because they are intended to be tamper-proof for security monitoring, etc, which doesn't help if you want to make a copy of what you recorded, and is a stupid idea regardless, because you have to put an entire recorder in an evidence locker rather than a tape or a hard-disk...
Anyhow, I mentioned the consumer-level devices like the Archos, etc, as a complete stab-in-the-dark suggestion. He picked up a couple and we spent a couple months experimenting and adapting and found that we could use an Archos AV-400 with a couple of those big old lead-acid batteries for literally days of continuous recording. Of course, it's far from broadcast quality, but I'm too lazy to RTFA so I don't know what you need it for. Anyhow, at 512x384, DivX-encoded with a time-stamp character generator patched in, it works nearly perfectly for our use, and saves us the very lengthy step of digitizing a video tape.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I'd have thought so too. They need the capability in playback mode for transfering tape to PC, so why not use it in record mode as well?
For portability, get an isight camera and a 12" powerbook, upgraded to a 100 (or 120 if you can find it) GB hard drive. Run iMove to capture your video.
Be prepared to go grab lunch and wait while the video "finishes" recording after the presentation - that cleanup it does when you hit Stop will take quite awhile for a four hour recording. (probably 30 minutes or more?)
Then do any editing you need to via iMovie (cutting out breaks, inserting text overlays at the start/end, transitions, etc) then export to whatever format suits you. You'll save yourself a lot of headache having to import the video into a computer later to do the editing and cleanup anyway.
Be sure you bring your power adapter - 4 hours is asking a lot of even a powerbook battery.
If you can stand a little less portable and quite a bit more expensive, go with a 17" powerbook instead. You'll fall in love with the large screen the first day out.
This is definitely not the cheapest solution out there, but it is arguably one of the best.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I forget what the brand name is, I can get back to you on monday, but at my old school district (where I still work for the summer) the video producer has a external mini-hard drive thing. I think its about 60gig. It has several firewire ports, both the bigger 6 pin, and the smaller 4 pin. We use this when we record a lot to go straight to the drive via firewire instead of using tape. It has its own battery pack, can plug into a car power outlet (cigerrette lighter) or has a regular wall adapter. It is actually pretty nice. Again, I forget what the brand is, but I'll find out monday and repost, so check back. Also, I think it might have been between $500 to $1000, but it was worth it in my opinion. Tho that is only a estimate.
:P)
(P.S. my name on here is sedorox, but it doesn't seem to wanna take my password
There are plenty of solutions out there, but they're all fairly expensive (Between $600 and $3000). The reason for this is that they're targetted at professional users.
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The cheap solution: You can hook your camera's firewire port directly to a laptop, and have your video software do direct recording, but you have to carry around the laptop, and deal with all the trouble that entails. If you're doing any sort of moving around, this likely more trouble than it is worth. The good news is that you don't have to take time to download the video to your computer for editing.
If you don't use a computer, you need a hard driver recording system. Unfortunately, your average firewire enclosure is too basic to know what to do with a DV stream, so just plugging a firewire drive into your camera won't work.
The following companies (not a complete list) make standalone devices that include a built-in hard drive, battery, and the logic to capture the firewire stream directly to disk:
ADS Technologies (PyroDV)
DataVideo (DV Bank)
Focus Enhancements (Firestore FS-3, FS-4)
Sony (DSR-DU1)
B&H search for "video hard disk recorders" gives a decent listing:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O
I just did an event where i needed to stream video from a DV cam. The issue there was that I could not find a DV cam of any format that would not go either into sleep or demo modes if left alone for more than 15 minutes. The only way to get past this was to pop in a tape and record, but that brought the tape length limitation back into play.
I eventually used an old CCD-TV3 from Sony, a high-8 commercial camera I had laying around and a capture device that could take NTSC via a RCA cable. It worked fine. I have not found a DV camera that does not go into either sleep (Panasonic, JVC) or demo mode (Sony), there seems to be no way to disable this. Any suggestions?
-GReg
...isn't all it's knocked up to be. Electronics are prone to failure; this is why my station records all shows on 1" tape as a backup. The Sony MAV fails. Often.
Sure tapes are a little work, but tit-for-tat, tapes are still a reliable medium. They have been for a long time. And until everybody you work for adopts tapeless, you must still keep the tape deck around anyway, so what's the point? If you adopt tapeless and your clients don't, you have to dub -- thereby eliminating any performance gain ten times over!
I know a specific PBS show that shoots on HDCAM in preference to any tapeless system. Even though HDCAM stock is notoriously expensive and takes up a lot of space (this show has a whole room full of tapes in my building), it works much better for them than tapeless ever would. The assistant editor dubs the footage to Unity, where the editor works on it, and then has the assistant editor dub out his edited show. So if anything, working from tape opens up a job for a college intern.
The product you want is called the firestore http://www.videoguys.com/FireStore.html Its a portable Hard drive product that is made just for your needs.
Buy another camera and start it rolling as the end of the tape on one nears the end. Use your timecoding to match up properly when you pull it to computer.
Neutiquam erro
Its not DV, but that's what VirtualDub is for.
Uhhhhghghgh. You're talking about converting lossy intraframe-compressed DV into lossy interframe-compressed MPEG-4 into lossy interframe-compressed DV, over an analog connection, for the low-low price of $400, which could easily be put towards the mere $900 of a DV-based firewire solution, which would preserve DV quality from start to finish.
If that's what VirtualDub is for...no thanks.
I'm wondering if there's an affordable consumer product out there that acts solely as a VCR, but has a FireWire output for the digital data, without the video camera mechanisms that make DV camcorders more expensive.
FYI I have read recently that the new Sony Playstation will have a DV Editing suite available as a hard disk add-on. It apparantley has some kind of underlying IOS, which the OS sits on top of. I believe there are currently three different OS's made, the gaming one by Sony, a specialist DV editing one, and a Linux one, so I'd guess you could set up with that? Also you could probably make a portable box with it in it along with a car battery and an inverter that may enable it to be semi portable for you.
I do a lot of Public Access TV and we use older 80GB FireStores to capture the FireWire output from our Canon GL2 cameras. It works pretty well - it only takes a couple of minutes to set up and 80GB holds 5 hours and 45 minutes (enough for even the longest Town Meeting marathons). They come with a little nylon carrying case that allow you to sling it from your shoulder or attach it to your belt - a real plus for mobile shoots.
... to keep our 2 cameras / firestores straight, we always record into bin 11 on camera 1 and bin 22 on camera 2).
Since the FireStore uses a FAT filesystem, the individual segments are 1.99GB each which, if I remember correctly, translates to 9 minutes plus change of DV25 video. However, you can also add your own segment marks with the push of a button (up to 99 segments per bin, up to 99 bins on the device
After you are done recording, you have to tell the device to convert the raw files to AVIs. This can take 5-10 minutes depending on how much you recorded. After that, I copy the files to my PowerBook (another 10-15 minutes) and I am ready to edit in Final Cut Express. Although the conversion and transfer times add up, it is still better than transcoding and/or rendering.
The only drawback is the price - when we got ours they were $999 each. It seems pretty steep for what is really not much more than a hard disk (and only an 80GB one at that). However, in the final analysis, I think that they have been more than worth it. We've been using both our units at least once a week for 2 years and have never had the slightest problem (even in the hands of some pretty computer-phobic users). Since I have yet to see any alternatives in this thread that is really any cheaper or easier (and the laptop solutions are definitely less mobile), I'd say that the FireStore is one of the best options.
I notice most of these video capture HD solutions are 2.5". I have seen external 3.5" HD that go up to 350 gb. This seems like a more ideal solution for DV. Although, I have not found a 3.5" HD that is desigend for DV (power through hot shoe, etc.) Really 3.5" is not that much bigger than 2.5" but they offer much more space than the 2.5"/laptop solution. Crossing the .5 TB mark now.
You should check this out. I'm sure that there are other brands, but this one seems to fit the bill.
E OEQUIP&subcat=&prodClass=VHDISK&search=0&off=0&bas eItem=LTM-CPDV3B
http://www.lairdtelemedia.com/Product.asp?cat=VID
I suppose this solution is a little bigger/more cumbersome than the solutions you mentioned but...
I've built a mini-itx system (fanless) with firewire and a 250gig hdd.
I then had my roomate build me a little device to connect a button and a set of LEDs to the internal rs232 port. I can control the LEDs and read the button presses from a python script running on the system.
With this setup I have a small/quiet machine (hold in one hand) that is very easy to use.
There's a power button and a record button, the LEDs show you when it's recording and how much drive space is left.
250gigs divided by 12.5GB/hour for DV gives me 20 hours of continuous/lossless DV capture (no more glitches from tape read/write problems)
When I get back to the office I just plug the machine into the lan and load the AVIs across the network directly into Premiere.
Ewww... you're that kind of lazy consumer that helps Microsoft to monopolize market.
For video postprocessing I recommend VirtualDub - very fast, powerful, free, open-source.
I just had to solve this exact problem. I had to record a potentially 3-hour commencement and did not want to rely on 1-hour DV tapes. I researched what it would take to get my laptop to be the video capture device. I wrote up my result in my Backpack.
Direct to Disk Video Recording
I hope you can find it useful.
Geez man you sound so cynic, so disabused, so jaded... Bet you can't see any motive other than $VAGUE_REASON or $CONTRADICTORY_REASON... Looks like you suspect $POORLY_CONCEIVED_AMBITIONS in everybody... You got a good case of $POORLY_HIDDEN_CYNISIM going on!
Sorry about that... the URL for the shared version of that page should be:
http://mboffin.backpackit.com/pub/66066
I agree with the parent, you need to use the equipment properly. But, you also need to use the right equipment.
Although consumer grade mini-DV equipment is pretty good, if you're trying to do anything real, you need real equipment. A DVCAM or DVCPRO camaera not only produces a higher quality recording, it also uses better, longer, tapes. If consumer grade equipment doesn't work, it's better to use better equipment than hack the junk to make it work.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
When contemplating using an HD instead of DV tape I'd suggest that you ponder what you're losing: a field master.
I'm a Final Cut Pro user and when I bring tape into my system the first thing I do is LOG it. Then I can select what I want to capture. The tape gets write protected, of course, properly labelled, and now I can simply save my project files. At the end of a project I can discard the captured video. It's merely a matter of popping in a few tapes should I need to recapture the project.
This saves a TON of disk space that otherwise you're going to have to hold onto - or you'll lose the footage you chose not to keep (but which might be very useful). I've had no problem over five years in retrieving old footage. Yes - you might need to keep a lot of tapes but they are small.
your milage, of course, may vary -- but I recommend you have your camera cleaned and aligned and maybe treat it a little better - respect the tools you want to giv eyou good results is always a good idea.
You should be able to find an 80GB firestore pro for about $1000. While it is a bit pricey, the cost is well worth the time saved capturing footage. If this is a problem you regularly run into, a 1000 dollar investment is not so bad. Others have mentioned using a laptop. While this is certainly an option, the cost will be comparable but your portability is limited. The firestore can fit on a beltclip for mobile shots and will fit in a camera bag. A laptop will probably require another ~6lb bag to carry. Another way to consider the issue--the firestore's price is approximately equal to 200 minidv tapes. After 200 hours of footage, you start coming out ahead with the portable solution. I doubt you could homebew a device with comparable reliability for significantly less money.
harmonious design
http://www.mcetech.com/quickstreamdv/index.html
Use a DVCAM camera. It uses DV or DVCAM tapes. There are larger than miniDV ones and can easily store 4 hours of video. (e.g. the Panasonic AY-DV276AMQ).
DV tapes are not that much more expensive.
Firestore is a solution for most DVcam stuff, and its integrated with the JVC-DV5000.
Its pretty rad.
yeah.
This is a profession that takes too much 1) time, 2) money, and 3) patience. You will spend every moment of your weekend and evenings editing video. You will burn GDPs worth of cash in order to store your video and build a computer that can cut and render it. And yet you'll still "botch" somebody's wedding or seminar, because your customer is the next Stanley Kubrick and you're just a bitchass with a camera and a swinging dick.
Save yourself this grief now. Get out.
I've used FireStore and mac laptops and various firewire drives and configurations.
Firestores and their rip-offs are perfect for killing video tape; however, they cost a lot.
A firestore starts at $700 for 40GB and doesn't run on batteries (costs more for battery.) You can get a n ibook for that kind of money!
The iBook is much better, you can do (simple) editing with iMovie. You can boot it up into Disk mode, and the iBook becomes a firewire drive.
The EXPENSIVE firestore devices are more portable.
NTSC DV is about 12.5 GB/hr
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You can open the iBook up and remove the magnetic sensor that detects the lid shutting, then you can run the laptop in a backback and have it still recording. Most those firestore-like drives have no more drive shock protection than a laptop.
Maybe someone has an OS hack to disable the lid sleep thing?
FYI: any firewire iBook will work, and you can put in a LARGE 2.5 ide drive... used "slow" ibooks can be found cheap.
Otherwise, I've been interested in a FreeBSD one, since I've seen there is a DV capture program out there for it. But finding a small cheap firewire laptop pc in the iBook price range is difficult.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Sony have XDCAM that records onto 23GB Optical media, Professional Disc for Data.
The discs are about $30 a pop, you can get a PDD drive for your computer, or use the camera via FireWire either as a VTR style device, or in file access mode, where you see the files on the disc. It's non-linear and very rugged. You can pause for as long as you like with no wear and tear. There's no need to then capture the footage to your computer, as it's already there, on the disc, ready to use in your editing software. Discs are cheap, when you have those 15 minute pauses, switch discs, even if it's not full, that way you'll never run out of space - no-one will be talking for over an hour and a half, continuously.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
The firestore seems to have a lot going for it, but it has a ~90 minute battery life. If this is a concern, a notebook with 2 battery bays, plus extra batteries you can hot swap, might be the best way to solve your problem. If portability is a big problem, then the firestore with an extension cord, or some other power extention device would seem best. But it sounds like continuous run time is your greatest concern.
;)
You could always just connect a firestore to a cart with a bunch of daisy chained UPSes.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
but I usually use pause when I leave for a while, which can be for more than 15 minutes, I used to press stop frequently back in the old days of VCRS, and pause usually kicked to stop after awhile, anyways back in those days. These days hitting stop makes the whole thing start over at the beginning, but he's still talking about tape, so why isn't he using stop for durations that long?
Check out JVC's DV3000U
It's not dirt cheap. But a good value for what you want to do. It also will allow you to retain your tape as the original archive footage. A Final Cut user pointed out earlier the usefulness of that.
A 4 hour tape runs list price $55.
I say stick with tape unless you are willing to through away your footage. Then you could go with a disk based appoach.
Sorry, I didn't read every word of your post--it was pretty long. Hopefully the brevity of my answer will make up for my inattention. If you hook up a DV camera to an Apple laptop, you might be able to use iMovie, QuickTime Broadcaster, Final Cut or something else to capture directly from the camera to disk. At 9.5 minutes for 2 GB of DV (maybe higher in Final Cut) you would need 50 GB of disk space for 4 hours, so a 60 or 80 GB PowerBook should do the trick.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Get instead a camera that is ONLY a camera. Go to linuxdevices.org and search for "camera" and you will find various models that come with lens mounts and a tcpip port. They're only about a thousand dollars and you can connect one to any PC you want. If a pair of 500GB drives in a RAID cannot meet your time needs, build two 1TB PCs and let software do the "swapping" in real time.
For the past 2 years anyone that has been serious in video have known about the Firewire hard drive recording decks that are available, and recording to your laptop is always do-able. Personally I only see DV tape problems with misused equipment and low end gear. and changing a tape at the 60 minute mark is not a hassle. (Note if you are recording a segment longer than 20 minutes, you are going to bore the hell out of people.)
I suggest starting with good gear, taking care of it, and picking a good tape and stick with it. My XL1's only ever have sony excellence DV tapes in them and almost never have dropouts. hell I wore out a complete tape transport in one of my XL1 cameras and never had a "gummed up" video head problem.
The portable hard drive recorders that are available that plug into the firewire will cost you a minimum of $900.00 without a hard drive. so unless you are shooting with high end gear (and from what I read in your post you're not) I suggest buying a new $300.00 DV camera every 6 months and call it done. That is your absolute cheapest solution with the highest portability and useability.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
hello... 82min in SP... obviously your not much of a videography with your 15min pauses but there are mini-dv tapes from Panasonic that goes to 276 minutes so please don't talk about no 82 minutes in SP mode!
sig here
No, that doesn't explain it. At 3.6MB/min one hour of footage ought to be about 13GB, without overhead, regardless of whether it's on tape or on a hard drive.
Assuming that the guy didn't actually transcode it from DV to MJPEG, then there's no reason why it should have ballooned in size like that. AVI is just a container format, it can easily have the DV data inside of it, without re-compressing each frame to MJPEG. Unless AVI adds a huge amount of overhead to the DV data, as compared to Quicktime or some of the other container formats.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I know my old Powerbook 667 Mhz is perfectly capabile of capturing video with no dropped frames. But one of the reasons I bought a powerbook was that I was fed up with trying to make PC's behave as stabily.
Perhaps direct firewire dumps will owrk pretty well on the PC... but then of course there's the issue of noing being able to use Final Cut (or even iMovie) on the video when you are done which would be pretty useful. A Mini while not the ideal box for video would work well enough for someone on a budget with a little time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.scenalyzer.com/
I've been using this SW for years. Put it on a laptop with Firewire. Connect your DV cam to the laptop via Firewire. Hit Capture.
It will record until the Hard Drive is full. It can automatically splice the capture into multiple files to handle any file size limitations (good for file management. Who wants one giant file? Too difficult to manage for edits afterwards).
It is also good for intelligent captures off of tapes in which you might have done on the fly editing. It has some neat effects (time lapse capture can be fun) as well.
Finally, it is pretty cost friendly ($39). And I would recommend you run the trial version to see if you like it first.
Pretty easy. What else could you want?
-- Mean People Suck
In the vein of "just google for $OBSCURE_TERMS", try:
"dv camcorder record to firewire hard disk"
Then you'll discover the even easier:
"firestore" and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky".
JVCs are junk. At least this is my experience. I have a JVC DVL-505u, and it has given me nothing but troule -- I should have spent the extra $200 and got a canon. Granted, this was a while ago.
I'm into digital video. I used to work with ancient Macintosh computers, back in the days of MJPEG analog capture cards, about the time Premiere 2 came out. Ad nauseum, I'm into portable video, especially as gagetty as I am.
I'm looking for a digital camcorder which does 720x480, or x486 -- I think the extra 6 aren't needed if you are not capturing from an analog source. I'm also looking for MPEG2 or better. Compact Flash formats have disks of -- what, 4 gigs? I'll settle for SD or MMC.
There are a couple units like the Canon S2, this thing, and others. I didn't find a link to this ultra generic model. They're all 640x480, which bothers me.
Here, have a bunch of opinionated spooge.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Or, conversely, you could just plug your iSight into your iPod photo and install that firmware hack that was floating around the net a while back to record mpeg-2 streams.
Of course, with an iSight, you can't zoom and the focus tended to be unreliable, but it might fit the bill...
-- My Weblog.
... you might even consider the model with a DVD burner in.
Get a laptop with firewire and get something like Cinelerra or FCP, then just plug the camera into the laptop and use the direct capture in the software to record. You'll be able to record for as much disk space as you've got (use usb2 or firewire if you want to add an external drive for more space). That should work fine.
No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
There are a few direct to hard disk products available that exceed your time req. and allow you to directly edit the video you shot.
h tm
I own a prod. company and buy most of my stuff from B & H photo out of NYC. Focus has one product at:
http://www.focusinfo.com/products/firestore/fs-4.
I have a Sony camcorder. The little 'memory stick' that it came with is able to record 4MB of information (20 pictures or about 10 seconds of video). It's a bit annoying because it's so tiny, but I've seen memroy sticks come out that can hold 2GB. Pause isn't a problem. If you do the math 2GB is more than 90 minutes of video. Two memory sticks and two batteries, and you have 180+ minutes of total recording time, with one interruption in between, and no tapes.
just get a ADVC with a large external firewire drive and a cheap analog camcorder that will stay on input without going into powersaving mode (essentially throughput without genereration loss of analog tape) and record to a laptop using the many apps that are availabe regardless of OS. ie quicktime pro 7, dv grab, and whatever the equivalent that the piece of shit OS microsoft has.
Republicans are jackballs...there, I said it!
use motion detection so that valuable tape time doesn't get wated when the genius' you are filming are all standing around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for the crowds obvious approval, applause, adoration and general ass kissing.
Republicans are jackballs...there, I said it!
"...thus loosing vital footage."
Can anyone in the world spell this friggin' word correctly? It's LOSING,, not LOOSING!
LOSING: It means that you are unsuccessful at retaining possession of something.
LOOSING: It means to make something less tight, or to detach.
I purchased a DX-97U a little while ago, remanufactured, and it hasn't worked once - been in the shop on warranty repair the entire time. Apparently there was some problem with the playback heads AND the tape ejection/loading mechanism.
The sad thing is that when it works, it's a BEAUTIFUL camera that produces a FANTASTIC image - especially in low light. Those Canons are great outdoors, but until very recently (and hence, very expensively) have had piss-poor image quality indoors.
My criteria for a camcorder were:
1) Must be good indoors
2) Must have a mic-in jack (because camcorder built-in audio sucks, uniformly)
3) There is no number 3.
This unit was the only one I could find that matched these specs at a reasonable price. Unfortunately I ended up screwing myself in the bargain.
+++ATH0
Good flame, buddy!
All these new digital cameras may not
have the functionality of a full video camera...
but my casio z750 is a great compact 7mega pixel
camera that can record video at a decent 640x480 @ 30fp in mpeg4... about 17mins on a 512meg sd
card at max quality... where it misses on fuctions
its the ultimate on convenience and price...
btw has slashdot turned into lazy writers google?
Get one of the 80Gb (or more) versions of the LyraAV or Archos. These can take 3xPhono inputs and record for hours and hours. Then hook up your camcorder to its TV-Out (a 3xPhono output) and buy 3 Phono F-F adapters. You can now record directly to your video jukebox, at whatever quality settings you like, and your only limitation is battery life. If you have an AC outlet near you, you're set. :)
The video is even stored in avi or mpeg format so you can set up VideoLan to stream it from your website straight away.
Have a nice day
obviously you do this to make money.
if you don't at least demand the money needed to do your job properly.
stop being a fucking tightass and pay the price for professional equipment.
you can't whine about consumer grade shit not doing a professional grade job. takes money to make money and all that...
Thanks for the link to DVIO, I love tiny little programs like this that do just what they need with no cruft.
Since I am a budding filmmaker this will be of good use to me when going to HDV.
Visceral Psyche Films
QuickTime Pro 7 now includes the ability to record video from a DV source with one click. Very simple and in my experience works well.
There's the whole bit about the solid rocket boosters on the space shuttle being as wide as they are based on the width of 2 roman war horses (roads built to support the width of chariots, carriages built to work on those roads, railroads built to support undercarriages based on carriages, SRB's gotta fit on a train).
Video is the same way. We've got purely digital video formats. There's no reason whatsoever to record stuff at 29.97 fps aside from that's the way we've been doing it since the analog days. We aren't bound by wall current frequency for timing that stuff anymore.
There's abosultely no excuse for dropped frames when importing from a deck or camera. The imporing solution could just download a file from a tape drive at whatever speed the hardware could handle it (slow if need be). But instead decks spit out video at speed just because that's they way it's always been done, hardware be damned.
There's so much stuff out there in video/broadcast that is just plain silly that it has to be done that way because it's being held back by old paradigms. Just like designing a space shuttle with the width of a horses ass being an important factor. Cameras don't have to behave this way. Storage doesn't have to act this way. Edit suites don't have to act this way. TV's/monitors don't have to act this way.
It's just that the horses ass solution has worked for the people who can spend enough to make it work, so they don't bother. But if enough people had the balls to break with these turd dropping paradigms we'd get cheaper, more efficient, more flexible and more productive workflows than we have today.
People just have to decide to get out from behind that ass.
I found myself in a similar situation this past year, as I need to record volleyball matches for our university team which run 90 minutes at the minimum to three hours at times. The only way to change tapes and not miss any action was using one tape per game, but being on the team and trying to manage that at the same time was not feasable. My solution was to take the DV camera, an external hard drive, and my tibook and capture the footage straight into final cut pro over firewire. The only tough part was finding a power outlet to plug my powerstrip into and have a good angle of the match, but it worked out. After the match I'd take it home, convert the DV files to mpeg2in real time using the Capty FastCoder, and then make a DVD using DVD Studio Pro for my coach to watch the next moring before practice. Cut out the cost of tapes (it's a NCAA Division III public university) and the time required to capture the footage.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all