For various reasons, I am not yet set up with a real video editing package, but I have the hardware. For other reasons, I need to immediately start sifting through a pile of tapes for video clips. I have my Digital-8 camcorder (connected via firewire), and that is where I've stopped.

For the time being, I am merely looking for a free-to-$50 solution that can get me the following capabilities:

1 - capture video
2 - remote control (FF/REW/PLAY/STOP controls on the PC)
3 - a simple video editor that will allow me to make simple cuts
4 - ability to save as some sort of file that can be imported into Picasa

Of these requirements, #2 is the least important, it would just make the process easier. If this can all be accomplished with one program, that's great. So far I've tried Virtualdub, which appears to have everything but #2, but I haven't tried an actual capture (because it's really freaking late/early).

Thanks for your help on this. I'm hoping to be able to start capturing by Monday evening, and need to get through the entire project with about 30 tapes by Saturday night. Sorry for the hurried time frame, I certainly wish it weren't the case.

I personally use iMovie and Final Cut on my Mac, but that isn't too much use to you.

My Dad is a fairly average PC user and has been using Pinnacle Studio 9 and then 10 to great effect for the past few years, it does everything you need but you'd have to check point 4.

From watching him use it I would say it's stable and easy to use. Capture is easy, you just play the whole tape in and it splits it automatically into scenes. The quality seems to be pretty good too, he tends to playback to his camcorder via firewire and then record to a DVD recorder, but this is more to do with his now very aged PC taking so long to encode DVD's from Pinnacle directly.

If you want a more solid package, with the ability to upskill later then you can't go wrong with http://www.adobe.com/ap/products/premiereel/ I guess.

Cheers

Cris.

I think Scenalyzer has the features you want. Well, possibly not #4, but it should be pretty easy to use another tool to batch convert. There's a $34 version with a demo and a freeware version.

Thanks to both of you.

Cris, I guess I'm a little biased agains Pinnacle's products, but that's from my experiences with it a looong time ago. Perhaps its changed. I'm very seriously looking at Premiere Elements eventually, though I still really dislike the interface for all of Adobe's products. I'll give it a shot eventually, though.

Bitt, that program looks VERY promising. I've downloaded it and I'll play with it tonight and tomorrow. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Scenalyzer isn't quite doing it for me. That may only be my own issues with the software, but it's also very much geared towards finding scenes on a tape.

I think I've found a solution that will work quite well for me for this immediate coming week. Basically, I found that I can eliminate steps 1-3 and skip right to 4, because Picasa has a built-in video capturing tool. As you might imagine, its extremely basic, and offers no control over the camcorder (the tool is mostly geared toward webcams), but it does what I really need at the moment, which is to get short clips directly into Picasa.

I have one problem, though. All the video that gets captured is then stored interlaced. Is there any way to deinterlace it during playback? I'm not sure what Picasa is using to play back the video, but I thought it might be something configurable to make it deinterlace the video. If it comes to it, I'll just deinterlace them separately and put them back into Picasa, but it would be much easier if I could just make it deinterlace during playback...

Any ideas? And if I have to deinterlace separately, what app would you suggest?

*edit*
if it helps, it looks like Picasa saves the captures as WMV files.

Picasa appears to use system codecs, based on this. Meaning horrible support for MPEG standards unless the user has either installed Quicktime, or is running on Windows 7.

Actually, I am running Windows 7 I just upgraded from the 7000 build to the 7100 RC build last night.

How does that change things?

*edit*
Actually, I'm still interested in knowing, but I won't be playing this slideshow on any Windows 7 boxes, so I guess I'll have to figure something out. If any of you were just looking to deinterlace a video, what tool would you use?

Not to beat a dead horse, but this is why a Mac makes sense for a lot of people. They, along with the software they're bundled with, can often pay for themselves quite quickly.

I'm sure if you spent some additional money on software for Windows you'd also find a solution that was better suited to what you're trying to do without jumping through so many hoops.

Maybe even Adobe Premiere Elements, though I don't have any experience with it myself. Should be around $40-60.

Microsoft is adding support for industry standard video and audio formats in Windows 7, after 6+ years of ignoring them. This has a full list of what is being supported.

Though, as you pointed out, it won't help if the intended playback platform isn't Windows 7, OS X, or Linux, without having to manually add codecs.

As for the deinterlacing issue, I don't really have an answer there. All my video work has been on OS X, and with progressive scan formatted videos.

If the playback device isn't interlaced itself or won't automatically convert the incoming signal to a progressive scan, then you can always use VLC to deinterlace/export.

You're right, of course. I definitely think that Macs are better suited for this type of thing I'm doing, but I made my choice and I don't regret much about it, especially the money I saved.


That's a possibility, but I can't seem to figure out if that's even possible. The camcorder's menu structure is terrible, and the manual isn't much better. I only bought it at the time because I needed something that could play Digital/Hi-8 with firewire connectivity, and this was cheaper than a deck.

I know this is a big favor, but could someone take a peek at the manual for the DCR-TRV480 and let me know if they can tell whether it can play back deinterlaced?

I didn't mean the camera as the playback device. I meant the device you will use to play back the final video once you've edited it.

Am I right in assuming that DV is all interlaced? So the footage is recorded interlaced etc... as progressive scan wasn't playable on most TV's when the format was invented.

AndyM is your man for this type of question, give him a quick PM.

Cheers

Cris.

The DV spec allows for progressive scan but we don't use it. However our ENG cameras will shoot progressive and our suites can work on it, but our SD outputs have to be interlaced, so there isn't much point for us.