Getting video off my camera onto computer

Hi all,

Some of this isn't computer related and I'm not really sure if this belongs in this forum or hardware but it's all interrelated and related to using software so here goes...

We have a Samsung VP-W80 PAL Hi8 8mm Camcorder. I have two 90-minute Hi8 tapes and one HS90.

On the computer, we have a Winfast TV2000 XP Expert video capture card which is currently in the desktop that has a 16Mb video card and is running Windows 98SE. I can move it into a machine that runs 2000 or XP and can insert the 128Mb video card when it arrives.

What I am trying to do is to take the video footage off the camera and onto video on a VCR tape or the computer. Eventually, I would like to convert all the footage to computer files of some sort but I would like to clear at least one tape by Saturday.

Basically, I don't know anything about transferring video off our camera and these are things I can think of that I need to know:

-what software I need, such as will Windows Movie Maker do it,

-where would I find Windows Movie Maker on our XP if it's there and if it isn't, why wouldn't it be (we have SP2) and how do I get it there,

-how much space would I need and can it be roughly calculated according to the time amount to transfer,

-what do I need to know about codecs,

-does my camera record the movie digitally (the camera says digital on the
side but uses a tape so I imagine that's something to do with how the movie is recorded onto the tape),

-does it record stereo sound,

-if I transfer it to VCR and it does record stereo sound will I need to feed it through 2 sound inputs,

-how much quality loss will I get if I record to VCR tape now and transfer to computer later,

-how do I avoid loss of quality when transferring to VCR or computer,

-what do I need to know about synchronisation of sound and picture,

-exactly how do I use this video capture card that I have (the instructions are difficult to follow),

-is there anything in particular I need to know about burning the files to CD.

If there's anything that anyone knows I need to know that I haven't covered, please give me that information too.

Thanks all!

 

On XP sp2, Start. Programs. Movie Maker should be there. Right click and 'send to desktop create shortcut' if you're going to be using it a lot, it saves having to find it in the program list

If you're capturing in AVI, this will use about 13gb of disk space per hour of footage.

It depends on the particular Hi8 format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_mm_video_format

Probably more than if you capture straight to the computer. Analogue to analogue is not lossless, like when copying an audio tape, the sound quality is never quite as good as the original, and if you copy the copy, a little more is lost. The good news is that once it's captured to the computer, it's in digital format and subject to a few exceptions, this is lossless (one exception is if you compress it, for example into MPEG, WMV etc)

All I can say about that is if you do encounter it, you might need a more versatile editing program than Movie Maker, for instance, Adobe Premiere Elements. With this you can unlink the audio from the video and resync it if necessary. I'm not sure how accurately (if at all) you can do this with Movie Maker

I wouldn't know unless I tried myself. Hopefully this will give you a few ideas.
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic339761.html#1770566

A CD might not have a large enough capacity for a decent quality video. It depends on how long the video is, and also on whether you just want it on CD for backup purposes. An hour's uncompressed AVI will be roughly 13gb which won't even fit on a DVD. I capture from Mini DV cameras and usually split the video into smaller chunks so I can back them up.

 

I use Easy CD Creator 6.0 by Roxio (I have others, but right now that is my premier program for burning DVDs). I also use my capture card to digitize the video from the VCR to my computer. My numbers aren't quite that bad, somewhere around 500Meg / hour, and it can be varied damatically by increasing or decreasing the resolution, something that standalone DVD recorders can't do.

The software you use makes all the difference, I tried a Pinicale product with poor results (unusable actually). I bought a VCR and put it on my stack just so I can use it for nothing else.

I would recommend expermenting, which is what I did. Take a VCR tape you don't care about with lots of video footage and start capturing.

 

As far as using the card, I'm assuming you have the PVR installed with it.

If so it is just a matter of hooking the camera or other input device into the cards inputs, opening the pvr, left-clicking on the screen to bring up the control panel, selecting the input source and clicking the record button.

By default it saves files into the largest partition that is available on your hard drive, it will call the folder 'winfast workarea'

you will most likely need to go into 'configuration' in the pvr and adjust the quality settings on the 'capture setting' tab to get the best results.

This card was designed for windows XP and can be problematic on previous operating sytems.

 

I saw muvee demonstrated at a computer users' group meeting. The guy had some very nice videos, with music, of his daughter and her fiancé and their wedding.

BTW, Windows Movie Maker is found under Programs, Accessories. Also, your camera will not record stereo sound if it has just one mic for recording sound and, most likely, that's what it has.

 

Thanks all for that. I had more space available than I remembered so I may not need to get as much off by this weekend as I was expecting, which gives me a few days grace to get this under control but by late next week I expect to run out of tape space.

If anyone has any other helpful information, please supply it. I'm a complete novice at this with a deadline and too much of the info that I have/have found is above my current level of understanding.

Thanks all.