Topic: Recording video from DV

[Schlotzky5]

So I am trying to get video off of a DV camera via firewire. I tried using microsoft movie maker, but the speed is inconsistent. Anyone have experience with this kinda stuff? any good free or 'free' programs out there?

[scottws]

I've used Windows Movie Maker and also Nero Vision with no problems capturing video with either program.  I prefer Nero Vision because it has better and many more types of fades, but overall the program is pretty crap.  I gather that Adobe Premier would be good for this sort of thing, but I always found it too unwieldy.

[Xessive]

If you had a Mac I'd recommend iMovie or Final Cut Pro (if you can use it).. On PC I think your best bet would be Adobe Premier.

[Schlotzky5]

Thanks, I'm probably just gonna do it on my buddies macbook. I think part of it was the fact that I had a lot of shit open while I was capturing the video.

[Cobra951]

If it's playback & capture rather than digital tranfer, then yeah, you need to dedicate the system to the process.  Close everything else, and bump the priority of the capture process to "above normal".  That should get rid of the hitchy glitchies.

[Cools]

I tried using microsoft movie maker, but the speed is inconsistent.

If you're just capturing, it should be real time transfer. I've used MovieMaker a few years back and I can't remember exactly, but it might be capturing to some kind of compressed file format (WMV, etc.) so see if you can change the settings so it captures the video into a regular NTSC DV (or DVCPRO) encoded AVI file. The files will be large, around 13 gigs per hour tape, but you'll get original quality video.

As a note of caution, if you capture on a Mac, it'll give you files that might not work on a PC without an extra conversion step. For example, iMovie returns DV stream files in a Quicktime container, which you'll need to conver to AVI to work on a PC in MovieMaker or Premiere Pro, etc.

[Schlotzky5]

Thanks guys,

I used my buddies mac for some of it and it worked well. I also got a tip from a friend about Ulead VideoStudio 11. It works pretty well.