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Video Editing?
bluechang
22-07-2008
I have finally bought a camcorder to record the precious moments of becoming a father to triplets. I will be wanting to edit the footage and then burn it to dvd to pass onto family members.

The miniDV camcorder I have bought has a 4 pin firewire port, to allow transfer to pc. this is where my questions lie.

1. Transferring from miniDV tape to PC HDD, how much space is this going to require for 60 mins of footage?

2. Is my laptop going to be powerful enough? Spec below
Dell inspiron 1501
Windows Vista Basic
1.6 Ghz AMD Turion 64x2
1GB Ram (2x512MB)
Onboard graphics.
HDD split over 3 partitions -
A= 44Gb 15GB free
B= 19.8GB 15.8GB free
C= 10.8GB 10.6GB free
Will be getting a PCMCIA firewire port as none in-built

3. Should I be looking at getting an external HDD to cope with the files generated?

4. Do I need specific software or will Windows Movie Maker suffice? If specific software is required, which package would be best for novice users?


I appreciate any responses to this thread.
Fromez
23-07-2008
Originally Posted by bluechang:
“I have finally bought a camcorder to record the precious moments of becoming a father to triplets. I will be wanting to edit the footage and then burn it to dvd to pass onto family members.

The miniDV camcorder I have bought has a 4 pin firewire port, to allow transfer to pc. this is where my questions lie.

1. Transferring from miniDV tape to PC HDD, how much space is this going to require for 60 mins of footage?

2. Is my laptop going to be powerful enough? Spec below
Dell inspiron 1501
Windows Vista Basic
1.6 Ghz AMD Turion 64x2
1GB Ram (2x512MB)
Onboard graphics.
HDD split over 3 partitions -
A= 44Gb 15GB free
B= 19.8GB 15.8GB free
C= 10.8GB 10.6GB free
Will be getting a PCMCIA firewire port as none in-built

3. Should I be looking at getting an external HDD to cope with the files generated?

4. Do I need specific software or will Windows Movie Maker suffice? If specific software is required, which package would be best for novice users?


I appreciate any responses to this thread.”

Seems powerful enough. DV file size is around 5 minutes per gigabyte, so your 60 mins will be around 12GB.

Does Vista Basic have the Windows dvd maker built in (like Home Premium)? If so, then a novice like yourself should be all set with that and movie maker, as both will provide you with what you need at no extra cost.

If you have problems with either, e.g. finding them too basic etc, then check out Vegas Movie Studio, a cut down version of Sony Vegas but with plenty of the goodness, including dvd authoring (though the Vista built in one is nice and simple to use and better than I first thought). Cost? About £30.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudio
bluechang
23-07-2008
Just had a quick check - it doesnt look like WVB has the dvd maker software - I guess any dvd/cd burning suite would do? I have Ashampoo burning suite 5 installed, which allows burning of cds, dvds and blu ray.

I will also check out the link you have provided as an alternative to using movie maker.
beintot
23-07-2008
yes your hard drive is fairly small for this type of stuff,as the other poster says you have barely enough workspace for one bit of footage on each partition,i use 60gb of space for videos,which is still fairly small by video editing standards,and i often have to delete stuff quickly to clear space,if i was doing what you are doing i'd buy a new hard drive and start again,or get an external drive to shift the large files to.
For example if it is 12gb for 1 hour [that figure sounds correct to me] you then want to compress that for transfer to dvd,during that process you end up with another 4gb file for a single layer disc or if you want to record this to a double layer disc you'll have an 8gb file,which is your finished dvd output ,so there is 16gb to 20gb gone just for one hour of footage.And most people would keep the footage a while to make sure it recorded perfectly to dvd,in your case the most you'd get from that hard drive is 2 to 3 bits of 60 minute footage and your drive is full.

The way round it is after your finished with the 12gb file move it to the external drive,basically doing one capture and shifting the large files over to the external drive and only keeping the 4gb dvd files on your hard drive.
Your laptop and external harddrive will both need to be NTFS for these large file sizes,fat 32 only supports 4gb.
Fromez
23-07-2008
Ahshampoo looks as if it might be fine - if you can select an avi file on your computer and have it create a DVD in a couple of easy steps, like how Windows dvd maker can, then you should be sorted.
mincepie
29-07-2008
3) Yes - Buy a cheap (ish) external hard disc. There so little money really, that it will be worth it in reduced hassle - rather than having bits of video all over the place.
bluechang
29-07-2008
thanks for the replies so far - I will look into the external HDD in the near future, when I have some footage to edit and transfer onto DVD
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