Archiving mini-dv films on high capacity hard drives

[Videoman-19]

Hello,
I have accumulated a considerable number of fully edited mini-dv films which now need re-archiving on to a new media before the mini-dv format becomes totally obsolescent. The new high capacity hard drives seem to offer the best solution but how does one go about getting the tape content from a mini-dv camera direct to such a drive without double-recording to the computer's C-drive interface.

 

[Paperdoc]

1. How are you going to get the video/audio into the computer? Do you have a Composite Video/Audio capture card system? Or, do you have a mini-DV camera that plays back with IEEE1394a (aka Firewire 400) output to a similar input on the computer? And of course you need video capture software to put that input stream onto a disk.

2. When you capture video from any input stream, your software can place it on any drive connected to the computer. It does NOT have to go to the C: drive - see your software's menus for how to chose its destination. So if you have a high-capacity hard drive connected to the computer somehow, you can write the incoming file directly to it. The big drive could be an internal unit or an external one connected by USB2, eSATA or Firewire interface (although of these, USB2 is the slowest, the others are a better choice if you're using an external drive).

 

[Videoman-19]

1. How are you going to get the video/audio into the computer? Do you have a Composite Video/Audio capture card system? Or, do you have a mini-DV camera that plays back with IEEE1394a (aka Firewire 400) output to a similar input on the computer? And of course you need video capture software to put that input stream onto a disk.

2. When you capture video from any input stream, your software can place it on any drive connected to the computer. It does NOT have to go to the C: drive - see your software's menus for how to chose its destination. So if you have a high-capacity hard drive connected to the computer somehow, you can write the incoming file directly to it. The big drive could be an internal unit or an external one connected by USB2, eSATA or Firewire interface (although of these, USB2 is the slowest, the others are a better choice if you're using an external drive).

Thank you for your input.

I use firewire to connect my camcorder to my laptop. I was going to use Windows Moviemaker, but it wants to edit my tapes which I certainly do not need as they are already edited. I have since learned of a small program called WinDv which I am hoping will just copy the tapes without any editing involved, directly to the designated drive in one operation.

What I need a swift method of swift archiving them to a bulk hard-disk - preferably just pressing play on the camcorder and seeing the results appearing on the appropriate hard-drive. At present I don't have such drives since I need to know if what I want to do is feasible before investing money in one or more of them.

Thank you again.

 

[Paperdoc]

Actually, in my experience with software bringing a camcorder's tape info in through a Firewire port, the software had a command to "Capture" video from a source. With the source set as the Firewire port, you set a few options like where the destination location and file name should be, how to mark the start of scenes and how long to run, then click on a "Start"button. The software actually starts and controls the camera's playback through the Firewire connection and you do just walk away and come back when you estimate it will be done. Not surprisingly, a one-hour tape takes an hour to play back and be captured. There is no high-speed capture mechanism.

The software I used treats Capture as a complete operation on its own. After it is on a HDD you can edit it if you choose.