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I've got some home vids I'd like to convert to DVD, Spent a good $1200 odd on this video camcorder(thing) about 7 years ago, only made 4 tapes with it, after the battery died I never bothered to use it again...yes waste of money I know.

Depending if it still works I'd like to transfer the analogue video to the pc for editing and burn it on DVD.

I did buy a TV tuner card a few years back for this purpose, while it worked well every time I edited the video the sound sync would fuck up so I eventually got bored with it and that was that.

Anybody know any good PC hardware I can buy/borrow that will do the job?

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What kind of camera is it?

 

I'd recommend borrowing a mac. While I own and love PCs, and can do everything I want to on mine - when it comes to "I don't want to have to learn all that crap, let me edit video" - Mac it is. Really!

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I've had the same problem with analogue cards in PCs. They always screw the sound up.

 

What my missus found was a much better way: if you can get a hold of a DV camcorder, use the A/V or (S-Video) out from a VCR (or whatever the analogue play device is) and record it into your DV cam's video-in.

 

Then rip the all digital DV cam over firewire to your PC. You'll get the whole thing in digital off the DV cam, complete with synced sound. Microsoft Movie Maker and Apple iMovie/iDVD are built into Windows and MacOSX respectively, and both do a perfect job of lossless, synced-audio rip to raw AVI.

 

From there, convert to anything you like (DVD, XVid, whatever).

 

We've got a little Sony digital handicam that does the job. It takes mini-DV (digital) tapes that hold about 1.5 hours per tape, and cost about $5 a tape. I bought the cam for $1600 back in 2003-ish, but I see them these days on sale for peanuts. If you don't like Sony gear, heaps of other manufacturers make them.

 

These days there's quite a few cameras that will encode real time to in built hard disk in MPEG2/VOB format (aka: DVD codec), or even a DVD directly, saving you the middle step of needing a PC to do ripping. The hard disk model ones will let you transfer off like a file copy to your disk, and burn direct to DVD.

 

Should be a neighbour/relative close by who'll have one you can borrow just for a few hours of video.

 

http://www.sony.com.au/dis/catalog/product.jsp?categoryId=22123 <- DV tape model

http://www.sony.com.au/dis/catalog/category.jsp?id=22012 <- other models

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I used an EXPERT DVD MAKER (USB2.0) plug in for my conversions. You do need to be patient with the process. Some settings will cause sound to go out of sync, while others are prefect. For example, no matter what process I use I cannot seem to get 2 seperate .MPG files merged and converted to DVD format in the software without sync issues. Gotta merge them seperately and then create the edited DVD. BUT, if I use just one capture file I can do pretty much anything I want with no problems. You can get it for $60 or less at the computer markets last time I looked. Worth a look if you don't mind fiddling a bit I reckon.

Dave

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One question.., is your camera an analogue or digital Cam Corder..? If analogue it will only have RCA (AV - video / left / right out). If Digital it will have Firewire.

 

 

As Elvis said.. Ripping it to PC via FIREWIRE is the only way to get it onto your Hdd with any real way of success.. However decoding the AVI to any sort of DivX / SVCD / DVD output will take time, patience and PC processing power.

 

If analogue, what about one of those $150.00 DVD recorders with AV / Mini DV inputs recording direct to DVD..?

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As per first post its analogue, model is a Sharp VL-E97 ViewCam. Thing looks like new, just powered up and its still working great, might even see if I can get a battery for it.

David has offered to lend me something that may what I need.

When I recorded the video via the TV capture card awhile back everything was fine until I tried to edit the video then the sound was all out of sync.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

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When I recorded the video via the TV capture card awhile back everything was fine until I tried to edit the video then the sound was all out of sync.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

 

Sorry for the question but I'm a bit slow today... was it the capture part that buggered up, or was it the edit part?

 

Was the sync stuffed if you played the raw AVI/whatever pre-edit?

 

And when you did the capture, what did you capture it as? Raw uncompressed AVI? Or did you do some sort of compression/codec stuff at capture time?

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This came from ALDI for under $40. Converts anything to digital for editing on your PC. Old VHS, any camcorder version (tape, disc etc).

 

Simply plug in the RCA cords or S-video and it plugs into USB 2.0. The software that comes with it captures it and allows editing etc. Very handy.

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This came from ALDI for under $40. Converts anything to digital for editing on your PC. Old VHS, any camcorder version (tape, disc etc).

 

Simply plug in the RCA cords or S-video and it plugs into USB 2.0. The software that comes with it captures it and allows editing etc. Very handy.

 

Ahh, but Horsey, have you used it AND DOES THE SOUND STAY PERFECTLY IN SYNC?

 

I read in PC User a while ago, that no-one can build a system on the cheap

that will do it properly (with perfect sound sync)

so many products are released that "almost work" and they only get away with it

because the users assume that "they" stuffed up the process.

 

I too bought a particular TV card with 'hardware conversion' but again, the bloody sound goes out of sync.

:evil Worthless. :evil

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Ahh, but Horsey, have you used it AND DOES THE SOUND STAY PERFECTLY IN SYNC?

 

I read in PC User a while ago, that no-one can build a system on the cheap

that will do it properly (with perfect sound sync)

so many products are released that "almost work" and they only get away with it

because the users assume that "they" stuffed up the process.

 

I too bought a particular TV card with 'hardware conversion' but again, the bloody sound goes out of sync.

:evil Worthless. :evil

 

It usually only happens when the capture card only does video and depends on the sound card on the PC to record the audio. When they work this way, there is no chance in them remaining in sync. The software will "ask" for a specific clock and sample rate, the hardware will "report" back it is doing so, but invariably there is drift and some devices flat out lie about what they are doing...

 

Gets worse when the source is a VCR - the frame-rate can tend to jitter around a bit and it throws everything out of whack.

 

Devices that do both the audio and video on their own usually DO keep in sync - like the canopus card mentioned earlier. I can't vouch for the aldi dongle, but it does appear to do both audio and video, so should remain in sync...

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Sorry for the question but I'm a bit slow today... was it the capture part that buggered up, or was it the edit part?

 

Was the sync stuffed if you played the raw AVI/whatever pre-edit?

 

And when you did the capture, what did you capture it as? Raw uncompressed AVI? Or did you do some sort of compression/codec stuff at capture time?

 

I believe because of the lack of hard drive space at the time I went with mpeg 4, tried DVX etx but found the codex that the tv tuner card used was the best, sound and quality was fine until I used an editing program to edit it how i liked. Most of the programs I tried you just edit then it encodes it and burns straight to DVD.

Edited by Arcade King
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