DV codec, software, tape methods?
 

I found a few of my old mini-DV tapes. In the past I have incorrectly used editing software such as Vegas Pro or Newtek SpeedEdit to grab the footage (I'm trying not use the word capture anymore!). From what I understand the best way is to use something like WinDV or Scenalyzer, which you have kindly archived (or hdvsplit if I had those types of tapes). I'm not sure if one is preferred over the other it appears that for most simple cases WinDV is the way to go. It was also suggested to check the footage for errors using AVPS DV Analyzer.

I came across this method that uses STOIK Video Capture: https://youtu.be/eTa6YIZnYWg?t=204

From what I understand from the different posts is that normally all your doing with mini-DV tape is transferring data from the tape to the computer similar to an old floppy disk and that it is already compressed on the tape (expect for the audio portion). Is this person actually doing something that is giving them real uncompressed video?

Thanks in Advance

Yes, it is just data transfer, After that you can do more to improve the footage after decompressing it from DV AVI to uncompressed AVI and de-interlace it or do some color correction or other enhancement, Once done recompress to a more modern efficient codec such as h.264 or h.265.

That doesn't look like it's a DV transfer (good you're not using the "capture" term! :)). The reasons I say that is 1/because he quotes a 60 minute tape as 70GB, which is not DV. DV is 13GB per hour. Second, after he stops capturing, the program does some sort of encoding. He comments that an hour would take some time. DV doesn't do that; as soon as the transfer has finished, that's it. There's no subsequent encoding.

On Win 11, I couldn't get Stoik to work, whereas Scenalyzer worked fine. WinDV, in my experience is flaky with Win 10 and 11.

I assume you mean "to lossless AVI".

Not necessarily lossless, DV is no longer lossless, Decompressing is the right term because what has been lost is lost forever, Decompressing means that you decode to basic AVI to get rid of the DV codec, how you go about doing that is entirely up the individual, I personally use lossless compression HuffYUV as a medium for de-interlacing and resizing, Some may prefer the raw uncompressed AVI since it's just an intermediary step so file size is not really important, The master files are the original DV files.

I will only add that if going the DV route I have found type 2 to be the better/more NLE compatible choice.

Thank You all for information! On Scenalyzer besides the file type, and max file size, are there any settings I should be mindful of?