Best container to capture Mini-DV via FireWire?
 

I have a few Mini-DV tapes which I'd like to transfer to digital media with my Sony Mini-DV Video Walkman connected to FireWire. I know with a digital source like those tapes there's no real point in going the analog route. But I am curious as to which container and what software is best suited for the capture. I'm currently trying VideoStudio's capture mode (which gives it remote control of the player), but I also have VirtualDub as an option. What's best for editing and long-term storage of the video?

Mini-DV and/or DV source is never "captured" to a container. DV is copied as DV via FireWire directly to DV-AVI 1:1 using transfer sorftware such as WinDV. Remember that Mini-DV is lossy compressed video. "Capturing" merely sends DV thru another lossy re-encode and visibly degrades it. Always copy DV to DV.

Understand, but I've been having problems making the copy. WinDV, Scenalyze, and VideoStudio are all locking up or crashing on me and I haven't had any success with VirtualDub. I think that may be a Win10 problem more than anything else.

I have one capture computer built around an ATI AIW 8500DV. I'm thinking of hooking the MiniDV player to it and seeing if I can use the WinDV program successfully under XP. I've seen comments here to the effect that the AIW FireWire interface is kind of funky; can anyone elaborate? And are there any settings which could make VirtualDub work with the Win10 setup?

You don't use a capture card or editors or VirtualDub for DV transfer. The source is played directly thru the camera's Firewire output to Firewire cable into the PC's Firewire input directly to FireWire copy software such as WinDV.

I can't answer for Windows10. Anyone who uses Win10 for video work is asking for frustration, and will usually get it.

Yep, looks like its a Windows 10 issue. After I got home from church I hooked the MiniDV player up to the FireWire on the XP computer's AIW 8500 card, installed Scenalyzer, and now it's capturing...sorry, Sanlyn, copying...flawlessly.

Isn't progress wonderful? :laugh:

Good work. :congrats:

BTW, to answer the question in the thread title, you want to use the native container.
- For Windows, that means AVI
- For Mac, Quicktime
- For Linux, containerless .dv file

Capturing was pet peeve of mine in the early days, and I gladly spread that view to others. Some moron co-opted the term, not too dissimilar from "encode" (compress video) vs "render" (not video, but graphics). Just "oh hey, that a good word, I'll use it here too" without realizing it meant something completely different. If anything, "stream" would have been more accurate, but would have been confusing in the 2000s (remember, DV is a 90s tech). It's merely a sustained realtime copy process, no data is changed (ie analog>digital), therefore nothing is captured. Nor encoded, nor rendered, nor anything else. Just a really, really long copy process that needs special software because the IEEE1394/Firewire spec quite honestly sucked, as did DV.

DV is similar to tape backups in the early 90s (same basic design used for both). Just a dog slow file copy, with the added option to just dump data (drop frames) if the throughput is interrupted rather than hang the copy. If you go back 15-20 years online, you can actually find conversations about using DV and Digital8 tapes for data backup, as the tapes were cheaper than the tape backup tapes. The biggest difference was the tape quality itself, with DV being really flimsy crap (aka why it has lousy longevity even compared to VHS or audio cassettes).

"DV isn't captured" is an often-repeated online statement I can take full credit for. :devil: (Because it's true!)

DV "capturing" was always a buggy sort of process, because again IEEE1394/Firewire was buggy/crappy. But it just gets worse with each new OS. It is, after all, a legacy tech that never really had a foothold beyond Mac and specialty uses. (Mac fanboys still cry about the demise of their beloved Firewire. I'm platform agnostic, still adore my Mac, but was never a fan of Firewire.)

But that said, what is a good interface to use for capture ? most USB (3) devices, are not, like All in wonder this type of USB is getting old, other or USB-C seem to get the future, but there are very few device who have that/a new interface, or use interface a pc-card (pci?) seems to be hard on cpu time or will have conflicts, and then the capture data has to be transfered (quickly) to HDD (in most cases) which is the next bottleneck if uncompressed, onboard (good) hardware compression would be a plus, but strong/bad compression is also not desireable, trying to find options in this, or better have a strong pc will be hard task, even more for a newbee.
In short: there is no one time solution

I'm not sure what is meant by saying USB capture devices are old tech, when in fact USB devices replaced even older tech. My problem with that is that the "old tech" (AGP cards) is still the preferred tech, mainly because it worked then and still works today. But if you want to get into which is "better", well, you'll have to get yourself an All in Wonder AGP setup or similar legacy chain and find out for yourself what others have been recommending since the late 1990's. The software being used is VirtualDub, the media that analog is captured to is recommended as 720x480 YUY2 losslessly compressed with huffyuv or (in second place but higher CPU usage) Lagarith.

Many have spent time, effort, money trying to better this analog -> digital process. Hasn't been bettered yet, unless you're willing to invest cash into 5 (or more) digits. But you can always give it a try.

Or MPEG-2 in ATI MMC (ATI Multimedia Center), at 15mbps (max 20) bitrates, interlaced, and you even have an option to autocrop overscan.

The Theatre Rage/100 and 200 chips by ATI were a game changer for analog capture. Those even left pro video companies like Matrox with mud on their face. On some specific models of cards, the chipset is essentially flawless, no color/etc issues, no image offset, no geometry issues, nothing. Just one really nice picture.

FWIW, starting with WIN 7 (including Win 8 and 10) many DV devices and software require the "legacy" firewire (AKA IEEE1394 & iLink) driver rather than the one routinely installed by the OS. Win 7 shipped with the "legacy" driver and it could be selected without problem. However, Win 8 and Win 10 do not ship with the "legacy" driver; it has to be downloaded from MicroSoft and installed manually, which can be a bit tricky depending on how your PC is configured (the issue being where the files are located once extracted).

Some NLE's used the term 'ingest" to describe the intake of video date from media. A scary term considering how often a beat up old VCR might eat a tape.

I've found it convenient to use dvgrab in linux. It's readily available for install in most distros, the firewire devices work out of the box, and you can even do it while running the linux OS off a USB stick.

:laugh: <nom, nom, nom> "TAPE GOOD!" <smack, smack>

Never thought of that. When I talked to peers, I used ingest. But online, where it's mostly non-pros, I use capture. And honestly, I prefer capture anyway. Ingest actually applies to more than just analog capture, and that's when the conversation can get fun (DAMs, etc).

Good to know. :salute:

More and more, I find myself using Linux, even for simple video tasks. I'd consider DV copy to be one of the more trivial tasks, if not for OS/hardware being a PITA more than not.

Brings to mind the garage sale VHS VCR that had part of a PBJ sandwich stuffed in the tape slot. :depressed:

Hello,

I can prove that one can succesfuly copy a miniDV source from a miniDV camera to a laptop (Lenovo T-61) with Windows 10. As told by sanlyn you get an .avi file with SD DV coded video. I copy with WinDV. Sometimes I use Vegas Video Pro and here it is called Capture Video. In fact it is not important if you call it copying or capture because it is a straight copying through Firewire cable. Why would you want to use a capture card? Maybe only if your PC/Laptop does not have a Firewire port?
The only problem as stated in a post above is that most possibly you will need to change your Firewire driver to Legacy driver in Windows 10.

Some think it's really bad that the file is video stored in a lossy codec, which in this case doesn't matter because resolution of the material is low resolution anyway.
it is an easy transfer method, though.

It depends on the project needs. If you just want to archive the video as DV, and you can install a Firewire card, then the analog capture is not needed. But at the same time, not really detrimental, depending on the camera. Consumer cameras had lousy optics, and the video isn't truly 720x480 resolution, but merely in 720x480 palette.

That's not always entirely accurate. Video isn't just about resolution, but fidelity of color and sound. And I don't really consider 720x480 max SD to be lower resolution. For this specific source, DV tape, you're right, but for other sources, not so much.

I don't want your post interpreted the wrong way by newbies. :)

btw what's the differnce between DV and miniDV ? because there's also HDV ....
or is DV the "general term for miniDV and is HDV a higher resolution or a better compression codec ?

DV is the name of codec used in miniDV camcoder video recording and the properties are 720x576 PAL 25Mbps Interlaced. This resolution is named as SD DV- Standard Definition SD.
I have not dealed with HDV, must be a higher resolution codec.

Thankyou, 25Mbps is also a speed thats not too fast, and why it can be used on old pc's i guess.
Shame i can't use my ADVC100 on my Macbook now, don't even know if there's a download driver for Mac OS.
would be nice to see the difference :)

Yes, MiniDV is name of the tape, and the codec is DV (often referred to as DV25).

More essentially than resolution, DV is either 4:2:0 PAL or 4:1:1 NTSC, and sacrifices color data. Like DVD, PAL is alternating halved data, while the NTSC is quartered. That's the primary reason that DV for NTSC looks so terrible, when used as a VHS conversion format, and throws out 50% of the color data on the tape (which was already not great to begin with).

Furthermore, using DV as a conversion method was not really part of the original intention of the format. The intension was better quality shooting, longer record time, smaller (cheap!) cameras. The conversion aspect was a hair-brained idea by Canon(?) to sell camcorders ("convert your old VHS to longer-lasting DV tapes!", which was BS), followed by Canopus making outright DV boxes without it being in the camera. And Canopus was all about marketing, with FUD like "audio lock" and charging the same prices as a camera without the benefit of it also begin a camera.

HDV was a DV hack to attempt to sell more of the dying DV format for the HD generation, but failed because it was viewed as "old tape" by most consumers in the middle of a DVD/disc/tape-less era. HDV was not even true 1080p, and had the weird interlaced 1440x1080 resolution. As with DV, there were variants, mostly used by broadcast/studio and not consumers.

I understand broadcasters also go no further than 1080i it's depressing to know that all :)
Knowing also the studios only leave 2K after post to upscale to expensive 4K UHD BluRay discs
Why buy 4K tv....

I guess you know that you can Copy (Capture) DV video from miniDV camera directly to a Firewire IEEE1394 card without using ADVC 300. You need a converter like Canopus only for Analog video capture.

Yes, i do have a Panasonic miniDV camera but i used it "then" not as much i did use a Hi8 camcorder, for the miniDV i need to search for it's powersupply, the Hi8 isn't working anymore due to rubber failure :(
I keep an eye out in local thrift shops...
or my brother can help me out with his 2nd hand Digital8 camcorder but he lives not near me,
i'm not in a hurry now, have enough VHS material to look through, i think i have a good combination now to transfer vhs, found some usefull tips, and i understand it's even an profession archival ocupation judging some of the guides i found all over the internet.

HDV was devepoped by JVC (and others) as a way to get higher resolution using the MinDV/DV tape format. In the 1440x1080 mode it used non-square pixels (as does the SD signal) to fill the 16x9 screen, used MPG2 compression, and provided an improved image over DV and the 720P line version. However, it is not as good as "full HD."

Camera head quality was always an issue with VHS, S-VHS, 8mm, Hi8, DV, Digital8, etc. Prosumer gear usually did better than the consumer gear. (Digital8 camcorders often were the most disappointing compared to the format's potential.)

The ultimate goal is the best image to the final user/viewer - sort of. That depends on the signal path, from the subject lighting, the lens, image sensors, encoding/modulation for recording, the recorder, recording media, playback system, decoding the recording, display, and the viewing environment.

In the interest of cost savings (and maximizing profit and sales) consumer systems were designed to provide an image that was acceptable to most people when used with currently available supporting technologies; i.e., why provide a 1400 line resolution consumer market sources when currently available displays only supported 400 lines. A 97% solution. The remaining 3% wanted something better.

Yes, Looking back, you can't compair old technology with todays standard, even now there are some good sensor chips available, it started with Vidicon tubes, Saticon tube, which had less streak effect, (cometh tail?)
CMOS CCD, i believe CMOS is still widely used.
I guess you need to be satisfied at a certain point because i notice different quality of recordings i have, due to the broadcast or due to VCR used, HiFi PCM sound was a real game changer, i only have few SuperVHS recordings.

Don't some cable sources and streaming services provide 4K now. Broadcasters will do it when there is sufficient demand and 4K sets out there to make it worth their while in terms potential advertising revenue. In any case the upscaling in the 4K sets can provide a subjectively more pleasing image from HD material than conventional large screen HD sets.

I would expect that any Macbook that can capture from a Sony MiniDV camcorder can capture from a ADVC 100 or 300. The ADVCs were designed to look a lot like like a Sony camcorder to a firewire device.

Each sensor technology had its strengths, and weaknesses. CMOS appears to be most common now, and it all but elrminated the vertical smear from bright sources common the CCDs, adding its motion skew, which may be less objectionable.

Netflix and sorts are internet streaming services on settop boxes or smart tv's
Otherwise it's a bandwith problem, and people are still used to the smooth-ness of interlaced.
btw.. less bandwith is more tv channels...

The whole analog-to-MiniDV idea was likely because Apple only really supported DV capture out of the box in MacOS X and their applications (iMovie and Final Cut). Analog capture devices were very poorly supported in the early years of OS X and documentation to develop drivers for them were very..... eh....limited to say the least. Technically this was the domain of QuickTime, but Apple was really pushing the DV route.

Windows users always had a well defined (albeit buggy) driver interface for video capture cards (Video for Windows and later DirectShow).

HDV wasn't a bad format (I have shot with a HDV camcorder) and worked well at the time. It predated commonplace 1080p video and dirt cheap flash memory and served a need at the time. Once flash got cheap, tape formats died pretty quickly.

And DV25 was a good compromise for its era. It provide a format that could be edited on commonly available computers. It provided a significant improvement in image quality over VHS/S-VHS/8mm/Hi8/Beta in terms of effective bandwidth and S/N. (Often the associated camera head didn't take full advantage of its potential.)

Products like the ADVC line provided a method to readily bring the old format analog video into the digital realm and feed a NLE or dump to DVD without a lot of fuss and muss. A lot of folks found it "good enough" for their purposes. But restoration is a different game.

One wouldn't do a multi-step image editing and color grading process storing the intermediate step results back to VHS and then feed that VHS to the next step. Similarly today one would find it better not to store the intermediate steps to DV25 but to use a lower loss format. The reason being the image flaws (processing artifacts and noise) introduced at each step are cumulative and will rise above the thresholds of acceptability that drive the design of the various formats, very quickly in the case of VHS.

Most old PC's can download from a DV device because of the nature of the file, it's compressed, and the the datarate is not that high over the firewire connection, CMOS has indeed that "motion skew" disadvantage, the so called rolling shutter, one picture is made from multiple "shutter" openings, so fast movements look "weird"

For me, that's the main issue.

I don't use the "O word" very often (outdated), as we're talking about videotapes from decade past, using tech from at least a decade ago for the best conversion of it. So in that aspect, the old stuff isn't always outdated. But DV is.

I always have to remind people that it was created for the era of Pentium III computers (when Pentium II was still on many households). Back when a 500mhz CPU was cutting edge fast, hard drives were measured in MB/megabytes, and 512 MB RAM was cost-prohibitively huge. The need for DV faded with the lossless capturing that was born a mere 5 years later, the era of the Pentium 4, 100 GB drives, and 1gb RAM. Even considering that holdovers kept their aging/failing PIII computer for another 5 years, by 2005 DV should have been an extinct format for conversion, as nobody had a functional PIII by then (not just "turn on", but usable for work or play, modern software/OS). And aside from Canopus pushing the ADVC line to make $$$, not because it was quality, it was entirely defunct.

As a shooting format, it was retired by 2010s. Or should have been. It belonged in a shooting bag about as much as VHS-C/Hi8 cams did.