Quick DV question

[Ribbit]

A friend has a DV camcorder with some footage I'd like a copy of. I don't have a firewire port on my PC, but I can borrow a firewire laptop (running WinXP), and I can probably borrow a camera to play the tape. What would be the simplest way of transferring the DV footage into the laptop, with a minimum of extra software? (This firewire port has probably never been used) Once I've transferred it, I can move it to my machine and do what I like with it.

[Hulk]

If your friends laptop has any DV capture software on it then you'll be able to capture the DV footage to the laptop. Is this the same friend? It seems reasonable that the friend with the DV camcorder would also have a means of tranferring footage to his computer?

After the video is in the laptop you could network your computer to the laptop for transfer to your computer. Or use a DVD burner if he has one and the file isn't too large and your computer reads his format (+ or -) burned discs.

- Mark

[Ribbit]

No, it's not the same friend. Also, the laptop owner has never done any kind of video work, and doesn't have any kind of DV capture software or other video software. Like I said, that firewire port has never ever been used I posted because I hoped there might be something simple built into Windows or downloadable for free.

I don't know if the camcorder-owning friend does much video work on his PC, but he lives a long way away and doesn't have a DVD burner. I've got another friend who's very knowledgable about these things and will have all the appropriate equipment (and a DVD burner), but he's very busy and hard to get hold of for any amount of time.

If I can use this laptop it would be the best solution - I can borrow it practically any time I like, and just plug it into my network to get the footage to my own PC. There's just the problem of getting the footage into it....

[wkulecz]

XP has a MovieMaker software built in. You probably need to download an update for it from Microsoft.

It's pretty lame video editing application but it should do the capture OK if you have enough free disk space (13 GB/hr of video for DV format).

--wally.

[DarrenD]

How long (in time) is the footage? Is there enough free disc space on the laptop? Expect to use 15Gb for an hour.

[Brian Ellis]

Not all laptops can capture video very well. Their hard disks and IEEE-1394 ports are not up to the same specs as for a desktop. I know many (myself included) have had difficulties, whereas many others have succeeded well. If the laptop is < 2 years old, you will have a better chance than with an older one.

I agree that any "capture" application will do, even MovieMaker, and there will be no quality difference because all the computer does is to add a header to the AVI file and then it simply copies the DV stream to the HDD, without altering it in any way.

[wkulecz]

Computers and Video is always a crap shoot, with odds getting much worse as the computers get older.

My experience both with desktops and laptops (PIII-500 or better) is most can capture DV over firewire just fine but really choke when exporting back to tape.

I suspect lots of "bad" systems are considered "good" simply because few people write their edits back to tape anymore -- making DVDs instead where the problems are mostly encoder and authoring software issues.

DV needs a sustained 3.6MByte per second stream to the disk.

--wally.