Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge capture to MPEG2

[sturmie]

i have a friend that desparately wants to take his old 8mm movies of his son and get em to DVD by this weekend. he's got the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge and was capturing and converting the video in Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 (DMF2). this was working for him on a 30 min video he tried, but when he tried a larger (1h30m) video, DMF2 bombed out on him - out of memory error.

from my experience, DMF2 is not really designed to capture/convert video of that size...it seems like more of a simple DVD authoring proggie for newbies, like me :). what program(s) should he use to capture video from his 8mm camera and then convert it to MPEG2? or is there a program that will capture the video right from the bridge as a DVD compliant MPEG2?

keep in mind, i'm looking for the simplest/easiest way for now...after this weekend, we can dive into the more complex apps ;).

thanks for the help...sturmie

[bb]

Sorry, 'cause now that I read this the weekend is over... Time's passing by so fast.

If you're still interested in a way to convert the footage, try this:
Capture the video through the Dazzle DV bridge to DV format, then open the DV file in TMPGEnc and encode using a DVD template to obtain a DVD compliant MPEG-2 program stream. Then make use your favourite DVD authoring program and burn the disc.

bb

[sturmie]

Originally posted by bb
Sorry, 'cause now that I read this the weekend is over...
actually, i referring to this coming weekend :).


Originally posted by bb
Capture the video through the Dazzle DV bridge to DV format.
what program would he use for this? the Dazzle software from the Hollywood Bride box? i've never played w/ it, so i don't know what it can do. also, would this be a ".AVI" file or a ".DV"?


Originally posted by bb
...then open the DV file in TMPGEnc and encode using a DVD template to obtain a DVD compliant MPEG-2 program stream.
is there a template for converting DV to MPEG2? just wondering...i've played some w/ TMPGEnc in the past, but not too much.



thanks for the info...sturmie

[bb]

Originally posted by sturmie
what program would he use for this? the Dazzle software from the Hollywood Bride box? i've never played w/ it, so i don't know what it can do. also, would this be a ".AVI" file or a ".DV"?
Any DV capture program should do this. I don't own a Dazzle box, but I guess they've included some software. Usually DV files are captured as AVI, either type-1 or type-2 (see F.A.Q.).

is there a template for converting DV to MPEG2? just wondering...i've played some w/ TMPGEnc in the past, but not too much.

There's a DVD template available for both PAL and NTSC. They are not specifically for DV sources, in fact those templates focus on the target format, not the source. You can modify some settings directly to meet your needs, or you can load the "unlock.mcf" profile to be able to modify all settings. You just load the AVI and encode.

bb

[Entropy512]

Originally posted by bb
Any DV capture program should do this. I don't own a Dazzle box, but I guess they've included some software. Usually DV files are captured as AVI, either type-1 or type-2 (see F.A.Q.).


There's a DVD template available for both PAL and NTSC. They are not specifically for DV sources, in fact those templates focus on the target format, not the source. You can modify some settings directly to meet your needs, or you can load the "unlock.mcf" profile to be able to modify all settings. You just load the AVI and encode.

bb
If you have Windows XP, Windows Movie Maker can do the capture. For better solutions, look at the FAQ.

One thing I haven't seen in the FAQ but have been wondering - Are there any capture utilities in Windows that can autosplit the output file at "scene changes" (i.e. when a camcorder was stopped/later restarted) like dvgrab under Linux can? So far it doesn't seem like any of the utilities I've tried (Premiere 6 trial, Windows Movie Maker 1 or 2) can do it, and none of the ones I've investigated mention it in the documentation.

[bb]

Many video editors like Ulead's MediaStudio Pro are able to split the captured file at scene changes (either using the camcorders timestamp info or by analysing the picture).

A popular program which can split scenen during capture is Scenalyzer.

bb

[Entropy512]

Originally posted by bb
Many video editors like Ulead's MediaStudio Pro are able to split the captured file at scene changes (either using the camcorders timestamp info or by analysing the picture).

A popular program which can split scenen during capture is Scenalyzer.

bb
Thanks. I believe (I can't be sure) that dvgrab uses the camcorder timestamp for this purpose. I'll look at the source code today. My 1394 card came with one of the Ulead packages, don't know which one, so I'll check that out tonight.