[MacDV] Converting VHS Videos to DVD's

[Gregg Gorrie]

on 4/13/04 6:38 AM, Ian Tucker at carlian at picknowl.com.au wrote:


> A friend has purchased a Sony DV camera and has been copying VHS
> footage into the camera and in turn, through to FCP4 on his iMac.    He
> is happy with the results, but is concerned that the amount of work he
> has to do will create undue wear and tear on the transport mechanism of
> his camera.   He does not want to purchase a conversion unit such as
> Canopus as it will become redundant once he has copied his VHS
> collection across to DVD.

As another list member mentioned, if the Sony DV camcorder is a fairly
recent model it should have a pass-thru mode, which means they can bypass
the tape (saving wear and tear) and record directly to the computer.

Unfortunately the Sony Digital 8mm model I have (TRV-315) does not have
pass-thru, so I opted to do exactly as your friend - copy my VHS tapes to
Digital 8mm and then capture them into Final Cut Pro. *WARNING HERE* After
spending a huge amount of time transferring all my family footage to DV
tapes, I began the process of capturing and editing.  Any footage that was
captured into FCP from those tapes would consistently lose audio/video sync
within a minute or two! I checked every setting in FCP regarding sample
rates, audio/video sync, striped the tape with blank TC, etc. and no
solution. Posted a number of messages on this list and no one else could
seem to nail it down either. No problems with sync playing back directly
from the tape on the camcorder, and no problem with capturing tapes that
were recorded with the camcorder. Only tapes that were recorded using the
RCA line-in jacks seem to be affected, or older 8mm/Hi8mm tapes that I was
directly converting to digital.

One temporary work-around has been to record from the camcorder into iMovie
first (which >doesn't< lose the audio/video sync) then export as a Quicktime
DV file and import into Final Cut Pro. If I output this Quicktime from FCP
back to tape via Firewire, I could capture the resulting footage from that
tape WITHOUT SYNC PROBLEMS!!!

Suggest to your friend that he go through the whole process (capturing and
editing) to check for this before wasting countless hours of time (and
wearing out the camcorder) like I did. Hopefully, he will discover that his
camcorder has pass-thru and won't have to worry about this issue.

> His wife works as a teacher and she took
> one of his VHS tapes to school and burnt it to DVD on a DVD recorder
> there.    The resultant disc plays OK on both his home DVD player and
> also on his iMac.   However,  when he attempts to transfer the content
> to FCP4 , or iMovie 4 for editing/cleanup purposes,  the video is OK ,
> but there is no sound.
> 
> We have tried passing the DVD's  content through DVD Backup and DVD2one
> X,  but only end up with the same files as we started with on the DVD.
> 
> Is there any way of getting the DVD's audio into either FCP , or
> iMovie, or does he have to fall back on the slow, laborious task of
> passing his VHS content through his DVD camera ?.
> 
> TIA
> 
> Ian Tucker

There >are< solutions to convert the DVD's MPEG-2 format back to DV (which
he'll need to do to edit in FCP), but the problem with that is the original
video footage has incurred lossy compression going to MPEG-2, and if he were
to convert it back to DV for editing and then output back to MPEG-2 for DVD
again, there will be a cumulative loss of quality.
   
-- 
Gregg