Thank you for your responce. I did not give you enough information because each person gave me a different purpose. You were correct that the interviews are for saving for two purposes. One purpose is for the teacher to see how well a child has improved from year to year. Another purpose is for research to see how the grade is progressing and the level the students. The files are suppose to be for each child and also for the class. The files have to be transferred from the tapes. I am looking for the best and easiest and fastest way to transfer them off the tape. Also the interviews will be used in workshops so that is why they need to be on dvds. Also the program was part of a grant. The grant requires we keep records of each interview. By the way we have been using the idea of white board with the child's name. Susan Message: 5 Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 21:38:02 +0900 From: Tim Selander <selander at tkf.att.ne.jp> Subject: Re: [MacDV] Best way of saving large quantity of interviews To: "A place to discuss digital video on Macintosh." <macdv at listserver.themacintoshguy.com> Message-ID: <45B0BBAA.6030000 at tkf.att.ne.jp> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed You didn't give quite enough information to give good advice (like, are the interviews for the kids to take home? Stored at school? Need to look good? etc.) but assuming this is for research, and not for kids to take home to their families, I'd use a little white board, write the kid's name on it. Hold it in front of the camera and roll the tape. Ten seconds later pull the white board away to show the kid, and let the interviewer start asking questions. Two interviews per miniDV tape, no copying or dubbing (or editing) needed. Two hundred miniDV tapes shouldn't take up more than 3 shoeboxes worth of storage space. Tim Selander Tokyo, Japan Susan Weiss wrote: > I am working with a teacher who has a project to interview with a video > of each interview for 400 children. The interviews are about 15 -25 > minutes each. The only editing is just to make sure the beginning says > the child name. We are using a Sony camcorder with MiniDV. At the > present time, we are making DVD's by combining at least 12 interviews on > one DVD by using a simple DVD recorder/burner. We never save anything to > a hard drive. > This is time consuming since you have to spend the time to send it the > DVD recorder. > I am looking for a better solution. > option #1: So far, it was suggested that we purchase a camcorder that > will make mini DVD automatically. For each student there will be a > mini DVD. No one has to spend the time switching the tape to a DVD. > The disadvantage is that nothing can be edited and there has to be 400 > mini dvds which will have to be filed for each child. > > option #2: Buy a camcorder which has an internal hard drive, edit it on > the camcorder and then send to a dvd. This eleminates the wait between > the interviews and hopefully will allow chapters after each interview. > > Otion #3 continue what we are doing and paying someone to edit and switch. > > > Does anyone have any thoughts on a better way of organizing all these > interviews in a timely manner. If we can have to pay for someone to > switch the interviews we have the money to buy the camcorder for either > option #1 or #2. > > Susan Weiss