JohnNY123

Q: Import DV video from camcorder tape to a single DV file?

I've looked around quite a bit on this forum and can't find an answer to this one...

 

I'm importing DV videotapes from an old Sony camcorder onto my Macbook Pro using iMovie 11.  I have unchecked the iMovie import dialog box that says "Split days into new Events".

 

When I click import in iMovie the video is indeed imported.....but upon looking at my hard disk after the whole tape was imported, iMovie split my import into about 35 separate DV file clips.

 

I don't want all of these individual DV clip files....I just want to do a straight import from the camera tape to hard disk and have one resulting large DV file (which for an hour of DV video will probably be around 17 gig).  If iMovie is going to split my single tape into 35 separate DV files then I'm going to have to go through the extra steps to create an iMovie project, assemble the clips into a movie within that project, export to a single movie file, etc.  All of that just to get a simple import done....

 

Is there a way to use iMovie to just do an import from the DV tape to a single DV file on my hard disk?  Or, do I have to find another piece of software to do this?

 

Any input would be greatly appreciated because I have about twenty DV tapes sitting on my desk and I need an easy way to import all of this stuff to archive it...

 

Thanks,

John

Posted on Oct 4, 2013 6:36 PM

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Q: Import DV video from camcorder tape to a single DV file?

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  • by thesurreyfriends,

    thesurreyfriends thesurreyfriends Oct 8, 2013 12:20 PM in response to Matthew Morgan
    Level 3 (838 points)
    Oct 8, 2013 12:20 PM in response to Matthew Morgan

    Matthew

    Out of curiosity are the data rates the same in your test with QuickTime Pro 7 and iMovie 11?

     

    I have also done a test and QT7 Pro is typically 30.3 Mbit/sec and iMovie 11 is showing 57.2 Mbit/sec.

     

    I thought that DV was 25 Mbit/sec so am somewhat confused with both results.

     

    Any thoughts to put me out of my misery?

  • by Matthew Morgan,

    Matthew Morgan Matthew Morgan Oct 8, 2013 12:38 PM in response to thesurreyfriends
    Level 7 (22,600 points)
    Oct 8, 2013 12:38 PM in response to thesurreyfriends

    The data rate for the QuickTime .mov is 30.31.

     

    The data rate once converted to .dv and the data rate from the iMovie .dv filas are both 57.55.

     

    I assume the higher rate on the .dv files is because there's two separate DV tracks for video and audio.

     

    My only thought to help put you out of your misery is that you may be over thinking this a bit!

     

    Matt

     

    Message was edited by: Matthew Morgan

  • by JohnNY123,

    JohnNY123 JohnNY123 Oct 8, 2013 12:48 PM in response to Matthew Morgan
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 8, 2013 12:48 PM in response to Matthew Morgan

    Matthew Morgan wrote:

     

    If it were me, I would use iMovie '11 to import as Events and then go to your Movie>iMovie Events folder and copy the files to your archive disk. Once that's done you can delete them from iMovie.

     

    Understood.....but that leaves me with a bunch of .dv files for each tape that I would then have to re-assemble into a movie to make them usable/viewable from the archive disk.  I didn't want to go through that trouble.....and potential loss in quality? (i.e., I don't understand the potential quality losses that might occur when assembling a bunch of .dv clips into a viewable movie within iMovie).

     

    My goal was to end up with one large disk .dv file per tape so that I can watch the disk versions instead of pulling out the camcorder and tapes every time.  A copy of the tape at the original quality level to a single file is all I want.  No editing desired.  (sorry if I'm repeating myself on that point needlessly).

     

    So......If the single .mov file out of Quicktime 7 Pro is the same quality level as the original .dv camcorder tape, then maybe I can just quit here and go that route and not be so concerned about ending up with a .dv file.

     

    So the ultimate question then is:  Is the .mov file from Quicktime 7 Pro the same quality as the original source tape byte for byte?

  • by JohnNY123,

    JohnNY123 JohnNY123 Oct 9, 2013 7:25 AM in response to JohnNY123
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 9, 2013 7:25 AM in response to JohnNY123

    Wow.  I did some research into this last night and I'm stunned by the complexities of dealing with video in general.

     

    But specifically, there seems to be a large amount of confusion about how to get maximum import and export quality out of the iMovie, Final Cut, and Quicktime/Quicktime Pro applications.  iMovie in particualr seems to be throttled in certain ways with regard to video export quality that necessitates people to update to Final Cut to get maximum quality (which is understandable from an Apple profit motive viewpoint, I suppose). I read thread after thread of conversations discussing difficulties with generating quality exports from iMovie.

     

    I'm now thinking that Apple software simply may not be the way to go for what I want to do, which is a simple archiving task with no quality loss.  DV file in from tape, DV file out to disk....with the same quality.

     

    Why is this so hard? 

     

    Are the Adobe software suites (e.g., Premiere) any better for this simple task?  Any other recommendations?

  • by Matthew Morgan,

    Matthew Morgan Matthew Morgan Oct 9, 2013 10:43 AM in response to JohnNY123
    Level 7 (22,600 points)
    Oct 9, 2013 10:43 AM in response to JohnNY123

     

     

    But specifically, there seems to be a large amount of confusion about how to get maximum import and export quality out of the iMovie, Final Cut, and Quicktime/Quicktime Pro applications.

     

     

    We've only be talking about the import part of the equation in your case which makes it a tiny bit easier.

     

    I'm now thinking that Apple software simply may not be the way to go for what I want to do, which is a simple archiving task with no quality loss.  DV file in from tape, DV file out to disk....with the same quality.

     

     

    I assume we're talking about a consumer grade video camera so there are quality compromises across the whole process from acquisition to final output. I think that either of the methods I mentioned will work for you.

     

    If you do want to go the extra mile, Final Cut Pro X ($300.00) has a "camera archive" feature that is designed to do exactly what you're trying to do - make an exact back-up of the footage from your camera.

     

    Using the the feature is discussed in this article:

     

    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12710

     

     

    Are the Adobe software suites (e.g., Premiere) any better for this simple task? 

     

    I haven't used any of Adobe's offerings, but I don't think you'll find a magic bullet there.

     

    Matt

  • by JohnNY123,

    JohnNY123 JohnNY123 Oct 9, 2013 11:21 AM in response to Matthew Morgan
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 9, 2013 11:21 AM in response to Matthew Morgan

    Hi Matt,

     

    Thanks for the continuing feedback...

     

    Yes, they are consumer DV camcorders.

     

    Understood and agreed on the quality compromises of consumer devices throughout the whole chain....which is precisely why I don't want to degrade it any further during the archiving process. 

     

    As a starting point, I'm going to try an experiment with just one of the tapes before I decide on my final approach.  I'm going to use the iMovie slice/dice-on-import capture method to create a bunch of DV files....and assemble the resulting DV files into a movie that I then output at the maximum quality setting.  And then.....I'll drop the $30 on Quicktime 7 Pro as an experiemnt to create one large DV file as output.  I'll then compare the iMovie and Quicktime 7 Pro results to the original tape and see how everything looks.

     

    Will post my feelings on the results......

     

    If anyone has any continuing feedback on the topic, I welcome it.  This is an interesting learning experience.

  • by Matthew Morgan,

    Matthew Morgan Matthew Morgan Oct 9, 2013 11:29 AM in response to JohnNY123
    Level 7 (22,600 points)
    Oct 9, 2013 11:29 AM in response to JohnNY123

    You're welcome. Happy to help.

     

    I look forward to your comments on the results of your experiment.

     

    Matt

  • by thesurreyfriends,

    thesurreyfriends thesurreyfriends Oct 11, 2013 12:58 AM in response to JohnNY123
    Level 3 (838 points)
    Oct 11, 2013 12:58 AM in response to JohnNY123

    JohnNY123

    This may be of some use to you ,depending on what you finally decide  to do with your archived DV import.

     

    Via Finder go to your iMovie Events.

    Open up one of your Event Folders and you will see a Folder called " iMovie Movie Cache "

    In this folder you will see a QuickTime movie called "Cache-25.mov.

     

    This "Cache-25.mov" is very small ( only KB in size) and is a reference file for the DV import.

    If you double click on this it will play your import back as one whole piece. ( You may have to download QuickTime 7 for this, free from Apple Site, you dont need to buy the Pro 7 for this.)

     

    You can copy this to your desktop etc and rename if you wish.

     

    You should be able to use this in the same way that you would use your single DV file. For example you could drag this into iDVD and produce a DVD of your import, (un-edited of course )

    As you have not created a Project and exported then this will not suffer from iMovie 11 single field processing .

     

    As this is a reference file it is not "stand alone" If you delete the imported DV clips from your event then this will affect the Cache-25.mov .In other words don't delete the imported clips from the iMovie Event.

     

    I know this is not what you are exactly after but thought you might like to experiment to see if it gets you a little closer to where you want to be.

  • by JohnNY123,

    JohnNY123 JohnNY123 Oct 11, 2013 6:26 PM in response to thesurreyfriends
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 11, 2013 6:26 PM in response to thesurreyfriends

    Thank you thesurreyfriends!  Good lord....I never would have known about that because I haven't yet seen it mentioned in any of the reading that I've done on this topic.

     

    This is indeed something akin to what I want to do.  When I click that cache-xx.mov file, it does play the whole set of clips as one unit.  Ultimately, this is what I want to be able to do.

     

    I can use Airplay from my Macbook to stream it to my TV, but when I do that the audio and video are playing back slightly out of sync....which I've seen before when streaming home video off my Macbook via Airplay.  I would imagine that if I plug the Macbook high def video out directly into my TV that this problem will go away.  I'm guessing it's some kind of latency or audio/video sync problem with Airplay?  I've also heard that this can be caused by how you hook up your home theater components with the routing of the audio and video.  Not sure which is the culprit in this case...but that's not the primary issue of this thread.

     

    The main drawback to this approach is that there are scan line flickers on the top line of the video when viewed in Quicktime, which is slightly annoying.  I've gotten rid of that in the past by using the 'crop video on playback' feature in the VLC media player to remove the first horizontal line of the video (great feature of VLC!), but Quicktime has no option like that.

     

    The second drawback is that this play-as-one-file playback approach depends on that cache-xx.mov file.  If anything ever happens to it (perhaps it could get corrupted somehow or maybe even accidentally deleted) then I'm stuck with a bunch of clips that would then need to be fiddled with to get them to play back as one.  I'm a little concerned about that because it could occur far down the road.

     

    But overall, yes, this is what I want to be able to do.  Thanks for this tip!

     

    I will continue to search for the best solution to my initial question though, which is capturing off tape to a single full quality DV file.  I think my next step to try to achieve that will be to spend the $30 on Quicktime 7 Pro to see if it captures the tape properly.  I would be able to play those files through the VLC media player and could therefore crop the first line on playback to get rid of the flicker that's so common in this process.

     

    The complex road continues.  And this isn't even my most complicated video scenario!  Scanning off the old tapes to a single DV file is possible with QT7 Pro or even using this method of play-all-clips as a work-around.  The much harder scenario is doing something like taking a month of video clips from two iPhones and several different pocket cameras and trying to assemble that into a single movie for that month.  Yikes!  I'll probably put a gun to my head when I get to that part of this video archiving task. 

     

    I will continue to report back here on my results with the QT7 Pro test for those who are interested...More to come....

  • by thesurreyfriends,Helpful

    thesurreyfriends thesurreyfriends Oct 14, 2013 11:37 AM in response to JohnNY123
    Level 3 (838 points)
    Oct 14, 2013 11:37 AM in response to JohnNY123

    JohnNY123

     

    Just had a thought

    The second drawback is that this play-as-one-file playback approach depends on that cache-xx.mov file.  If anything ever happens to it (perhaps it could get corrupted somehow or maybe even accidentally deleted) then I'm stuck with a bunch of clips that would then need to be fiddled with to get them to play back as one.  I'm a little concerned about that because it could occur far down the road.

    Sounds like you have decided to invest in QT7 Pro

     

    If you open up the Cache-25.mov in QT7 Pro >File>Export. In the Export option choose Movie to DV Stream and then set your options as required (make sure Scan Mode is set to Interlaced).

    This shoud give you a stand-alone (Self Contained) DV file.It's size will be equivalent to the addition of all the single .dv clips.

     

    By doing this you should get the best of both worlds.

     

    You end up with individual clips if you should ever need them.

     

    You get the single Cache-25.mov single clip that you can use.

     

    Thirdly you get the self contained .dv file ( single clip) that you can use independently of iMovie and copy to  another hard drive if you are woried about it being corrupted or accidently deleted.

     

    The Cache-25.mov file and the self contained file should behave in the same way.

  • by JohnNY123,

    JohnNY123 JohnNY123 Oct 15, 2013 6:22 AM in response to thesurreyfriends
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 15, 2013 6:22 AM in response to thesurreyfriends

    surreyfriends, this is a very interesting idea, and I agree that if it works and the original quality is maintained throughout the process then this is absolutely the best way for me to go.  I will definitely try it to see how it works!

     

    Question:  What is DV Stream?  Does the discussion thread at the link below contain an accurate explanation?  If so, then this seems like it will indeed solve every one of my goals.

     

    Let me know your thoughts....Thanks!

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1773310?start=0&tstart=0

  • by thesurreyfriends,

    thesurreyfriends thesurreyfriends Oct 15, 2013 9:26 AM in response to JohnNY123
    Level 3 (838 points)
    Oct 15, 2013 9:26 AM in response to JohnNY123

    I think it safe to say that David Babsky knows what he is talking about.

     

    So yes, as I see it, it will be the same quality as what you import into iMovie from your cam' .

     

    Before committing yourself to hours and hours of importing you will no doubt do a short test to see how it turns out quality wise .You will obviously want to compare your final output, as above suggestion, with an original .dv clip/clips imported into iMovie.

     

    Will be very interested to hear how you get on and your thoughts on quality achieved.

     

    Good Luck

  • by Maccanaut,Helpful

    Maccanaut Maccanaut Nov 12, 2013 9:42 PM in response to JohnNY123
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 12, 2013 9:42 PM in response to JohnNY123

    Hi JohnNY123,

     

    I completely understand ur dilemma because I too have been trying to do PRECISELY the same as u. I thought I had succeeded but discovered after capturing over 120 hours of DV tapes and storing them on an external hard drive, that the capture method messed up the fields and I had lines running through video in playback. To be honest, given my experience, that was a pretty dumb error on my part. Anyway so I had to start all over again. I read the posts here just this morning and purchased QT7 Pro immediately. Its currently capturing the second video and its a success. File sizes are almost exactly as per original file size and I can export the file in so many formats I think I'm complete. There IS an issue with the fileds again but its fixed immediately with the click of the 'deinterlace' button (which is somewhat obscure but it is there). Im using a 2012 iMac with mountain lion.

    Hopefully u get urs sorted. What I find with full size DV files is that the image quality when streamed to a HD TV is amazing. This is one reason I wish to keep the original file size as is.

     

    Michael

  • by JohnNY123,

    JohnNY123 JohnNY123 Nov 13, 2013 5:22 AM in response to Maccanaut
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 13, 2013 5:22 AM in response to Maccanaut

    Hi Maccanaut....What specific steps and settings are you using in QT7 Pro to achieve your successful video captures?  I also purchased QT7 Pro to try out various ways of capturing, so I would be interested to know your workflow in QT7 Pro.

  • by robertsharp3,

    robertsharp3 robertsharp3 Nov 20, 2013 11:36 AM in response to JohnNY123
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 20, 2013 11:36 AM in response to JohnNY123

    The LifeFlix MiniDV Converter will do exactly what you need for only $9.99.  Available as a download on the Mac app store. 

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lifeflix-minidv-importer/id630212114?mt=12

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