Capturing 90 minutes from DV--Faster way?

Hi Steve - I fear that you are stuck with the long-wait method - there's no quick way.
Re the VHS capture, you may be able to play them 'straight-through' to iMovie if your camera is capable of that (converting to DV as it does so). Connect camera to TV/VCR, and then via firewire to computer.

Steve,

As the other poster said, you're stuck importing the video in realtime. But, think of the positive: You can watch and preview all of you material as it feeds iMovie, then you become very familiar with the material and can make edit notes along the way. Once you do this, your editing will take less time because you already know the material and can quickly edit out irrelevant material. If you don't watch the material as it digitizes, you'll need to watch it at some point to know what to edit out, so you either pay the price up front or after digitizing. I too had tons of VHS material to load into iMovie, and I bought a analog-to-digital convertor which I still use. As the other poster said, you can use some mini-DV cameras to do the conversion.

Steve,

I've been using the Canopus ADVC-100, which is no longer made. It's been replaced with the ADVC-55 and the 110. They aren't cheap, but they work good. There are other brands, but I think the models that need software to work, don't do so good. Units that strictly do a hardware conversion I think are best. Now that I'm done loading my tons of old VHS into iMovie to make DVDs, I still have a VHS player and my convertor hooked up to my Mac because I record certain TV shows on VHS then burn them to DVDs. This may seem silly, but sometimes there is an episode on the History Channel or similar that I want to watch again, so I burn it on a .80 cent DVD.

Steve,
I have a Sony TRV6, & it works VHS pass through. Have alook at the menu in Playback mode. There should be a "DV IN" OR off option.
Really the quickest way to DVD is a standalone recorder. Less software, less hastles.
Mark

a hundred mini-dv into video-dvd..?

calculating: 100x60min for playback, you haven't published ANY info about your hardware or system you're using, calculating with 4h encoding per 1h dv, plus ~20min per 1hcassettes.. = 530 hours/8h a day= the next two months you have nothing else to do...

I would take in concern to let any company doing that, see yellow pages...

ooops: 90minutes per tape? longplay??? trouble. and: add another month into my math.....

and, no, there's "sped up" feature with mini-dv.......

Then there's finding time to view them!

I'd consider burning 100 tapes with a standalone DVD burner.

You don't get as nice menus as with iDVD and the chapter markers aren't hand-tuned to the right spots but with that amount of tapes you have to draw the line somewhere…

Another alternative is to edit those 100 tapes to a compact, viewable video but that takes even more time.

I would second that. Send the tapes to a company. Best Buy charges $20 for a 2hr DVD. Say one tape take you 4hrs to process, $20 is less than min wage for a four-hour job. Good luck.

If you were just archiving it, I would suggest having a company store it as h.264 so you can edit it later without recapturing the footage.

hi
i know that tha archos av 300 could capture video but i don't know the speed

good luck

XS Lingerie caracos nuisettes

Hi Steve - you may well have solved your 'pass-through' issue by now!
Anyway, on my Sony (not same model) I had to carefully go through the entire index of the User Guide, until I found "Signal Convert Function". That did the trick. Maybe that's the same for your camera - check it out.

Also, I have a large number of VHS tapes I would like
to put onto DVD. I saw a Sony product mentioned for
capture (rather than copying all the tapes to miniDV
first, then iMovie)

What should my workflow be for this type of project?

I just finished converting a collection of VHS tapes to DVD. I wanted a Digital Video Recorder to use anyway with my DirecTivo satellite TV setup, so I bought a combo VHS-DVD Recorder.

The box offers one-button transfer of VHS to DVD, so it's very convenient. But I found the VHS deck wasn't able to deliver the quality I got using a separate VHS deck. I ended up connecting a separate VHS box to the DVD half the recorder. Burning a DVD from the tape is a snap and although it's hard to believe, it actually improved the quality.

In fact, I'd encourage you to consider that solution for your mini DV tapes too. Consider buying a DVR that accepts FireWire input from your camera -- mine does not -- and burn the DVD there. WAY easier for so large a collection.

Some DVRs have horrible user interfaces (for adding titles, etcetera) so shop carefully. And be picky about recording quality. That combo unit was the second box I purchased. The first, a top name brand, refused to properly sync audio and video after 40 minutes of recording. And the user interface was terrible.

I now really enjoy being able to transfer special TV (Tivo-type) recordings to DVD. No problems; great quality, and a lot less expensive than tapes.

Karl