How to save legacy videos, currently in .dv file form

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Level 2

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How to save legacy videos, currently in .dv file form

I have nearly 500 GBytes of legacy videos recorded years ago on 8mm tape... Quite a few years ago I saved those videos using (what I think is no more) the "iMovie" application under macOS (way older)... Now I have those videos saved to multiple hard drives as .DV files (digital video)...

They will play using QuickTime Player... One quirk I've noticed (that I don't think was always there, maybe related to Quicktime or macOS version???) is that in order to play them via Quicktime I need to launch the video, then click "Play", then "Pause" and then "Play" a 2nd time... They never start on the first click of Play but they always do on the 2nd click... Interesting...

Anyway, in order to continue to have these videos available into the future, how should I store them??? As they are??? That would be great but I don't want to lose them... Or as mp4??? But if so, what software do I need to convert them and how long might a conversion take??? the 500 Gbytes is comprised of 100's of individual clips of files...

And help would be much appreciated... I currently run macOS Sonoma 14.3.1.... thanks...

MacBook Pro (2021)

Posted on Feb 22, 2024 3:57 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Matti Haveri

Level 6

19,904 points

Feb 22, 2024 11:43 PM in response to Robert Paris

Years ago I exported and archived edited iMovie v1-6 projects as max 9 min 20 sec (the old iMovie 2 GB max) .dv clips. A few years ago I converted them to .mp4:

I converted rectangular pixel .dv to square pixel H.265 and "bob" deinterlaced 25 fps PAL to double frame rate 50 fps wrapped as .mp4 with the following ffmpeg batch that I let the Mac mini 2018 do for about three days (AFAIR about 20 hours footage).

for i in *.dv; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -vf bwdif=1,scale=788:576,crop=768:576:10:0,setsar=sar=1/1 -c:v libx265 -crf 18 -preset slow -timecode 00:00:00:00 -tag:v hvc1 -c:a aac -b:a 128k "${i%.*}_converted.mp4"; done

NTSC .dv needs slightly different scaling and cropping values.

I edited .mp4 dates, captions, keywords and GPS with exiftool and GraphicConverter 12.

For testing I used the following simpler command. ffmpeg default '-crf 28 -preset medium' would have been much faster with smaller output .mp4 files but a few low quality original footage clips were blocky with that setting so I used the slower encoding for all.

ffmpeg -i input.dv -vf bwdif=1,scale=788:576,crop=768:576:10:0,setsar=sar=1/1 -c:v libx265 -crf 18 -preset slow -timecode 00:00:00:00 -tag:v hvc1 -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4

Alternatively you could use Final Cut Pro or daVinci Resolve for this task.

Or just simply use Handbrake or Shutter Encoder for the conversion.

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Answer 2

leroydouglas

Level 10

199,908 points

Feb 22, 2024 4:14 PM in response to Robert Paris

Robert Paris wrote:

I have nearly 500 GBytes of legacy videos recorded years ago on 8mm tape... Quite a few years ago I saved those videos using (what I think is no more) the "iMovie" application under macOS (way older)... Now I have those videos saved to multiple hard drives as .DV files (digital video)...

?

currently in Sonoma 14.3.1

compare—

About incompatible media in Final Cut Pro - Apple Support

Try an alternative software to open:

see MPV— https://mpv.io/

See Cisdem https://www.cisdem.com/video-player-mac.html

see VLC https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

convert:

https://handbrake.fr/

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