Greetings,
I already know my way around nonlinear video editing on Linux. This time I'm looking for pointers to general information useful for the procedure below, as well as tips on the best software and hardware peripherals to do it on Fedora boxes.
My relatives asked me to "make sense" of the family home made videos. So I should transform an ugly mess of already existing analog or digital movies of ALL sorts into one archive of digital video clips ready for later editing.
"ALL sorts" means everything from VHS and DV tapes to home-made DVDs and NEVER edited footage by assorted camcorders, smartphones, digital cameras..
"later editing" means that the "ONLY" thing I'm supposed to do now is:
- capture the video from FireWire camcorders, VHS players etc, when not already on file
- discard all the useless scenes (like those ten-minutes-long close ups of the ground of the inside of a backpack, because somebody forgot to turn the camcorder off and started walking...)
- convert all what's left, regardless of its origin, in clips in one open digital format. Possibly lossless, possibly able to carry some metadata inside like author, comments, subject tags...
all the real editing and "publishing", like mixing clips, adding effects, titles and soundtracks, uploading to YouTube, burning to DVD, whatever.. will happen later, if/when somebody feels like it. I "just" have to prepare the raw video archive, that is to save the footage (minus the useless scenes) all in one place. Therefore, the questions are:
what do you think is the best "one, open digital format" (assuming it exists...) that would make it possible later editing and transcoding, with the smallest possible degradation? What forums or online tutorials would you recommend to know more on this?
What Fedora-compatible video capture hardware should I buy to hook VHS players, Firewire camcorders... to my computer?
what tools do you recommend (command-line stuff is OK) for grabbing the video from that hardware, transcoding and saving to disk only specified parts automatically (meaning connect the VHS player, then tell Fedora "save by yourself only the first 5:30 minutes, then from minute 40:20 to 43:10, of the incoming video")
Thanks a lot for any feedback
Marco
Allegedly, on or about 07 November 2013, M. Fioretti sent:
I already know my way around nonlinear video editing on Linux.
I'd be interested to know what you use. I still don't use computers for editing my own work, because I've not found anything that works, or isn't painful, on Linux.
what do you think is the best "one, open digital format" (assuming it exists...) that would make it possible later editing and transcoding, with the smallest possible degradation?
I don't know if there's ever going to be "one." I would have thought for firewire caption of DV, the best choice would be a straight dump of what the camera gives you. That way, there's no transcoding, and whenever someone gets around to using the data, they can use it as-is, and render out with whatever's best at the time. And what's great as an editing source format this year, mayn't be next year, as editing applications change, and different CODECs become popular.
That's harder to think about for other analogue formats, that need to be captured, first. But one option has always been, at least when I've used other computer systems, was to play the analogue recording through a digital camera that has analogue inputs, too, and can work as your capture device (e.g. VHS into analogue in, DV out into PC's Firewire) for the signal to be passed through it (E-E, not re-record and replay).
On Fri, 08 Nov 2013 00:23:06 +1030 Tim ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au wrote:
Allegedly, on or about 07 November 2013, M. Fioretti sent:
I already know my way around nonlinear video editing on Linux.
I'd be interested to know what you use. I still don't use computers for editing my own work, because I've not found anything that works, or isn't painful, on Linux.
Likewise. though haven't filmed since 3/4sp was in vogue for stringers.
On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 13:58:24 PM +0000, Frank Murphy wrote:
On Fri, 08 Nov 2013 00:23:06 +1030 Tim ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au wrote:
Allegedly, on or about 07 November 2013, M. Fioretti sent:
I already know my way around nonlinear video editing on Linux.
I'd be interested to know what you use.
at the moment, my personal favourite for video editing on LInux is kdenlive. I find it almost perfect, in the sense that it does all **I** need or care to do, without too much effort. But I am the first to say that it cannot be THE answer for everybody. Video editing is too varied to have one answer. I also plan to keep an eye on openshot, btw.
However, this time is a very different issue, as I explained in the original message. This I need to do isn't video editing, as much as video digitization, in ways that:
- are as "fire and forget" as possible, plug the "source" into the computer, let it work by itself
- in formats that let others, more than me, to do edit maybe one year from now, on who knows what platform, with as little degradation as possible
Marco
On Thu, 7 Nov 2013 14:22:58 +0100 "M. Fioretti" mfioretti@nexaima.net wrote:
What Fedora-compatible video capture hardware should I buy to hook VHS players, Firewire camcorders... to my computer?
For VHS, you want to get a TV card. Lookup "video4linux" documentation (usually called v4l) to find out what chipsets are supported by the Linux kernel --- before you buy the hardware. Also, in case of TV cards, hardware quality is usually proportional to its price.
Another thing that I can recommend is to ask someone else to do it for you --- there are professional/commercial mini-studios that can convert your VHS to some digital format (usually to DVD), for a small price. Typically they own the hardware do it with better quality than you could do it yourself.
As for firewire, AFAIK this already comes in a digital format. This means that the capture software and hardware do not need to do analog-to-digital conversion, the data already comes in digital. In addition to the recording/capture software, you just need a camcorder to playback the tape through the firewire, and you need to have a firewire port in your computer. If you don't have one, any firewire PCI card will do the job.
Depending on your camcorder, the firewire data may come in the raw, uncompressed DV format. You want to have *a* *lot* of hard disk space for that. I vaguely remember needing tens of GB per hour of tape. After you have the file on your hard drive, you can transcode it to some format of reasonable size, and play around with various compression levels, quality settings, etc.
what tools do you recommend (command-line stuff is OK) for grabbing the video from that hardware, transcoding and saving to disk only specified parts automatically (meaning connect the VHS player, then tell Fedora "save by yourself only the first 5:30 minutes, then from minute 40:20 to 43:10, of the incoming video")
I know that mplayer/mencoder can do this, if you are not afraid of reading the mammoth man page and finding the relevant command-line options. :-) However, my usual recommendation is --- grab the whole tape to a file first, and then cut out unneeded pieces from the digital version. You'll have far greater control of the positions of the cuts than you would have if you would capture time-based pieces. That way you'll also avoid potential A/V sync issues, etc...
HTH, :-) Marko
First of all, please all accept my apologies if I disappeared after starting this. For several reasons, the whole "project" has gone on hold, and I... honestly forgot there were messages that deserved an answer.
On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 14:19:53 PM +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
On Thu, 7 Nov 2013 14:22:58 +0100 "M. Fioretti" mfioretti@nexaima.net wrote:
What Fedora-compatible video capture hardware should I buy to hook VHS players, Firewire camcorders... to my computer?
For VHS, you want to get a TV card. Lookup "video4linux" documentation (usually called v4l) to find out what chipsets are supported by the Linux kernel --- before you buy the hardware. Also, in case of TV cards, hardware quality is usually proportional to its price.
Another thing that I can recommend is to ask someone else to do it for you --- there are professional/commercial mini-studios that can convert your VHS to some digital format (usually to DVD), for a small price. Typically they own the hardware do it with better quality than you could do it yourself.
I started the thread exactly because mini-studios are NOT an option for us. In my family there are lots of DV and VHS tapes where only 5 minutes, scattered through the whole tape, are worth preserving. Mini-studios around us would still ask full price for any of those tapes, with a total cost, I believe, a couple orders of magnitude bigger than video capture hw and some hacking night
Apart from this, all the other info will surely be valuable when I get around to actually do it.
Many thanks to Marko and all the others who contributed to this thread.
Marco
On Sun, Dec 01, 2013 at 04:36:16PM +0100, M. Fioretti wrote:
First of all, please all accept my apologies if I disappeared after starting this. For several reasons, the whole "project" has gone on hold, and I... honestly forgot there were messages that deserved an answer.
On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 14:19:53 PM +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
On Thu, 7 Nov 2013 14:22:58 +0100 "M. Fioretti" mfioretti@nexaima.net wrote:
What Fedora-compatible video capture hardware should I buy to hook VHS players, Firewire camcorders... to my computer?
For VHS, you want to get a TV card. Lookup "video4linux" documentation (usually called v4l) to find out what chipsets are supported by the Linux kernel --- before you buy the hardware. Also, in case of TV cards, hardware quality is usually proportional to its price.
Another thing that I can recommend is to ask someone else to do it for you --- there are professional/commercial mini-studios that can convert your VHS to some digital format (usually to DVD), for a small price. Typically they own the hardware do it with better quality than you could do it yourself.
I started the thread exactly because mini-studios are NOT an option for us. In my family there are lots of DV and VHS tapes where only 5 minutes, scattered through the whole tape, are worth preserving. Mini-studios around us would still ask full price for any of those tapes, with a total cost, I believe, a couple orders of magnitude bigger than video capture hw and some hacking night
Marco, I have a (borrowed) device that sits between the video output device (commonly a camera, but could be a VCR) that can take the analog output of a VCR (or other device) and turn it into a digital stream for capture in your computer.
Unfortunately, I haven't had superb luck doing the job, probably due to my own ignorance and/or laziness, not having spent a lot of time on it yet.
It appears to be discontinued, and I haven't found anything else like it (but maybe I just didn't look hard enough.) but I wouldn't be surprised if you could find 'em used on ebay.
it's a:
Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge
and the label on the underside says:
DVBridge HW1X2
for inputs it has video in, audio in (both RCA jacks), S-Video in, and firewire in. I'm trying to use the RCA jacks since that's all my old VCR has.
For outputs it has the same set of connectors. I'm trying to use it with the RCA audio out and the Firewire video out.
While I'm still struggling, my friend (from whom it is borrowed) says he has used it in similar configurations where it worked fine. so I'm sure all I gotta do is get my head around it.
Good luck!
Fred
Apart from this, all the other info will surely be valuable when I get around to actually do it.
Many thanks to Marko and all the others who contributed to this thread.
Marco
M. Fioretti http://mfioretti.com http://stop.zona-m.net
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On Sun, Dec 01, 2013 17:45:04 PM -0500, Fred Smith wrote:
Marco, I have a (borrowed) device that sits between the video output device (commonly a camera, but could be a VCR) that can take the analog output of a VCR (or other device) and turn it into a digital stream for capture in your computer.
thanks Fred, I'll look into that too.
-
Frank Murphy -
Fred Smith -
M. Fioretti -
Marko Vojinovic -
Tim