MiniDV editing suggestions?
 

I'm on a Windows based PC with a MiniDV camera and I'd like to convert some of the stuff on tape to clips on the computer.

My initial experimentation has been with Windows Movie Maker, but it kinda sucks. I'd like to be able to do some de-interlacing, noise reduction, cropping, and fade in and out from black. I tried monkeying with VirtualDub, but it seems not to be able to capture directly from the camera.

Any suggestions on freeware and/or workflow processing that will give me the best quality files?

Thanks!

V-dub should be fine with capturing... make sure you are using a firewire cable, as it allows for best lossless video capture. All I can say is... play with the settings. As far as fading and other funny video stuff, I cannot help 'cause I use Premier, far from free.

Thanks for the quick reply!

I get a weird RGB error when I try to import into VirtualDub directly from the camera via the Firewire. I know it works (the camera via firewire) as I can run it via Windows Media Encoder.

Again, all I can really say is play with settings. I used V-dub with all kinds of cameras through highschool and I was always able to get Vdub to work with miniDV cameras. I had some issues but was always able to resolve them with some persistence. It has since been a couple years and I have not been doing any video editing really... so I would have to re-learn the program to help with specific issues. Sorry.

Unfortunately, you're not going to find a lot of free software that will do a whole lot. You could check around over at sourceforge.net

I think I can use VirtualDub for the editing portion, I'm just trying to get as pure an extract/copy from the MiniDV tape as possible. It seems (to my eyes) that the 12 Gig AVI extract of a 60 min tape was pretty bad quality to start with, and I figure the better the source, the better the end product.

Maybe it doesn't get any better than extracting with Media Encoder?

Well, file-size doesn't have as much to do with it as you think, but 12GB for 60 minutes sounds like you are extracting it compressed. This will certainly have reduced quality ... especially if you are going to edit and then re-render it later.

You want to try to extract it as raw or as close to raw as you can get. In Windows world you should try to extract as an uncompressed AVI. You should be looking at about 1GB per minute.

It looked compressed.

I guess I'm looking for how to extract it uncompressed with freeware.

I think once I have a good raw extract I can work with it from an editing standpoint with VirtualDub.