Amateur film from vid to digital?

[The Chuckster]

I shot a few films of my girlfriend on Video, but now I want to get them on my PC. Can anyone help?

[Phil mCc]

No problem send them to me,

Phil McC

[ecucamman]

Many ways depending on how PC literate you are, You need a firewall video capture card, or an external card. Your local Jessops should be able to advise, or try PC world. A fairly standard home use are pinnacle cards
see http://www.pinnaclesys.com/

[Steven]

I have been doing this profesionally for years. You could send them to somebody like myself or Phil McC, but I suspect what you were after was to do it yourself.

Well what you need is an analog capture device. (An interface which allows the analog machine to play into the PC).

You will also need relevant software (a basic software is normally included with the device).

I dont know what sort of quality you are after, but if you want to get the best possible quality from your source, you need a dedicated internal card in the computer such as a Pinnacle DV500 or Matrox RT2000/RT2500. You can pick these up second hand for round about ?250 nowadays.

If you are looking for reasonable quality, you could go for something like a Pinnacle moviebox (go for firewire version not USB), which costs about ?190 brand new I think so will be cheaper second hand on eBay.

There are many cheap devices on the market such as Dazzle for example. These devices claim to plug into your USB socket and captuer video that way. The quality if these is dire. The only use for these would be if you were creating low quality clips for web use, or pehaps little videos for use in powerpoint presentations etc. You can completely forget these USB devices if you intend to make VCDs or DVDs because they simply arent up to the job.

Thanks

[philk]

I have a Pinnacle DV500 for sale if anyone is interested - unboxed, bare card, break out box and drivers only (i.e. no Adobe Premiere software)

Serious offers welcomed by email

Jason

[Bill Malone]

I think you mean "Firewire", not "Firewall", but I guess that's pretty obvious.
Firewall is a thinkg that protects computers from viruses or being hacked.
Firewire is a type of lead that connects a PC to a mini-DV camera.

Can I just point out you can get equally good results with a Mac, and you get free editing software wit it (i-Movie). And they have little silver fruit logos on them, so much more attractive.

[Steven]

But Bill, he is asking how to get analogue footage into the computer. For Mac you need a special interface which is not included in the setup. I-Movie is ok as basic program but the best one available for Mac is Final Cut Pro which even BBC has started using.