Video

I’m not surprised that beginners get confused. Analog. Digital. Betamax. VHS. SVHS. VHS-C. 8mm Hi-8 Digital 8. DV Mini-DV. DVD Mini-DVD, and now a whole raft of HD ones coming along too. All this in about 20 years or so. The technology is advancing so fast.

Perhaps it’s not so much the technology sometimes as the availability of it at a consumer level. The capability to make high quality video has been around for a number of years. Ampex invented the video tape in 1950. Most TV broadcast stations switched over from film to videotape during the late 50’s or early 60’s. High Def has been around for a while at broadcast level, and is now making serious inroads into the consumer market both for viewing and for home video making.

I bought a then start of the art consumer level Hi-8 video camera around 10 years ago. I’ve taken a fair amount of video on it. To be honest most of it is still sitting on the hi-8 tapes. It’s never been through any kind of post-production process.

Why?

Originally the plan was to copy it to a VHS VCR, editing it on the fly, and make a VHS Tape from it. You know, the hour Hi-8 material you recorded on Sunday afternoon at the beach ends up (or should usually end up) as a few minutes VHS.

Then I decided to copy it all to the computer, and turn it into digital video. That was originally going to be into DVD format, but a recent rethink has me wondering if it is worth the trouble of DVD authoring.

I’m looking to put a media center system together for the living room. Nothing grand, basically use a computer connected to the sound system, and to the TV. That way I can play all formats directly. Well, I can sort of do that now. We have a Phillips 642 in the living room that plays DVD, Video-CD, and also regular audio CD, and MP3 CD. However, it’s limited to what it can do now, whereas a computer can always be upgraded with new software codecs to play new and updated formats. For example I like to use AAC or mp4 audio. It gives much better audio quality at much lower bit rates. Lower bit rates not only mean lower bandwidth if streaming online for Internet Radio, but also mean you can get a lot more tunes on a DVD. That’s the other thing. The 642 will only play DVD format from the DVD.

Problem? Well, only that with a computer I can play mp3 from a DVD, and as even a regular DVD at 4.7GB can get 7 times more data on it than a 700MB CD for around the same price it makes economic sense it terms of both storage and cost. We got a 50 pack of CDs from a local store for $10 over the weekend, and a 50 pack of DVD for $12. So for $2 more, we get seven times more data storage. Doesn’t that make sense? Also for that same data to be on CD would take 350 CDs – and it’s easier to find shelf space for 50 than 350, right?

So, anyway, back to the videos. We have a little Sony DCR HC-38. It’s not HD, but it does fine right now for what we need. I can shoot video, connect it to the computer via Firewire, and import from the tape into Premiere Pro. Then, I can pretty much do what I like with it post production wise. Premiere Pro is extremely flexible in what it allows you to accomplish, and you’re only really limited by your own skills with the software, and your own imagination. A far cry from copying to VHS tape.

Now, back to those Hi-8 tapes. The old Sony Hi-8 camera is from the UK. The UK uses a different television system. PAL is 625 lines interlaced at 25 frames per second, whereas NTSC is 525 lines interlaced at 29.97 frames per second. The way the color and luminance is derived is electronically different too.

With the DV cam I don’t need a capture card, as it’s already in a digital format. WIth the HI-8 being analog I do need one. It’s akin to scanning in a photgraph from a print or magazine, so you can edit it in the computer.

In my computer we have a TV card, however that is only NTSC. On Kathy’s computer we have a TV card that is both NTSC and PAL. (This dual card works well on her machine, and was a quarter of the price of the Hauppage card in my machine – go figure!)

So, the current plan is to use her machine to capture the video, and then to transfer it to my computer for post production.

DVD? Perhaps, but most will end up as AVI files on DVD, and quite a lot will end up as FLV (Flash Video) format. That, in my opinion, is the best video format to use online, as it’s cross-platform, and more than 95% of internet users have the Flash plug-in installed in their web browsers.

It’s that open-source open standard philosophy I have again you see. I don’t want to use a format like WMV online, which although has good quality, restricts it to viewers on Windows machines.

Once I’ve got some of this video ready, I’ll post it online. I’ll be setting up a new site for it, so watch out here for news of that some time in the future. It’s a spare time project, so it’s not going to be done overnight!