Had posted this long time back for a user who wanted advice on this…
Thought this might come in handy for other folks too:
Most handycams sold these days are either Mini DV or Hi8 format…
Since both these formats are digital, it’s fairly easy to create your own DVD/VCD (for standalone players), or store vids as mpegs on your HDD for easy access…
The only hitch is finding the right combo of tools given the multiple steps involved …
After using several tools and utilities, I think I have finally hit the perfect combo…Posting here for everyone’s benefit
Pre-requistes :
[]MiniDV/Hi8 handycam
[]IEEE1394 (firewire) slot on the PC
[*]Connecting cable
Now that this is done, here we go :
1- Install a PCI-IEEE1394 (firewire) card if the PC doesn’t already have one
2- Install WinDV (freeware utility) , a <100KB app. (You can also use windows movie maker that comes with WinXP though i suggest u use windv as it is light and also doesn’t drop any frames like Win Movie maker
3- Hook the DV port of the camera to the firewire port using a 4-6 pin firewire cable (will come along with the card) or 4-4 pin if using laptop
4- Set the tape to the point frm which u want to start recording
5- Enable the automatic DV camera control chkbox on winDV (it is The chkbox next to the capture button, the application doesn’t have any txt describing wht it is)
6- specify the capture location (Ensure that the drive on which u r capturing has loads of empty space on it…The raw DV format footage frm a DV camera is ~13GB per hour …i’d suggestthat this should be a separate partition frm the OS and is NTFS as NTFS allows large file sizes while FAT32 can’t handle a single file ~4GB(don’t rem the exact figure though)
7- click capture and relax till the tape reaches the end of the part which u want to capture
8- This takes care of the capturing needs…Now you need to compress these huge raw DVfiles (uncompressed avi format) to a more manageable format
9- I use a utility called WinAVI converter, most ppl use a freeware called TMPGenc..WinAvi converter is faster, TMPGenc gives u more freedom to tweak with the video
10- Add the captured raw DV avi files to batch conversion mode …
11- you need to choose a suitable format for conversion…I use SVCD(MPEG1) as I find that loss of quality is much lower than VCD format (SVCD has twice the resolution than VCD)…the disadvantage is that a 700MB CD will hold ~35-40 mins of video as compared to ~74 mins in VCD format
Try playing around with different file format till you find the right one
(WMV is fairly decent even at high level of compression…if u want small file sizes, use wmv)
12- Start the conversion process and fix urself a drink 
1 hr of footage takes approx 45 mins for conversion on my mid-end rig (AMD 2400, 256 Meg RAM)
13- Add the converted file to Nero, choose burn SVCD or VCD as appropriate…
Coupla notes :
a) VCD will play on any stand-alone VCD player…SVCDs are trickier..they play on my Chinese DVD player but refuse to work on some hi-end DVD players, however, they workon my friend’s philips DVD player…haven’t tried playing a SVCD on a stand-alon VCD player but i doubt if it’ll work
b) WinDV breaks the captured Video into separate files at all points where the recording was paused while shooting…I prefer this mode…and I use TMPGenc to join the converted mpeg files as required…If u don’t want to work with a single contigous file, set the pause threshold to “0” in the options menu (winDV)
TV /VHS Video cassette Capture Many ppl are not aware of the fact that most Digital handycams allow a Ana-digi pass-thru feature
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Just feed the AV out from the TV/VCP to the video-in slot on the handycam (many handycams have a single pin for both in/out…You may need to set the pin to IN from within the menu)
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Enable "DV out " on the handycam so that the pass-thru feature is activatd
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Hook the DV out of the cam to the PC firewire slot
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Start WinDV…if all is well till here, you should be able to see the TV/VCP video on the WinDV window…
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Start the capture process
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When done with with capturing, and it’s time for conversion, plz bear in mind that it would be overkill to use a hi resolution format like MPEG1 (DVD/SVCD ) for TV/VHS cassette captures…Use Mpeg2/WMV etc
I’d be glad to be of help if anyone has any questions…
Just as the clouds have gone to sleep
Angels can be seen in heaven’s keep
Alone in fear they question why
Goddamn not an angel when I die !!!
