Newbie/Old guy question

M

Mammonista

New member
Bought my Panasonic HVX200AP years ago and used it to shoot a indie film all on P2. Don't know how I got the video off the cards and into my computer for editing but I did somehow as the movie got made! :) A few years earlier I used the camera once in a while to shoot video for a TV station where I worked as a reporter. That stuff I shot exclusively on Mini-DV tapes because at the time the station had editing suites set up for mini-dv input. So I would shoot the video, pop it out of the camera and into a dedicated player/recorder combo with a joy stick control.
But that was 12 or 13 years ago. The other day I found a box of the old mini-dv tapes that I would dearly love to input into my new pc for non-linear editing in something like DaVinci resolve. But...
I can't figure out for the life of me how to output the stuff from the tapes. Apparently Firewire is out because that's only good for outputting P2 content. I bought a cheapo converter that inputs r/g/b and outputs to hdmi. I also bought a cheapo converter that inputs hdmi and outputs to a usb 'host'. So I figured I'd use the supplied Panasonic component cable that plugs into the camera and outputs r/g/b rca jacks and hook it up to the converter then go from there to the scond converter that outputs to a usb thumbdrive and copy video over to a thumb drive which I could plug into the computer.
Yeah, right!
Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?
Is there any easy way to get video from Mini-DV tapes into my computer using the camera as a player?
Any help is appreciated!
Thanks,
Mark
 
Looks like you are on PC if so just go to eBay and buy a PCI slot Firewire card for between $15-25.00 and download the now free Scenalyzer which will control a Firewire camera recorder section or a Firewire deck. Scenalyzer gives you options to capture via timestamp, optical scene change and camera start/stop. Scenalyzer can also auto detect between 4:3 and 16:9. It can also do a complete high speed scan of a DV tape and build a log for later review and and capture.. While you are capturing you can split files, rename, delete sections etc, etc. I just had a client turn up a couple of weeks ago with 33 DV tapes and used this exact process. The other nice thing is that when you put a tape in and play it on Scenalyzer it will display the record date extracted from the DV sub-data code. In this last case it enabled me to create folders with dates that kept everything in nice chronological order which kept the workflow nice and tidy. Additionally with software like XSplit and a Firewire card you can actually live stream a Firewire camera to YouTube or a number of other streaming services.

Chris Young

http://scenalyzer.com/

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...irewire+card.TRS0&_nkw=firewire+card&_sacat=0

scenalyzerlive_2.jpg
 
Chris, if that works I owe you a beer or two or maybe a case! I recently bought a firewire card for the pc...a pci-express card that plugged right in. but the camera didn't see it, or at least I couldn't capture anything with DaVinci using it. I'll give this a try in a few minutes!
thanks,
mark
 
I may owe Chris a beer too, if that’s his poison.

Thanks mate!
 
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