I know this a odd question to ask in the DCC section but there seem to be a lot of smart people here. I have a good but old Camcorder and would like to make a decent video of some train action at K-10. Any ideas?
Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
Analog can be converted. Ask around your area if anyone might have a DV-Bridge. It's a device that allows you to input analog, like a vcr or analog camcorder, and outputs it as DV (digital video). You need a 1394 (Firewire) port on your PC to use one. Once the conversion is done, you can do pretty much as you want with the files. Burn to dvd, post, whatever.
You might also check the yellow pages. Places that used to do film to tape transfer may be doing analog to digital conversions by now. Converting used to cost an arm and a leg but it's dropped over the years.
Your cheapest and easiest option would be to purchase a combo VCR/DVD recorder. I have one and it is quite easy to use. I have had mine for about three years and it cost me $250 at the time.
Will
I have a TV input card for my PC. It's a WIN TV product, from www.hauppauge.com. Mine is an older one, but so is my camcorder. I'd imagine there are other companies making similar products. I've got an old 8-mm tape camcorder with separate audio and video outputs on RCA jacks.
I plug the camcorder outputs directly into the board with a simple patch cable. Then I use Windows Movie Maker. The software comes with Windows XP. I set it up to read the input from the WIN TV board and start the camera. It has an option to automatically break the input video into "scenes." Then, you can edit the scenes and assemble them into a complete short video in .mpg format. I think you can output them to DVD as well, but I haven't played with that. (Actually, that may be a separate program. I'm not sure.)
I did this movie a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ5OvZtI-QU&feature=channel
I shot about 20 minutes of raw video. Then I brought it into the computer, edited it down to about 3 minutes, added music and generated the movie. I hadn't done it for a while, and had to re-learn stuff, but the whole editing process took a couple of hours. The scenes are all very short and choppy in this, and I did a lot of manipulation. (These train-cams have poor signal transmission, and there are lots of break-ups to edit out.) All in all, it was an easier process than I thought it would be.
I found that Windows Movie Maker wants .wav files for sound input, if you're providing a sound track. If you want to use a music CD, you'll need to convert the format. There are free utilities available to do that.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
What you need is a video capture card. There are video cards with this built-in (ATI All-in-Wonder line) and there are cards and there are USB devices, like the Dazzle Video Creator. The USB devices won't work properly unless you have USB 2.0 and based on the info from the PR3 threads your computer may be too old
I skipped the video capture route and got an inexpensive digital video camcorder that records to memory instead of tapes and connects to my computer via USB. Soon as I actually have some trains to take video of I'll give it a better try, right now I have a few videos of the cats runnign around but that's it.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Ken,
Check with your local Walgreens store. They often have "transfer to DVD" services available, both for still photos and videos.
Steve
I have a USB video capture device that I have been tinkering around with for my business. As Randy said, with your USB's potentially being an issue it may not do you any good.
We can certainly try it and see if if does the job.
Simon Modelling CB&Q and Wabash See my slowly evolving layout on my picturetrail site http://www.picturetrail.com/simontrains and our videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/MrCrispybake?feature=mhum
Possibly the best way is to get a VCR/DVD recorder combo machine. We got an RCA one a couple of years ago for around $80, and they're good for burning DVDs from TV (cable/satelite, etc.) as well as copying your old VCR tapes to DVD.
The PC capture card route can be more complicated/fiddly.
Paying for the service is really the easiest, but you get a lot more bang for your buck with the VCR/DVD machine.
I've converted almost 100 old video tapes to DVD using a VCR and a computer add-on board called the Turtle Beach Video Advantage to save them to a hard drive. I edit them using Corel's WinDVD Creator and then burn to DVD.
However, this setup requires an Intel or AMD quad processor, Gigs of RAM, and Gigs of hard drive space. Without a very fast computer with lots of memory and SATA drives, you will get jerky, fuzzy, very poor video.
The quality of your camcorder and its tape has a definite effect on results, too. The ability to edit is a must. No one will like watching a train go round and round and round without a good, well thought out commentary.
cudakenI have a good but old Camcorder and would like to make a decent video of some train action at K-10.
Video transfer systems do just that - transfer video from one medium to another. However, to make a "decent video" that people might want to watch, you will need to edit it. While you might have a lot of fun taping your layout for an hour, sitting down and watching the replay of that whole hour probably isn't what you're hoping for.
I'd imagine, though, that if you transfer your tape to DVD, you can then import the DVD into your computer for editing. It's an alternate solution to buying a video capture board.
Again folks you have all the answers.
Ken
All great ideas,but a new small handheld video cam can be purchased for under a hundred dollars.A good investment if your planning on a lot of future videos.
IbeamlickerAll great ideas,but a new small handheld video cam can be purchased for under a hundred dollars.
What kind of output do these typically have? (I'll confess that I haven't looked at video cameras for 15 years, but mine still works.) Do they write to thumb drives? Do they have USB output?
By the way, Ken, thanks for posting this. I was unaware that I could buy a DVD recorder so cheap. It's the obvious solution to my problem of family videos on tape, which will both deteriorate and become obsolete with time. I've been thinking of professional video transfer, but if I can buy a box for $100 and do it myself, that's a much better option.
Mr.B ,mine just has a SD card that i remove and slide in a port in my computer.My computer automatically recognizes it and opens windows media player(you can change to any other editing program)and starts downloading.
I have been doing video for years both for myself and for cutomers. I started out about 15 years ago doing video for myself with an ATI all-in-Wonder card but soon outgrew that.
Next I bought a $1600 Pinnalce DV500 digital capture card with firewire and a compsite, (RCA) breakout box. It was the cat's meow and I still use it. Requires a serious editing system.
Right mow I mainly use a Sony HDD digital comacorder that I can connect to my top of the line Toshiba Qosmio laptop via usb. It is recognized by Vista as a removable drive and I just transfer the files over. No more hours spent doing real-time capture.
The bottom line with video is, garbage in = garbage out. If the video coming from your camera is of bad quality digitizing it and editing it will not make it better.
If your computer has the horsepower for video and USB 2.0 one of the analog interface devices is probably the best solution if you want to be able to edit what you shoot.
Mr B, thank you for posting your video! I all wise loved that music but had no idea what the name was. Not really sure I want to go to Harlem these days, but got me looking for Big Band music on U-Tube.
Simon, looks like the video at K-10 is out this Friday, Ken is on vacation and the powers left in charged (Jim & Larry) said we could not use the bench. So we might as well break out the other computer I have and see what we got. It is newer than the one I am using, not sure of the specks. It is the black Dell sitting by the bench.
On Walgreen's, they can convert to digital but at $25.00 and takes 5 weeks not worth the cost for what I have in mind.
Like I can afford anything right now, but what kind of specks should I look for in a digital video camera? Walgreen's had 2 around $70.00. My digital camera HP 720 will make a short clip but very poor quality.
http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j284/cudaken/?action=view¤t=IM000058-1.flv
Sound is good but video is very grainy. HP 720 is 6 years plus and is a still 3.3 MP. Give you a idea how long ago I bought it? It was $300.00 and was told by a friend it was a steal at that prices.
I just bought my HD digital cam for $180, it does 1080p HD. I also had to buy an SD memory card, the internal memory is only good for a few secodns at 1080. I got an 8GB card which will outlast the battery.
WalMart has an Aiptek for like $140 which has decent specs as well, and there is also the Flip series. The non-HD ones will naturally be less expensive but it's nbot by as much as you migh tthink, all else being approximately equal.
It's certainly no pro quality camera, not for under $200. It's good enough to get decent quality video, plenty good enough for Youtube and so forth. If you want video quality in the range of the audio quality of your audio gear, expect to pay 10x or more - actually, you have some serious audio gear, might need to go to a true pro camera to get the video equivalent, and that'll cost probably what your Cuda is worth. The $200 is PLENTY for my needs at the moment Before I spend more on a video camera I'd get a better still camera.