Hello,

I want to start archiving precious family video. I am not sure what is the best way to do this.

My question is ... my capture card only saves video as .AVI files, but I want to burn them as MPEG files and it takes forever to convert just a three minute video clip. Is there any way around this?

Jeff Eastern Canada

-- Jeff Scott (scottjt@nbed.nb.ca), April 10, 2001

Answers

It WILL always take forever to convert to MPEG. Best you get concerned with the MPEG quality instead. If you have a DV or D8 camcorder why don't you get an OHCI FireWire card?? These are inexpensive, and many come bundled with the appropriate NLE (like Premiere6, like the ADSPyroPlatinum at US$350 for the lot). One advocate of DV-AVI to SVCD MPEG-2 can be found in www.geocities.com/aussie01au.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), April 11, 2001.

Buy ATI 64 MB VIVO video card (has video capture) and install it on your computer. Connect your camcorder to the videocard on your computer using RCA cables. Use ATI software to play and to record at the same time your camcorder movie on your computer. When you stop recording, you can save your recording as MPEG2 file on your computer. If you record about 9 minute or less, the file will be small enough (550 MB) for you to burn it on a CD Rom blank disk for archival or distribution purposes.

You lose something of the "quality" of your movie. If your camcorder is digital, your camera does digital to analogue conversion. Then on the computer side, your ATI does analogue to digital conversion. It is a double work and you lose signal on both ends. But the system is cheap. I havd Sony MD Discam that allows me to use the MD Data2 minidiscs ($15. per disc) again and again (up to a million times), and save the files on cheap CD Rom blanks (30 cents per disc).

Good Luck.

Bo 5/31/01

-- BO (CCBGSTG@EARTHLINK.NET), May 31, 2001.