You can try importing them into a compressed format like MPG rather than AVI and that saves about 50+% as your source file, however you get loss of detail too.

Recording to AVI will definitely be about 1gig for 45 mins.

PDR7+ has video deNoise filter but beware it consumes tons of memory to perform it so either have tons of ram or a long wait.

I wonder if outputting the VHS as RGB and inputting that signal into a HD or Mini_DV camera RGB input would help with the initial low quality. The HD camcorder might do some signal processing on the fly to improve the video.

Then input the DV signal normally into PDR. I would check with some of the VHS forums and Google. If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem

To be honest, 1 GB for 45 minutes is not bad at all. A DVD will hold about about 1 hour at 4 GB recorded in mpeg2 format. As mentioned before, that may be your best option to reduce file size.

Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

I am in the midst of digitizing many years of home videos before they turn to dust, ultimately wanting to create movies that show events of a year, in video, with photos interspersed and music overlapped to create a montage. When I digitize a two hour video, it creates a massive file. If I try to cut that file into smaller pieces, I can do that, sort of, but each of them is still part of the larger file, just not all of it is displayed any more, only the segments I kept in. Moving that large file around is cumbersome and slows the whole process down hugely; also, I can't identify the segments and work with them individually.

So, my questions are: Is there a way to subdivide the digitized video into discrete sections, with discrete names, each of which can be handled separately? I would like, for example, to identify and to pull the "Christmas" section out of each year and create a movie, with photos, too, just of that holiday. Can I do that, and if so, how?

As you likely can tell, I am not technologically adept, so I need appropriate directions, for the enthusiastic yet ignorant user.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

I know what you want and the simple answer is, to date , no.

It might be a good after-market product for someone to make.
A searchable database where you could skim through a video and tag by time different content. so birthday, christmas, vacation etc.

Then at another time search the database and retrieve all relevant tapes, clips of vacation and build an edit file.

The real world: You can open a new project in PDR and bring in your first video to the timeline. Roughly chop out everything but the vacation. Save the project. Drag in the next video and repeat and save.

Now your project knows that two video sources exist and two clips from them are wanted on the time line.

Repeat as many times with as many video sources, saving each time.

Next time you load PDR and load the saved project it will assemble all your clips on the time line as it was saved originally.

If your project was saved as "all-vacations" then you got waht you want, but thats not the same as having a VHS with a bunch of items and being able to database the items in a sort of future directory of content.

Not yet anyway.

Actually, the data in the .pds file COULD BE CREATED by a Visual Basic add-on Hmmmmm maybe I will research this another time.

Wonder how many PDR users would want such a tool and how much it would be worth.
If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem

It might be easier to capture the entire video in 20 minute sections and then perform a scene detection. PD will search for obvious scene changes and mark them as such. It will not actually save these as separate videos, but will allow you to drop them into the timeline and edit them as if they were separate videos.

Note: The reason why I suggested 20 minute sections is because it is much easier to manage smaller chunks of video. Both for yourself and the computer. I've also have had audio issues when I capture too much, but when I capture smaller pieces I have no problems. If you are planning on capturing a lot of video I would make sure it is set for MPEG2 capture, not AVI.

Good luck Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

I just ran a check in PDR8 and examined the .pds file OUCH - no way I would try to parse and edit that file in Visual Basic anymore. Its full of sort of encrypted stuff now like
><Buffer>/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAYABgAAD/2wBDAAMCAgMCAgMDAwMEAwMEBQgFBQQEBQoHBwYIDAoMDAsKCwsNDhIQDQ4RDgsLEBYQERMUFRUVDA8XGBYUGBIUFRT

OK I would fall back on creating a simple notepad history of tape # and time along the tape of what you see when you scan through a tape like

Tape #1
0.00 Vacation
5.30 Birthday
17.20 Ball Game
Tape #2
0.00 Birthday
15.30 Birthday
27.20 Anniversary

and can at least search the notepad to see what tapes you need to import

If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem

Hi Maggie,

I, too, am slowly digitizing all of my old analog movies (photos are next). And I, too, am planning on say, putting all the old Christmas videos on 1 DVD, vacations another, etc.

I agree there is not easy way to do it. I agree with James in that splitting it up into 15-20 minute chuncks (I kinda set a goal of 1 GB or so) seems to work best.

For what it's worth, this is how I've been doing it:
1. Pull in the raw video through PD using DVD Maker (this little contraption works great!)
2. Save as a MPG file. When I name the files, I use the date and a short description such as 1997_12_25 Christmas. If I have more than 15-20 minutes of the same event, I name it 1997_12_25a Christmas. Then they all show up in the correct chronological order on my hard drive for easy retrieving.
3. Then I just create a new project and start importing say, all the Christmas files and edit from there.

I'm finding this to be a MUCH longer project that I anticipated. It gets very monotonous and boring to wade through some of my videos. I have to put it down and come back to it after a while.

Someone probably has a faster way, but I want to be able to preserve the raw video to use in other projects. I also bought an external hard drive to back up all the raw video files in case of a crash - very important!

Hope that helps,
Cindy

Cindy,

Excellent post an assessment of archiving analog footage. In my opinion your explanation and technique is spot on.

Archiving analog to digital can be a major undertaking. There’s just not that one button fix that will accomplish it all. It simply takes some good old fashion elbow grease, which can indeed become monotonous and boring. But just as Cindy said, you just have to put it down now and then, and then come back to it.

That’s what Michelangelo did. And he was only painting some dumb ceiling over in Rome.


Click here PDtoots for a collection of PowerDirector Tutorials and Tips

News:
I have created a small stand alone VB program which is a VideoClip Database complete with a well behaved SETUP program.

Features:
1. Its FREE
2. You can use it to collect the following information about your clips

Name or ID - of each Tape
Format - e.g. VHS BETA WMV MP4
Subject - Description of the clip
Time Posn - Time on the Timeline beginning of each clip
Length - Running time of each clip
Comments - Up to 256 characters per clip

Database is MS Access but it exports to a textbox which you can simply right-click select and copy as comma and quotes delimited text

You can Add,Update Delete records and there is a grid view too.

Any field can have any kind of text, numbers quotes and punctuation so you are not limited by my design. e.g you could use the TapeName or Subject fields for any other use you like, indeed any field can be used as you like.

It works in any Microsoft PC - I tested it in Vista.
You can sort the display as well, so all your birthday clips can be grouped easily. Its not 'connected' to PowerDirector in any way though if I can figure out how, I might make a better version in the future. Eventually I would love it to be able to build a .pds file but thats a long way off I think.

Want a copy ? PM me please


You dont need Access installed to use this program
If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem

heres a screen shot If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem

Hi All,

I like Ron's database approach and I used to use something similar until I moved off tape and onto SD card recording. Then I found I was generating lots of smaller clips, rather than a series of long ones.

So quite quickly you end up with the same issues that face still image photographers - collating and organising many, many images or for us - video clips.

As I also do still photography I use the same reasonably priced software - Photoshop Elements - to organise both still and video assets. The beauty is that you can tag clips with keywords as well as organising them into albums so it becomes easy to find all the christmas party with uncle billy in or whatever or christmas party with uncle billy and a bonfire etc etc because you can tag the clips with multiple keywords.

So at present ,on my main drive I have 1529 .mp4 files, 598 .mpg, 2053 .arw still images and 52,184 .jpg ( luckily this includes at least 2 sets of backups) as I have had to recover another crashed drive so maybe only 10,000 unique stills

They are all organised on the hard drive in appropriate folders, but it's great to be able to get hold of say, all the sunsets, or all the diving video in Croatia and then maybe build up a separate library for a particular video by copying and maybe renaming the clips you might need, without messing around with the 'originals' so to speak.

Something to think about sooner rather than later? I wish I'd done it sooner before scanning in all the old family slides and photos - it's quite daunting being faced with several thousand images to organise.

Cheers
Adrian

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

OK, a field with searchable keywords.
I will add this to the VB program too so it can be searched. And a search input as well to tell Access what search is required.

Will take a day to do it and publish. Thanks 'rider


DONE

You can now sort by any column, search for multiple keywords, export text, it still does not affect any PD Files e.g. the .pds file

HOW TO USE IT
As you go through a set of VHS tapes, or AVI files or any video tape system, viewing them on say a TV or a PC editor,
Make a note of the Tape Identity and Format and possibly the Disk path to the file c:\files\Nov2006\
As you watch the tape you can add records like
Party at Joes + Tape Position + Length of Clip _+ Comments
BBQ at Joes + Tape Position + Length of Clip _+ Comments
Poolside Party at Joes + Tape Position + Length of Clip _+ Comments

It remembers the tape ID etc for you

When you have done a couple of tapes you can review the database, sorting by any column, and add keywords as you go or edit any field any time. You can sort columns and search keywords.
You can print a list and get it into your clipboard (Copy) and paste it elswhere any time.

Then when you are ready to do a big edit of say that party you can sort by subject and see what tapes to get out of your library and corral them into the editor, roughly clipping at the start/runlength times and now you are ready to do the PowerDirector editing proper. This way you wont spend hours with PDR open while browsing dozens of files cuz you already did that part and saved it in the database.
If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem