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FAMILYCAM VIDEO PREPARATION FAQs |
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How do I transfer video from a DV tape onto my PC? |
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Firstly, please DO NOT try to use Windows Movie Maker. We recommend an excellent video capture and video conversion software suite called AVS Video Tools. This is available from AVS Media for US$39.99 (about £20.00). It is an excellent investment and will give you complete control over handling your home video on your PC.
To capture video from a DV tape (or similar) onto a PC, you'll need a PC equipped with a Firewire port (sometimes called an IEEE 1394 adapter). This lets you plug a DV camcorder into the PC using a standard DV cable. You can then use the AVS Capture Wizard to extract the video from your camcorder tape and it will produce a very high quality (and very large) digital video file on your PC.
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How do I transfer video from a DV tape onto a PC without a Firewire port? |
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With older PCs there is no way to connect a DV or MiniDV camcorder directly. But if you have a DVD recorder underneath your living room TV, you can copy video from a DV camcorder onto a blank DVD and you can put the resulting DVD into your PC's DVD drive.
Next, just copy the entire VIDEO_TS folder from the DVD you made onto your PC's hard drive. This folder will contain one or more files that end in .VOB. These are actually just very high quality MPEG2 video files but they have a maximum size of 1Gbyte. Usually one hour of video will occupy two or three DVD VOB files.
You can then feed the VOB files into the FamilyCam Uploader which will convert them straight to H264-encoded MP4 video in the right format for FamilyCam and it will then upload the MP4 video into your FamilyCam account.
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How do I transfer video from a DV tape onto my Mac? |
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All Macs come with a Firewire port and a copy of Apple iMovie. It's very easy to use iMovie to capture video from a DV camcorder into iMovie. Once you've done this, the best thing to do is to use iMovie to export your entire video into a high quality Quicktime format that can then be fed into the FamilyCam Uploader.
For video in standard 4x3 aspect ratio, you should use the following iMovie export settings:
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- Choose Export & Compress Movie for "Expert Settings"
- Click "Share" and select "Export to Quicktime Movie"
- Video Settings: H264 framerate=25fps, bitrate=5000kbps
- Size: 720x540 pixels + Deinterlace=Yes + Preserve AspectRatio=Unchecked
- Audio: AAC 44.1KHz and bitrate=128
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For video in wide screen 16x9 aspect ratio, you should use the following iMovie export settings:
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- Choose Export & Compress Movie for "Expert Settings"
- Click "Share" and select "Export to Quicktime Movie"
- Video Settings: H264 framerate=25fps, bitrate=5000kbps
- Size: 720x404 pixels + Deinterlace=Yes + Preserve AspectRatio=Unchecked
- Audio: AAC 44.1KHz and bitrate=128
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If you follow these instructions you will produce a video file that is not just perfect for playback on your Mac (or any PC) but that is ideal for feeding to the FamilyCam Uploader on a PC.
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How do I transfer video from an 8mm tape onto my PC? |
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If you have 8mm (or Hi8 or Digital8) video tapes and you still have a camcorder that can play these tapes, the best method is to connect your camcorder to an ordinary DVD video recorder and to make a DVD copy of the video on the tape. The connection should be made using a triple-wire cable with a yellow video jack and red and white (L+R) audio jacks.
Next, just copy the entire VIDEO_TS folder from the DVD you made onto your PC's hard drive. This folder will contain one or more files that end in .VOB. These are actually just very high quality MPEG2 video files but they have a maximum size of 1Gbyte. Usually one hour of video will occupy two or three DVD VOB files.
You can then feed the VOB files into the FamilyCam Uploader which will convert them straight to H264-encoded MP4 video in the right format for FamilyCam and it will then upload the MP4 video into your FamilyCam account.
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How do I transfer video from a VHS tape onto my PC? |
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If you have VHS or mini-VHS (VHSC) video tapes and you still have a camcorder or VHS player that can play these tapes, the best method is to connect your camcorder to an ordinary DVD video recorder and to make a DVD copy of the video on the tape. The connection should be made using a triple wire cable with yellow video jacks and red and white (L+R) audio jacks.
Next, just copy the entire VIDEO_TS folder from the DVD you made onto your PC's hard drive. This folder will contain one or more files that end in .VOB. These are actually just very high quality MPEG2 video files but they have a maximum size of 1Gbyte. Usually one hour of video will occupy two or three DVD VOB files.
You can then feed the VOB files into the FamilyCam Uploader which will convert them straight to H264-encoded MP4 video in the right format for FamilyCam and it will then upload the MP4 video into your FamilyCam account.
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How do I transfer video from my HDD camcorder onto my PC? |
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To do this you just need to connect your hard drive camcorder to your PC using a USB cable. Then you can browse for the video files stored on your camcorder's hard drive and copy them to your PC.
When you've selected one or a group of MPEG files from your HDD camcorder and you want to turn these into a single movie for FamilyCam, you have a choice. You can feed the files straight into the FamilyCam Uploader.
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Can I prepare my own MP4 streamable video files myself? |
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Yes you can. If you want total control over the final resulting movie and you want to do things like apply a special amount of cropping to your source video or if you want to adjust brightness levels etc., you can prepare your own MP4 video files in the correct format and bitrate for FamilyCam streaming.
But, the FamilyCam uploader is the ideal tool to use and it is designed to apply a 2% zoom to all 4x3 source video to remove jagged edges and things like overscan.
However, if you give the FamilyCam uploader app a correctly prepared H264-encoded MP4 video in one of the two fundamental FamilyCam formats (see below), it will recognise that it does not need to convert your MP4 video and it will upload it directy to your FamilyCam account.
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How do I prepare my own streamable MP4 video files? |
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This advice is for advanced users only.
Although you can use Apple's Quicktime Pro to generate perfect H264-encoded MP4 streamable video files in exactly the right format for FamilyCam, Quicktime does not actually give you a great deal of control over the output (especially if you want to do custom video cropping) and Quicktime can only convert from a limited range of source input video formats.
Instead, we recommend that you try using a product called MPEG-StreamClip which is free to download and install and there are identical versions for Macs and PCs. You'll also need a copy of Quicktime 7 installed but you don't need to buy a licence to Quicktime Pro. MPEG Streamclip works with the standard (free) version of Quicktime 7.
Once you've captured or copied video from your source media onto your PC, whether it's in .DV, .VOB, .AVI, MPEG or .MOV or almost any other high quality format, launch the MPEG-StreamClip application and load into it your video file or files. If you have VOB files from a DVD, load them all in.
Then Choose "Export to MPEG-4" from the main menu. This will bring up an export settings panel and you should use one of the following groups of settings. For standard video in 4x3 aspect ratio, you should use the following:
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- Video Compression = H264 Encoder (one pass)
- Quality = 90%
- Audio Format = MPEG-4 AAC, Stereo 48kbps
- Framerate = 25 fps
- Frame Size = Custom: 720 (W) x 540 (H)
- Limit Data Rate to 648kbps
- Zoom = 100%
- Cropping = Yes: (use about 10 pixels for each edge)
- Scale = Yes
- Click Here for a screen shot
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For video with 16x9 aspect ratio, e.g. from a hard-drive camcorder, you should use the following settings:
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- Video Compression = H264 Encoder (one pass)
- Quality = 90%
- Audio Format = MPEG-4 AAC, Stereo 48kbps
- Framerate = 25 fps
- Frame Size = Custom: 720 (W) x 404 (H)
- Limit Data Rate to 648kbps
- Zoom = 100%
- Cropping = No
- Scale = N/A
- Click Here for a screen shot
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If you follow these instructions, you will create a streamable MP4 video file that is in exactly the right format (4x3 or 16x9) for FamilyCam. All you need to do then is feed the file into the FamilyCam Uploader. It will recognise that your MP4 video file has been expertly prepared and it will upload the file directly to our ingestion servers ready for automatic transfer into your FamilyCam account.
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I can't be bothered with all this. What should I do? |
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It's OK. We're here to help and we have expert knowledge. If you want help to get your video from your legacy tapes or other sources onto your PC for upload into your FamilyCam account, just email support@familycam.co.uk and our experts will tell you how to achieve the best result.
But the easier alternative is to let us do all the hard work for you. Just collect all your video tapes, camcorder DVDs and cine reels and use our professional Media Conversion Service.
It's safe, painless and competitively priced and you can rest assured that your precious media items will be in safe hands. We have the backing of a British PLC company and we only use British Royal Mail special delivery when you send us your media and when we return them safely to you.
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Questions?
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| Email: support@familycam.com |
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