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Import faster?

S

sportsfanMAW

macrumors regular
Original poster
I posted in the apple forums and decided to post here too. I have a canon ZR80 and i'm importing the video to my imac in imovie with a firewire cable. However when it imports it plays the video back to me and imports at the speed the video is playing. Is there anyway that i don't have to watch the video and i can just import the footage? Because watching an hour and a half of footage isn't very fun...

thanks in advance
 
sportsfanMAW said:
I posted in the apple forums and decided to post here too. I have a canon ZR80 and i'm importing the video to my imac in imovie with a firewire cable. However when it imports it plays the video back to me and imports at the speed the video is playing. Is there anyway that i don't have to watch the video and i can just import the footage? Because watching an hour and a half of footage isn't very fun...

thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Nope. Real time is the only option.


Lethal
 
sportsfanMAW said:
wow.... that's incredibly lame
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, LethalWolfe answered your question; there is not a whole lot more to say. Your camera has to grab the video/audio off the tape, and there is not a way to do that with most camera VCR's. Kind of the nature of the beast, so to speak. You might want to consider a hard disk or DVD based camera.
 
huntercr said:
Now that you know, why don't you set up your workflow so you set up the capture and walk away. There's no reason to hang around... it's not like you have to be there when it's done.
Click to expand...

Ya that's what i ended up doing, it's just that its a pain to wait and hour and a half before i can start doing any sort of editing with it.
 
you just have to be organized enough to be doing something else while it's running.

welcome to the world of editing 🙂
 
You could go through and mark all of your clips, then just let it sit there and do a batch capture while you eat or something. Then you also don't end up with a bunch of extra footage that you don't need clogging up your hard drives.
 
I think this topic fits to what I want to do.

I am planning on a workaround to shorten the import and encoding time, thus reducing the time between an event happening (live) and then, in the end, uploading the video of it.

First, I eliminate the tape by recording live onto the harddisk (with, for example iMovie). Then I can save the time that would be needed to transfer the whole event to HDD from tape later (that means, event time x 2).

Next, the footage needs to be compressed/converted to H264 or similar, from HDV or DV or similar.

My question is now: Can I use some software solution to circumvent the encoding step after the event with some kind of live stream encoding software??

I am talking about the video (DV) being recorded and converted live directly into an H264 (or similar) file to be uploaded directly afterwards? Or, for that matter, streaming it even onto some FTP server to be downloaded right after the event finished?

Which software can be used for this? I am pretty sure this exists, and... oh, right, can I use the Quicktime Export options with it? It sure would give a great use to my Elgato Turbo 264... 😉
 
Awesome hint!

Only problem is: This seems to stream only (and save the movie to somewhere, if desired). But I want it ONLY to be saved.

Can I prevent it from broadcasting, or can I send the footage to >NIL: ? 🙂

Then, the video would be saved, the stream would go into oblivion or somewhere else, and I would be happy... any ideas?

Thanks for that hint though, really appreciated! 😀
 
My question would be: What do you want to do with the footage after it's been captured? If you plan to edit it, you do NOT want to compress it to any other codec, especially one meant for final delivery (h.264 or any other MPEG format).

If you want to capture live, you can do that with iMovie, FCE or FCP and several other software apps. Or you can use one of the Firestore devices connected to your camera via Firewire. Takes about 12 minutes to transfer 2+ hours of footage from a Firestore FS4HD Pro to a dual 2.5ghz G5. Regardless of what type of device you record to, I'd strongly recommend also recording to tape (in camera) as a backup. HDD captures can go bad.

-DH
 
-DH said:
My question would be: What do you want to do with the footage after it's been captured? If you plan to edit it, you do NOT want to compress it to any other codec, especially one meant for final delivery (h.264 or any other MPEG format).

If you want to capture live, you can do that with iMovie, FCE or FCP and several other software apps. Or you can use one of the Firestore devices connected to your camera via Firewire. Takes about 12 minutes to transfer 2+ hours of footage from a Firestore FS4HD Pro to a dual 2.5ghz G5. Regardless of what type of device you record to, I'd strongly recommend also recording to tape (in camera) as a backup. HDD captures can go bad.

-DH
Click to expand...

DH is right as usual of course. If i ever record any event specifically, it will be to tape and to a firestore...definite time saver.

As for encoding speeds, it simply takes time to produce a quality video. People have to accept that. We'd all like things to be faster, but good things are worth waiting for 🙂

Cheers,
Keebler
 
Thanks for the good advice!

I dont need any editing for this, the file should just be uploaded "as is".
If possible, it would be great to capture not only live with the computer but also at the same time on the camera tape. I didnt try that yet - the cam does that? Record to tape AND output it to Firewire? Would be great to deliver high quality shorts after the whole event is online.

My "vision" is this one: Event finished - boom, the video is online, download now!

I am really almost on track... there are just a few things that are not yet working.

- I managed to send the footage with Quicktime Broadcaster basically into nothingness: My own local IP. I dont see any problem with this - or is there?
- The file that is being generated locally, as the next step, has to be uploaded while it is being generated, i.e. remotely saved. How can I do this?

I was trying to use FTP: Connect with Finder, save at the FTP-path in Finder. Sadly, Finder STILL does not allow write-access to FTP servers.

Could I upload the file that is being generated with Cyberduck? 😕
But this is only possible if the file is complete before upload starts, right? 🙁

Any help is appreciated! Thank you!
 
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