I want to incorporate some Live footage onto my band website, and perhaps make a music vid for the site too...
1) Any ideas how I get the footage from my VHS tape onto my PC? Is it special hardware & software I need, or just a special cable etc?
2) Does anyone know where I can get a free editing thing...? So I can make it look good and sync it with music?
All ideas/help appreciated!
Gazz
For free? not that I know of but you can use any one of the Dazzle (http://www.Dazzle.com) Digital Video Creators. You can get a video capture card too, but they are usually a lot more expensive. I paid less than $200 for the DVC that I have. I love mine! I'm not sure what your capable of paying but this is the least expensive way that I know of. Do a search for "Dazzle" on www.bestbuy.com or www.circuitcity.com to see what they are going for now because I bought mine almost 2 years ago.
With this I can:
1. have a vcr conected to a Dazzle Digital Video Creator which is connected by usb to my computer
2. Use Dazzle's software to digitize and edit movie
3. then export for the web (I usually export it as mpg or rm)
Hope some of this info is helpful.
you can do it for free.. ive just forgoten where! ha! I work for a band and they wanted to use some site to do it before they knew i had the ability to do it. the site does it for free, and hosts it. I know prety amazing, i can rememer the name tho. I will look for it and try to post it here. Otherwise all you need is a TV tunner card and your set. its pretty simple.
I really like the Flash video compression that comes with flash. But you need to get the footage there first, so you'll need the card. Or if you shot the video on minidv, some mini DV cards have USB or in a mac firewire ports, which can bring it in directly. But thats a little more specifica than i can deal with here.
i have the dazzle card, it isn't bad and it is portable if you plan on working off of different computers or don't have space for an internal card in the computer.
i am not aware of any free editing programs out there, but i do have one particularly good link to pass along.
http://www.imagestation.com
this is sony imagestation. they have free file storage and unlimited bandwidth. the video files are limited to 40 megabytes though and you are capped at 15 minutes of film. you also need to have all the viewers register for a free account to get in to see some film. otherwise this is a great way to share video online without having to pay for it. i have been using them to serve videos off of my ohio state football website for nearly a year now and they are good about having the server up and running all the time and i have downloaded film from them at around 225 kb/s on cable.