I'm pleased to offer our support to Jason Clark.
Jason has no previous sailing experience but is spending the next two years refitting a 22 ft yacht ready to enter the Jester Challenge. A single handed race that will take him from the UK to the azores.
A journey that will raise money for the cancer charity Christies.
Please visit his web site to learn more and donate.
Check back here for further updates on his progress and the ways in which we'll be offering support
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Which camcorder should I buy
Interestingly I had a couple of customers in my office during yesterday that got me back on a soap box. Why do so many shop assistants think that the best camcorder for everyone to buy is the most expensive and modern?
Witness my pet hate of always trying to sell HDD hi def camcorders. These are great for the techno savy but I am regularly phoned by a customer with many many hours recorded on to their now full hard drives. Who have no idea how to get the footage off them and on to a format they can readliy use and share. Often the customer doesn't even have a Hi Def TV as yet. HDD camcorders are great if you are PC literate and upto date on all your other technology.
One of my customers had been sold a TV, Blu Ray player and camcorder. She'd even had a blu ray drive added to the family PC and was happily burning Blu Ray discs from the camcorder. BUT, she couldn't understand why the disc she made were not playing for friends in their DVD players. The second customer, luckily had not bought a camcorder yet but is expecting her first baby and windering what to buy. She admnits to not being a techy. I suggested one that takes SD cards so she can easily have some one else make the transfers.
So... yes there are lots of options and some very fine cutting edge technologies out there but when researching you need to consider a number the whole process. From shooting to sharing and archiving the memories.
Witness my pet hate of always trying to sell HDD hi def camcorders. These are great for the techno savy but I am regularly phoned by a customer with many many hours recorded on to their now full hard drives. Who have no idea how to get the footage off them and on to a format they can readliy use and share. Often the customer doesn't even have a Hi Def TV as yet. HDD camcorders are great if you are PC literate and upto date on all your other technology.
One of my customers had been sold a TV, Blu Ray player and camcorder. She'd even had a blu ray drive added to the family PC and was happily burning Blu Ray discs from the camcorder. BUT, she couldn't understand why the disc she made were not playing for friends in their DVD players. The second customer, luckily had not bought a camcorder yet but is expecting her first baby and windering what to buy. She admnits to not being a techy. I suggested one that takes SD cards so she can easily have some one else make the transfers.
So... yes there are lots of options and some very fine cutting edge technologies out there but when researching you need to consider a number the whole process. From shooting to sharing and archiving the memories.
Promotional Video for V2DT
Check out our new promo reel shot for us by Darren at Cliff Productions.
It gives an insight in to the story behind a customers film and show some of how we work on your treasured memories.
www.video2dvdtransfers.co.uk
It gives an insight in to the story behind a customers film and show some of how we work on your treasured memories.
www.video2dvdtransfers.co.uk
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
I've had my videotapes copied to DVD... can I edit them?
Amongst the many questions I get asked one that regularly crops up is the question of editing footage once it's been copied to DVD. The popularity and value of services such as ours, coupled with relatively low prices for computers and DVD drives mean that it's something that ocuurs to many people when they first out to copy and preserve all their family footage by transfering it to DVD.
There are a number of issues that need to be considered when contemplating such a project.
Firstly and to my mind most importantly is time. We don't offer an editing service to our customers and the main reason is due to time and cost. Lets say you have 2 hours of video that you want to edit down to just 1 hour of hi-lights. How long is that going to take you to do? 1 hr, 2 hrs ? Well in reality it will take you at least 3 hours.
So the first question to ask is do you really want to spend the time needed to complete the editing. After all who ever originally filmed your old cine films or Video tapes filmed them for a reason and once they are on DVD you can easily skip through them.
So you've made the decision and it's time to get down to some video production! Traditionally the practice of editing and copying DVDs has been associated with video pirates. Do a web search and you are likely to find a host of information aimed at defeating copy protection codes added to commercial discs. Luckily this is of no interest to you as our DVDs are neither encrypted or copy protected.
What you will find if you've done some editing in the past is that a quick look at the DVD in My Computer or file explorer won't reveal a list of movie files. This is because the DVD has been produced in a format that is meant to be played in a DVD player. The DVD player expects a certain structure of information on the DVD and that's what is there. Various video and audio streams, along with the menu structure are tucked away in what is aften called a VOB wrapper. It's also worth noting that DVDs use Mpeg compression. You may be used to AVI and WMV files. Mpeg can make hefty demands on computer power.
If you are working with a PC you now have two choices, based on the complexity of what you want to achieve. Option one, the complex approach that will give you full control and allow your creativeness to shine is to extract the Mpeg files from that DVD to your computer hard drive in their raw state. You can then use one fo the many videoediting packages on the market to do create your movie which is then burnt back on to another recordable DVD. To carry out this extraction you'll need to use one of many utilities that you will find on the web. Such as DVD decrypter, Magic DVD Ripper or Prism Video Converter. It's worth noting that these will also allow you to convert the video format during the extraction process which can be useful if your editing software works with different file types.
Another way to approach the editing is to use software designed especially to allow editing of the VOB files that make up your DVD. One such piece of software is Mpeg Video Wizard from womble Multimedia inc This allows simpel frame accurate editing of the Mpeg2 streams that are contained inside the VOB structure of the DVD.
You can find an article on the software here.
There are a number of issues that need to be considered when contemplating such a project.
Firstly and to my mind most importantly is time. We don't offer an editing service to our customers and the main reason is due to time and cost. Lets say you have 2 hours of video that you want to edit down to just 1 hour of hi-lights. How long is that going to take you to do? 1 hr, 2 hrs ? Well in reality it will take you at least 3 hours.
So the first question to ask is do you really want to spend the time needed to complete the editing. After all who ever originally filmed your old cine films or Video tapes filmed them for a reason and once they are on DVD you can easily skip through them.
So you've made the decision and it's time to get down to some video production! Traditionally the practice of editing and copying DVDs has been associated with video pirates. Do a web search and you are likely to find a host of information aimed at defeating copy protection codes added to commercial discs. Luckily this is of no interest to you as our DVDs are neither encrypted or copy protected.
What you will find if you've done some editing in the past is that a quick look at the DVD in My Computer or file explorer won't reveal a list of movie files. This is because the DVD has been produced in a format that is meant to be played in a DVD player. The DVD player expects a certain structure of information on the DVD and that's what is there. Various video and audio streams, along with the menu structure are tucked away in what is aften called a VOB wrapper. It's also worth noting that DVDs use Mpeg compression. You may be used to AVI and WMV files. Mpeg can make hefty demands on computer power.
If you are working with a PC you now have two choices, based on the complexity of what you want to achieve. Option one, the complex approach that will give you full control and allow your creativeness to shine is to extract the Mpeg files from that DVD to your computer hard drive in their raw state. You can then use one fo the many videoediting packages on the market to do create your movie which is then burnt back on to another recordable DVD. To carry out this extraction you'll need to use one of many utilities that you will find on the web. Such as DVD decrypter, Magic DVD Ripper or Prism Video Converter. It's worth noting that these will also allow you to convert the video format during the extraction process which can be useful if your editing software works with different file types.
Another way to approach the editing is to use software designed especially to allow editing of the VOB files that make up your DVD. One such piece of software is Mpeg Video Wizard from womble Multimedia inc This allows simpel frame accurate editing of the Mpeg2 streams that are contained inside the VOB structure of the DVD.
You can find an article on the software here.
Monday, 23 November 2009
www.cine2dvdtransfers.co.uk
Thanks to the Andy at my dream designs work on the new cine transfer site is progressing well and the site will soon be up and running.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Old cine films to convert?
Just a sneaky little word to let you know that we've started work on a sister site to Video2dvdtransfers which will make our wealth of experience in cine transfers avaliable to our customers.
Keep an eye out for more details.
Keep an eye out for more details.
Who Do You Think You Are? Live
I'm pleased to announce that video2dvdtransfers has booked a stand and will be at the biggest family history event of 2010. Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE, sponsored by Ancestry.co.uk, is a live event at London Olympia. Along with the stands advising in how to research your family tree, there will be a whole area dedicated to photography and preservation of family memories.
More details of the event can be found at the official website
We look forward to meeting customers old and new and to sharing our love for preserving video footage.... creating digital memories.
More details of the event can be found at the official website
We look forward to meeting customers old and new and to sharing our love for preserving video footage.... creating digital memories.
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