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Wednesday 14 January 2015

Capuring dv video from a samsung VP-D381 and converting it to avi on Dragora Linux Libre

 First build and install dvgrab and sundry libs then...

dvgrab


Plugin the firewire to the camcorder I also made sure the power was connected as I had now idea of it's battery life.

I then switched it on rewound the tape  and put it in the play mode

code:
dvgrab -i

then

c

to start the capture

wait. Use the info I found below, rinse and repeat until you have you dvgrab-xxx.dv files

https://tr.opensuse.org/Video_editing/Capturer_DV_vid%C3%A9o_DV_with_dvgrab

"Principle of working

You must have the ieee1394 modules loaded and, of course, the camcorder connected and switched in read mode.

dvgrab is a CLI application, close all the eventually perturbating apps and open an xterm.

Go to the folder where you wan the files to be written. These files are approx 1Gb and must stay at the same place for all the video editing work. They can be moved straight after the capture, but given the size, this is long, so better avoid it.

Run:

dvgrab

The capture begins automatically. The files will use the dv2 format, easy to read with nearly any application, cut in approx 1Gb chunks (approx 10 minutes) and named dvgrab-XXX, where XXX is a three digits number, for example:

dvgrab-003.avi

You can add the --autosplit option to have the file cut at any timecode break (usually new sequence), very handy.
Interactive mode

If you run:

dvgrab -i

You enter an interactive mode.
?
    gives the command list
q
    quits, stopping an eventual capture
p
    play the camcorder. If the camcorder screen is open you will have image and sound from it, but nothing from the PC, but a counter
c
    start the capture
Escape
    stops the capture
h
    slow back move
l
    fast forward
j
    fast rewind
a
    rewind

There are others commands, but on my computer the keyboard/dvgrab interface is not reliable, so I try not to use it. "


Conversion with ffmpeg


Now I had 40GB of files! I needed to convert them to avi so my mate could edit them

code:
 ffmpeg -i dvgrab-001.dv -vcodec copy -vtag dvsd -acodec pcm_s16le -f avi -aspect 4:3 -y video-001.avi

dvgrab dumps files in 1gb chunks and just numbers each file.  001, 002 etc

I found the avi files were 36mb bigger. All the added crap no doubt.