How should I go about sending this footage.....?

[spinner]

Here's my dilemma:

I have some footage that I shot about 2 years ago. I would like to send some of it to one of the bands as a courtesy and in appreciation for allowing me into their little group for a while. However, I have no intention of sending them my tapes.

What is the best way to get the footage copied and sent?

I sent about 5 minutes of footage, imported into FC, exported to my desktop and tranferred to a flash drive. I was told that it could not be used. I don't know why.

Since I would like to send about 2 and a half hours to them, what is the best way to do this? As always, it seems that time is of the essence. I am considering just having the footage, shot on mini DV, copied to another mini DV and sending it off. I don't have the money to give them any pieces of equipment so I'm not getting an external to send them. I just don't know what my next step should be.....

what should I do?

-- spinner

 

[John@Bophe]

Can you import the footage onto your computer, then burn it off to a DVD (or 2 DVDs)?

 

[spinner]

.....what they want to do is be able to edit it, so putting it to DVD would probably not help much...???

I am trying to send it in a form that can be edited....


-- spinner

 

[VPTurner]

.....what they want to do is be able to edit it, so putting it to DVD would probably not help much...???

I am trying to send it in a form that can be edited....


-- spinner

You can still use a DVD disc, just use it as a data disc and don't transcode it. It's not any different from using a CDR or CDR/W, just higher capacity. What is the size of your files?

 

[spinner]

You can still use a DVD disc, just use it as a data disc and don't transcode it. It's not any different from using a CDR or CDR/W, just higher capacity. What is the size of your files?

I don't know how long the file is yet because I haven't imported it as yet. But So far I think there will be about an hour and a half of footage to send.

I don't have any idea how to save as a 'data disc' and I'm not sure if I even know how to 'transcode' something...my terminology is still not that good...


-- spinner

 

[VPTurner]

I don't know how long the file is yet because I haven't imported it as yet. But So far I think there will be about an hour and a half of footage to send.

I don't have any idea how to save as a 'data disc' and I'm not sure if I even know how to 'transcode' something...my terminology is still not that good...

-- spinner

Using it as a data disc is similar to just using it as a removable hard drive (except it's optical). "Transcoding" is just converting from one form of encoding to another (e.g. from NTSC DV to MPEG2). And for DVD authoring, it goes even further in that it breaks up the MPEG2 audio/video files in a way that a consumer DVD player can interpret and play the video (with provisions for a menu system). So you don't need to make a DVD movie. You can just use a program to "format" the DVD ROM media and copy the files straight to the discs. On the PC, I use Roxio. Mac should have something comparable. Windows Vista Ultimate has this capability built-in; I can just drag and drop files right to a blank CD or DVD.

Do you have a DVD burner? Can it record dual-layer? If so, one disc can hold around 8GB.

 

[spinner]

I do have a DVD burner, but no dual-layer I don't think....

So does 'encoded' mean how it is exported? Like to Quicktime movie or Quicktime conversion?


-- spinner

 

[rydog4]

IF the footage is in Final Cut, you can just export it using quicktime conversion to whatever format they want. DV seems good enough in your case since it sounds like that's how it was shot. Put a blank writable disc in your DVD burner. It will pop up on the desktop. Double click it. Then take the exported quicktime and drag and drop into the window of the blank disc. Then select burn. You have your disc. You can store around 4 gigs on a non dual layer disc. So you might have to export the footage in smaller chunks. I think 7 minutes of DV footage is around a gig. So you can roughly fit 28 minutes on each DVD. Although I'd go a little smaller so you don't wind up with a file to big to fit on a disc. Hope this helps.

 

[VPTurner]

I do have a DVD burner, but no dual-layer I don't think....

So does 'encoded' mean how it is exported? Like to Quicktime movie or Quicktime conversion?

-- spinner

Encoding is just the way the data is arranged and the language it's using. Different encoding formats include standards from MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group), H.264 (aka MPEG-4 Part 10 or MPEG-4 AVC), VC1, NTSC DV, and others. You can have any number of "codecs" (code/decode) on your system. Transcoding is simply translating from one code form into another. For instance, if you want to play your movie on your I-pod, you'd first need to translate it or "transcode" it into a language the I-pod can understand. And the same holds true for a Windows AVI file into a Quicktime file. This is the same thing as going from NTSC DV (my default import format) to MPEG2, the standard most consumer DVDs use.

I hope I didn't muddle you further.

Bottom line, just capture your footage in high-quality format, break it up into under 4GB chunks, and burn those chunks to however many DVD "data" discs you need.

 

[knightly]

If they want the footage to use for editing, have them provide you an external firewire harddrive. Copy the footage to it and give it back to them. There's tons of cost involved with getting that much footage to them in a quality that they won't mind using for editing.

Put that cost on them.

 

[spinner]

If they want the footage to use for editing, have them provide you an external firewire harddrive. Copy the footage to it and give it back to them. There's tons of cost involved with getting that much footage to them in a quality that they won't mind using for editing.

Put that cost on them.

...whatever I end up doing, there's no effin' way I'm gonna send my masters.....


-- spinner