Import digital video
I'm having difficulty importing digital video from a Canon Elura 40MC digital video camcorder NTSC.
It faithfully recorded about 10 60-minute DVM cassettes of travel-related footage, but I haven't been able to get the video into a computer to do any editing or sharing.
options tried
kino
Doesn't recognize the camera when connected by firewire.
much time goes by since last attempt
Starting this project again from scratch.
- Located the firewire cable that has a plug that fits into the Elura.
- Located the batteries and charger for the Elura.
- Located the box of untransfered video.
While I wait for the batteries to charge, I can form a strategy. This attempt will be different, because I think I actually had some success at one point but didn't document it.
There is a directory with a few files in it. The first three tapes have been turned into 13GB AVI files. Each is about 1 hour long, 720x480, 30 frames per second, 32GHz sample rate audio.
Playing these files with VLC generates lots of loud garbled audio, but correct video. Playing with Xine, there is no audio, but the video looks right.
Also in the directory are some files generated by iMovie that are DV instead of AVI. They have good video and audio that you can understand, but still there are lots of sound artifacts.
I'm pretty sure that I want to try VLC as the software to open the video camera device and record. But I'm not sure how to pick the right container, video codec, and audio codec.
Another option might be handbrake, but that isn't installed yet on the one firewire enabled server.
Maybe Kino is worth another shot. It is now at version 1.3.4 on the server.
Also dvgrab looks promising (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/PackageList).
dvgrab
rday@weasel:/drobo2/home-movies/tmp$ dvgrab rom1394_0 warning: read failed: 0x0000fffff0000414 error reading config rom directory for node 0 rom1394_1 warning: read failed: 0x0000fffff0000414 error reading config rom directory for node 1 Found AV/C device with GUID 0x00008500005e42e9 Waiting for DV... Capture Started ^C"dvgrab-001.dv": 215.95 MiB 1887 frames timecode 00:03:03.03 date 2003.07.29 22:47:48 Capture Stopped rday@weasel:/drobo2/home-movies/tmp$ file * dvgrab-001.dv: DIF (DV) movie file (NTSC) rday@weasel:/drobo2/home-movies/tmp$ ls -l total 221356 -rw-r--r-- 1 rday rday 226440000 Oct 24 23:57 dvgrab-001.dv
Result has garbled audio.
rday@weasel:/drobo2/home-movies/tmp$ dvgrab -f dv2 rom1394_0 warning: read failed: 0x0000fffff0000414 error reading config rom directory for node 0 rom1394_1 warning: read failed: 0x0000fffff0000414 error reading config rom directory for node 1 Found AV/C device with GUID 0x00008500005e42e9 Waiting for DV... Capture Started # no audio ^C"dvgrab-001.avi": 36.27 MiB 306 frames timecode 00:00:00.00 date 2013.10.25 00:02:19 Capture Stopped
Result has garbled audio.
Tried the experiment of saving in each of these formats: dv1, dv2, avi, raw, qt, mov. Each time the audio was garbled for the first five seconds, and then absent for the rest of the sample. Still need to try jpeg, jpg, mpeg2, hdv.
mpeg2 fails even more:
rday@weasel:/rootback/home-movies$ dvgrab -f mpeg2 rom1394_0 warning: read failed: 0x0000fffff0000414 error reading config rom directory for node 0 rom1394_1 warning: read failed: 0x0000fffff0000414 error reading config rom directory for node 1 Found AV/C device with GUID 0x00008500005e42e9 Waiting for HDV... ^C"" 0.00 MiB 0 frames Capture Stopped Error: no HDV. Try again before giving up.
Same with hdv format.
rday@weasel:/rootback/home-movies$ dvgrab -f hdv rom1394_0 warning: read failed: 0x0000fffff0000414 error reading config rom directory for node 0 rom1394_1 warning: read failed: 0x0000fffff0000414 error reading config rom directory for node 1 Found AV/C device with GUID 0x00008500005e42e9 Waiting for HDV... ^C"" 0.00 MiB 0 frames Capture Stopped Error: no HDV. Try again before giving up.
Exporting to jpg format works, but actually makes a pile of jpgs and drops the audio. So I'll count that as not working.
more time goes by
- I think the last time I tried, I established that there is a problem with the firewire subsystem. But the video camera also has a usb port. I don't think I've tried the usb port.
- openshot is installed. does it work?