DV or FTP?
 

I am working with someone on creating some short 1 minute clips for the web. What would be the best way for them to get the footage to me? Should I have them mail me the Tape or upload it to a server and have me download it? I am about an hour from them so its a little difficult to drive out there and pick it up.

Thanks,
Brian

Best method is always to start with the original. So if they can mail you the tapes, I would go for that (ship them in a larger box with packing peanuts). FTP is possible if you are in a crunch, Filezilla works great for that. Be sure to send the raw .mpeg or .avi file. Keep in mind a 63 minute DV tape is usually around 10GB.

JS

Both methods work fine, I've used them both myself. If you go for ftp, you will need a web server and a very fast internet connection on both sides, especially uploading is much slower as ISPs only provide a fraction of the download speed as upload speed, the tipycal DSL is usually 4-6Mbps down but only 384 or 768 Kbps up.

He said he would like to keep the original tape so FTP is looking like that may be the way of transfer. I do have Filezilla and access to his web server (I am his webmaster).

Do you know of any programs where you can cut the raw footage into smaller maybe 15-20 minute clips but still retain 95% of the quality? These will most likely be uploaded to youtube so they do not need to be DVD quality but that would definitely be ideal.

"Keep in mind a 63 minute DV tape is usually around 10GB." That also applies to SD?

Thanks,
Brian

Yes, actually it's more like 13 GB. Doesn't matter if it's DV or HDV, same amount of data, just different compression type.

You can try WinRar - can cut it up in whatever size pieces you want.

Hi...........
 

If whomever has access to two cameras, he/ she can copy the original to the second camera using Firewire.

They get to keep the original, you get mailed the identical copy.

Everbody's happy.


CS

"You can try WinRar - can cut it up in whatever size pieces you want. "
I use WinRar for any basic compression that I need, but are you saying that you can cut the footage in WinRar?

If not, do you happen to know of any programs that I can try and also refer to him?

Thanks

If it's DV, have that person capture it and put it on a small portable hard drive or a large USB thumb drive.

Capturing from tape is essentially a simple data transfer from tape to the HDD. So there's no loss. Your production partner gets to keep the original tapes and you get a duplicate. It will also serve as a backup should something happen to the tapes.

No, this is NOT video editing. WinRar will cut up large data files into small pieces - useful for FTP transfer. If the transfer gets interrupted, you don't have to start all over, you just start from where it got stopped. I used this method for tranferring 4-5GB mpeg files (a weekly one hour TV show) from here to a TV station over in Eastern Europe for two years - that's about 100 times, worked very well.

On the receiving end the small pieces are re-combined into the original file.

WinRAR can break large files into smaller files. Video footage is just a file. Once recombined, you will have a bit-for-bit exact copy of the original file.