Editing from Camcorder DVD's....
 

In the NLE world, is it "easy" to edit from camcorder DVD's?

That would depend on the NLE. Adobe Premiere Elements, for instance, is supposed to be able to import and edit video from DVDs and DVD camcorders. It's big brother, Premiere Pro, on the other hand, doesn't currently have this feature.

Thanks Chris.

Now my follow up would be if one was to make an edit master from multiple camcorder DVD's and was using tape to do it.

Because the camcorder DVD's don't have complex menu features, I outputted the DVD signal via firewire to a mini-dv tape . Once on mini-dv I reimported the DV tape signal and combined the four DVD's onto one. Is that a logical approach to take since editing from camcorder DVD's is still somewhat of a mystery?

The reason I ask is I don't know if it's fair to bill my client for the double step of first exporting to tape then importing back when the job appears to be much more simple than that if one can edit directly from original DVD camcorder.

Workflow for DVD based video is to import it into an editable format as defined by your NLE. You are doing this by dubbing the video to a Mini-DV camera and then importing it via Firewire. There are a variety of utilities that will process the DVD directly into your NLE's format. I use DVDxDV Pro to do this.

You can also edit the contents from a DVD directly from within your editor without any sort of conversion using the method described in this article: How to frameserve DVD/MPEG2/HDTV to an advanced video editor

I read the thread, fascinatingly easy and complex at the same time.

So my method seems to work fine with no hidden issues.

Alessandro,

I don't know if this would meet your final end product's requirements, but have you considered using an mpeg editor?

I record things onto DVD-RAM disks with my set top DVD recorder, copy the .VRO file from the DVD-RAM onto my harddrive, and then edit it with Womble mpeg editor, save it as an mpeg2, drop the mpeg2 into an authoring program, and author a DVD.

Of course, the editing features in the mpeg editor are no match for what you'll find in a typical NLE. However, if your editing requirements are not that great, this might be an option that can save you a lot of time and effort.

Randy