DV Capture

Choosing Capture DV in Tape from the File menu brings up the capture dialog that will control all the capture process, including:

• capture options,
• tape deck control,
• video preview
   

(1) Video display

The video being acquired from your deck or camera is shown in this window, together with the timecode, date and still picture indicator.

(2) Tape deck controls

Shows the command that can be sent to your camera or deck, including Rewind, Fast Forward and Stop. Some devices, like Analog to DV converters are not able to control the transport state of the tape deck or camera that is attached to them. In such a situation, the transport buttons will be disabled.

(3) Record button

Hit this button to start recording the video from your tape. This will put the deck or camera in Play mode, if not already the case.

(4) Sampling options

Choose how iDive should sample the clips from the tape. Sampling frequency and compression options can be selected from this panel. By moving the frequency slider to the ‘Off’ position, you will choose to capture only the start and end image of each detected clip.

(5) Video capture options

Choose whether the full video is captured along with the samples.

(6) Footage compression options

Select whether the captured footage should be compressed and what compression codec and options should be applied. Some presets are available from the pullDown menu, whereas the ‘Custom’ options opens the standard Quicktime dialog and allows complete control over the settings for video and sound.

The ‘delete original after compression’ flag determines whether the original DV files are deleted when successfully compressed. This option will leave you with only the compressed files, which might be an interesting option if you only want to have access to a very lightweight version of your footage. It will however force you to recapture the footage (in FCP for example) whenever you will want to

(7) Available disk space indicator.

The available disk space on the volume hosting the current library (i.e. the library into which the data is being captured) is displayed here, together with minutes and tapes equivalents. Click on the ‘toggle’ button to switch between the different displays.

(8) Source is as DV Converter.

Check this option if you camera is used to convert analog footage (via a "Analog In" interface). In this setup, iDive will disable the transport button (fast forward, rewind) because your camera is acting as a video converter and go into preview mode.

If you are using a real Analog to Digital Video Converter that is not recognized natively by iDive, select the 'Source is a DV converter' check box to force iDive to behave appropriately.

What happens during the capture process...

The process of capture is sometimes referred to as ‘Indexing the tape”. This is because iDive will take sample images of your video sample at a frequency that is user defined. iDive does not necessarily require from you that you capture the raw DV movie in order to catalog your tape; it can capture full resolution samples of your DV clips and use them to build views of your data on tape. iDive does detect the clip boundaries on your tape and makes sure to take a sample image at the beginning and end of each of the clips, whatever the sampling frequency that you’ve set. This guarantees that the in and out frames of each clip are always part of the sample.

Still pictures are handled specifically when they are detected. A single full resolution frame is saved for each of the still images, which minimizes the amount of storage needed for those clips.

The predefined sampling frequencies are 1 frame/sec, 1 frame/2sec, 1 frame/5sec, 1frame/10sec, 1frame/20s, no sampling.

Capture session

A capture session begins when the user hits the Record button and ends either when the transport state of the camera/deck is changed (stop, rewind, fast fwd), when the end of tape is reached or when the user hits the Stop Recording button.

Footage compression

If footage compression has been chosen in the capture dialog, the standard iDive compression dialog will be opened at the end of the capture session. Details about this

Thumbnails generation

iDive maintains low-resolution thumbnail images for the start and end frames of each clip. These images are used to speed up the display of clips either in List or Icon View, especially when scrolling or changing the size of the displayed clips.

These thumbnails are not generated during the capture process, neither during the compression process. Instead, they are generated, if required, when the application starts up. This has the following consequences:
• you won’t notice the speed optimization when displaying just acquired clips, because the above-mentioned thumbnails have not been generated yet. You need to restart iDive for the thumbnails to be generated.
• the next time you start iDive after having captured some footage, you will notice that the startup sequence takes longer than usual because these thumbnails are being generated. This operation needs to be performed only once.