Quote Originally Posted by santiago
I have a question.
I want to measure specific production times at the manufacturing plant where I work, and I suggested using a video camera. I've edited with Mini DV footage at home before, so it'd be quite simple doing it with a MiniDV cam. Basically what I'd do is shoot some 5 to 20 mins of production with a tripod, then transfer to a computer with firewire, and open up the video with an editing suite, I use Premiere at home. With Premiere I can scrub through the video and find exactly what point a task begins and ends with a precision of 1/30th of a second. And voila, I can calculate my efficiencies once I have the length of time determined.

But I've been asked if perhaps a DVD camcorder would suit the needs for this project better.

I hesitated at the begin, but then thought about it. I've never used a DVD cam, so I really don't know what it's like editing DVD cam footage. Obviously the quality of the image doesn't matter that much, because I'll just be shooting the video, transfering to the computer, finding the production times, then deleting the video. What I mainly want are the times.
Now, I understand that transferring video from a DVD cam takes less time, I wonder how much less. This is important, because it would be the main advantage for my purposes, since I'd be transferring alot of time each day, perhaps even 2 hours of video a day.

I remember trying to edit MPEG video with premiere years ago, and the video would look like garbage while scrubbing through the timeline, all the similar frames would just go black. When it comes to filming production procedures, minute changes may happen, such as fastening two parts with screws or reaching for material, so perhaps if I scrubbed through MPEG or MPEG2 or MPEG4 videos, I may not be able to see everything that goes on. Where as with a MiniDV, I barely ever get dropped frames, and then everything else is totally scrubbable, I can determine exactly when something starts and ends.

So my questions are the following:
1. How long does it take to transfer DVD cam video to a computer? And how is this done?
2. Can I simply pop in a DVD disc that was used for shooting with a DVD camcorder, into a computer dvd drive, and browse the video files? What format are they? VOB? Can I simply copy those files to my hard drive and open them with Premiere?
3. What is it like editing with video shot with a DVD camera? Is it scrubbable? Will I lose frames?
Bottom line, will I be able to determine the exact time when an event starts and ends to the accuracy of at least 1/3 of a second (1/30th would be perfect though)
if you are going to use the process you described above (utilising the timcode to determine the length of a task) then i think mini dv is the better option. a dvd camera records video as an mpeg file which would not be ideal for the task you describe. the only other thing i can suggest is setting up a clock or stopwatch somewhere in the shot so you have that timing as well. good luck.