To expound:
I have: video tapes
I want: video files
Why? To consolidate the video and to preserve its quality.
When I started this project, I tried importing the digital 8 tapes into Final Cut Pro, but there were timecode breaks everywhere. It's been so long I don't remember exactly why this rendered Final Cut Pro useless as an import tool, but I think it was because I could have it care about or not care about the timecode. If it cared about the timecode, it was unusable for a reason I don't remember. If it did not, the video and audio got completely out of sync. So I did an Internet search and the majority of people seemed to agree that if you had video with a bunch of timecode breaks, it's better just to import it with iMovie.
Yes, it resulted in a bunch of tiny clips. Moreover, since I was already using iMovie by this point, I imported the analog tapes, which I also have, via Canopus ADVC-55 using iMovie as well. I don't remember whether I tried Final Cut Pro for the analog tapes, but my confidence in it was already lost after the audio/video sync issues, with it going about its jolly business and handing me an out-of-sync video clip. For the analog tapes, iMovie gave me one clip for the entire tape, which was good enough for me. Again, the highest priority is to get the content of the tapes onto a hard drive lest the analog tapes continue to degrade, and also free up the space they've been taking up in my cabinet.
So ideally, with all of the remaining digital 8 and VHS-C (via ADVC-55) tapes I have left, I would have a tool that:
- Imports them with no audio/video sync issues
- Imports them without a significant loss of quality
- Makes only one video clip, not several for each timecode break or blank frame
- Does not import while the tape is blank
- Stops importing once the tape is at the end and saves a video file with a usable format, like .dv
- Does not spend time on tasks that I don't require (like generating thumbnails). I don't need thumbnails, as there are plenty of programs that can edit .dv files without them, and I'm not going into every video to tweak little pieces of it, I may just take the entire .dv file, or even several, and put it onto a DVD.
The thumbnail generation is a time-waster because while it's generating thumbnails, I could instead be importing another tape. So if you have suggestions for a workaround or a better or more appropriate tool for what I'm doing, I'd love to hear it.