Scan My DVDs

July 26, 2004 3:50 PM

I am in the process of creating a DVD of my sketch comedy group's work. This means I have to go through about fifty DV tapes in order to find the ones which have completed sketches rather than footage on them. In addition, many of the tapes are unlabelled. Is there some method or program which can scan a tape quickly and give me an overall impression of what's on it? (I'm thinking via thumbnails, but I presume there are other ways of doing it.)
posted by tweebiscuit to Technology (7 answers total)

You can get logging software -- basically, you run the video through it, and it grabs thumbnails (frame grabs) whenever there's a shot change. Is that the kind of thing you're looking for?

Virage VideoLogger is great (I use it at work) but is most likely expensive.

Good luck.
posted by Vidiot at 4:53 PM on July 26, 2004

Response by poster: Yup, this is pretty much what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, looks like this only runs in Windows, and I'm using OS X. And yes, it's outside my price range. (Although if you have any other suggestions, please give them, regardless of how much the software costs.)
posted by tweebiscuit at 5:28 PM on July 26, 2004

you might want this.
posted by Kwantsar at 5:32 PM on July 26, 2004

Holy cow! Kwantsar, that software looks incredibly sweet.
posted by ssmith at 7:34 AM on July 27, 2004

hey tweebiscuit...where do you do your sketches? a friend of mine is at the UCB theater.
posted by taumeson at 10:11 AM on July 27, 2004

Response by poster: I wasn't going to plug it here, but our website is OldeEnglish.org.

Your friend is at the UCB? Lucky bastard!
posted by tweebiscuit at 5:14 PM on July 27, 2004

Response by poster: And thank you, Kwantsar, that is indeed exactly what I was looking for!
posted by tweebiscuit at 5:16 PM on July 27, 2004