Automatic Capture and Convert Digital Camcorder Video

Introduction

There are hundreds of software applications that can capture Digital Video from a IEEE 1394 camcorder (pretty much any camcorder after analog hi-8, before MPEG camcorder era). Some for money and others for free. However, faced with several shoe boxes full of Mini-DV tapes, what I needed was a nearly automatic system. Like pop-in the cassette to the camcorder (which is connected to the computer via IEEE 1394 cable) and `press a button' to get the whole content of the cassette captured, deinterlaced and transcoded to MPEG-4 -- a format that is far more suitable for computer storage and playback.