I have a question for anyone who has had experience doing the same thing I am attempting to do.

Basically I have edited a film on to video (VCR) that was recorded on DV. The whole set-up was pretty straight-forward: the DVCam connected to the VCR and VCR connected to TV etc... so as I could edit the movie on to a VHS tape and watch it at the same time. The reason for this was in order to achieve certain effects only possible when recording on to video such as the interference from the AV channel and screwing around with the video format to achieve "downgraded" quality visuals (on purpose).

So now I have the entire fully finished version on VHS tape, however I need to transfer it back to DV in order to work on FCP. Only trouble is that if any of you already know, when viewing material that contains interference it will show up as interference (snow) on a monitor but it will technically appear as a blue screen if recorded from the VCR. This is because the VCR reads the interference as an error and instead inserts a blue screen. This is my trouble. I need the interference that I have worked into the visuals, without them I will simply have a film composed of interesting original footage intercut with blue screens.

So what I want to know is this: what is the best way possible to record directly off a TV/monitor that displays the video footage from the tape? I know that most TV/monitors do not have an output - this is the problem I have already confronted, however is there an alternative solution by which I could record the footage (without having to film the video playing on the monitor) as it appears from the TV/monitor on to my computer or DVCam?

Any help or feedback is appreciated. Also if anyone was wondering, this is a video-art installation thus the reason I have decided to go about editing and working on this in such an odd manner. Thanks again for your replies.

would is affect the look of your film if you were to film the pictures on your DVCAM while they appeared on the screen... you could pass it off as some kind of postmodernist reference to the integration of technology or something.

I would have gone about this differently and added the interference in post. I've achieved a pretty good beaten up video look using particle illusion.

__________________

| video editing guides | our videos |
| wedding guides | website hosting |

so if this person still has the original DV then what is to stop them redoing the damage in post-prod?

Thanks for your feedback, but in answer to your questions:

Dj_Trigger - If I filmed the pictures on DVCam while they appeared on screen it wouldn't be the desired look I'm going for because it will give off those tell-tale signs that it was in fact a re-recording off of a monitor through a DV device.

Marc Peters - It wouldn't have worked in post because the interference I wanted could have only been achieved by using an analog recording device in order to integrate it within the visuals. Otherwise I would have done it in post - however as I stated I wasn't trying to get a typical video look but to get the typical video transmission interference signal interweaved through the visuals. Hard to explain unless I show you a screen capture - but look at my avatar, it's a still taken of a screen paused on a video machine of a scene from Night of the Living Dead. The movie is composed of shots like this throughout only they are moving with the interference in a systematic pattern.

I may have discovered an answer by accident, not sure if it'll work. But a friend came up with the idea when fooling around trying to find a way around it. We'll be using a TV tuner card for PC to transfer the footage from the Video on to his PC and capture it as an AVI file. Then I can transfer the file into FCP on my Mac and work on it. We already did a simple test - but it came out wrong because we were missing the right cable connections. However luckily the interference managed to come out alright. If all goes well I'll post my results here and even hopefully a link to a sample piece. Thanks again for your help.

I use Vegas and the interference/white noise/tape effect is easily achieveable in it. What s/w are you using? We may be able to show you how to duplicate the effect.

__________________
www.playpauseclick.com