The question is:

A friend wants me to help him upload video to his website...he needs to mail me the media since he is 150 miles away.

He has the edited version of the video on mini DV tape.
I have no way of playing the tape to get it downloaded to my computer.

If he formats the video to MPEG-2 can he copy the 30 min MPEG-2 format to a CR-R...
If so, is there any special thing that needs to be done?

Then I can get it from him and tranfer the MPEG-2 to the website or convert it to a .WMV file and post it on the site...

Can a 30 min MPEG-2 be e-mailed, without any problems?

Any other suggestions would be helpful as well.

Thanks,
Donnie

What you want can be done but if you have a broadband connection, take a look here. There are a number of sites like this that let you send very large files to a server, it sends an email to whomever you want with info on how to retrieve the file(s). I sent a 375mb file to my sister in laws family before Christmas and the person on the other end showed the file on his laptop to everyone and made a dvd later for himself.

You're not going to be able to fit 2 GBs of mpeg2 video onto a 700 MB CD-R. ( Is that what you meant by CR-R?) You could get 30 minutes of mpeg1 onto a CD-R.

What options does he have available? If he has WindowsXP and a way to import the video into his computer, he could use the free Windows Movie Maker included with XP to change that video into a .wmv file. Unfortunately, I don't know how much video you can get onto a CD with MM, but maybe you could just talk him through how to upload the file to his website.

The other option, if you want mpeg2 video on a CD-R would be for him to chop it into less than 700 MB mpeg2 movies and burn those to a CD. If he's got a DVD burner, that would simplify things because you could fit one hour of mpeg2 onto the dvd.

Yes, I was talking about a CD-R. I was thinking that the MPEG-2 is a higher quality "video" and would work better if I render it to a .WMV and upload it to the web site...his other videos on the site are .wmv so the plan was to keep them all the same.

I tried talking him through it first...converting the footage from mini DV tape to .wmv file and upload it to his site...he tells me he is not computer savy.

The 2 CD is an option...
He says he rendered the video to a DVD...
I was under the impression that if a video is "burned" to a DVD I would not be able to download it and re-render it into a MPEG.
So I thought making the video into a MPEG-2 and copying it to a CD-R would be a better option.

If he sends you the DVD you should be able to copy it to your hard drive one of two ways. First way is to capture it from the DVD with Roxio or you could open Disc Copier and insert the DVD in your drive and choose save to hard drive.

I understand. I've got a few non computer savy friends myself.

With the information you've provided, you've got a some choices.

The first is the easiest. If he's got the video on a DVD, you should be able to 'Capture' the video in EMC7. Look for the second copy of your DVD burner in the Capture window (it's a bug). The .vob files on a DVD are really mpeg2 files. Some people have had success in just copying the .vob files to their hard drive and renaming the extension to .mpg, but Capturing is usually the better way to do it.

Or he could make the video into an mpeg2 (in VideoWave use File\ Output production to.... \ Video File\ Show All and choose the type of file you want. Then he could burn that file to a DATA DVD.

There are also options under the Show All for WMV files which he could burn to a DVD or CD depending on the size of the final file. If it's small enough, he might be able to email it to you, but that's going to depend on your ISP provider and Paul gave you an option to get around that. Of course, if he's not very computer savy, you're probably going to have a tough time explaining that.

Hope that helps.

I like the first idea, but the second one is a good back up plan!

It shouldn't matter what video editing software he used to make the DVD right?
I know he used Pinnacle for that....


Thanks,
Donnie

It shouldn't make any difference, but you'll never know until you try.

Now all mpeg2's are not the same and Pinnacle might use a different 'codec' to make the DVD. When you capture it into EMC7, there is the slight possibility that the video might degrade in quality when it's decoded.

However, you're changing it into a lower quality video for a website anyway, so it shouldn't make a difference.

Please let us know what you find out.

Alright...I'll have him send me a DVD and see what happens from there.

I tried capturing a DVD (Netflix rental) with VW 7 Pro...when I caputed it some of the titles would download; preview, credits, things like that but the body or main video would not...

I was able to do it with a homemade DVD so there is a hope it will work.

I'll let ya'll know what happens!

Thanks for you help...

Donnie

Roxio won't copy or capture copy protected DVDs.

I figured it wouldn't but I just had to see what it would do...

Got the previews...lol