How To turn a 6 hour VHS tape into several DVD's of various topics ?

VHS_guy_2019 wrote on 6/17/2019, 7:57 PM

The Problem - i have an old vhs tape, with 6 hours of various accumulated recordings scattered on it. There is a mix of subjects on the one tape, for example, there are some family videos, some camping videos, some community sports games, family pets, etc, etc,,, a big variety of topics all mixed together on one very long 6 hour vhs tape,,,,

My Objective - I would like to just set the timer on "movie edit pro mx" and walk away and come back later when the whole 6 hour tape has been copied by "movie edit pro mx" onto my PC.... And then later on the PC using "movie edit pro mx" cut up and separate out the various categories so that they can all be burned onto separate dvds eventually ,,, My objective in the end is to have tuned that mixed up 6 hour VHS tape into several dvds of separate categories, one dvd of sports, one dvd of family, one dvd of birthdays , one dvd of pets ,,,etc etc.....

Cutting and placing scenes of similar catagories into its own separate movie ????

1. - So how do I separate all the family scenes(for example) from the main movie. gather them all together and then save them as a separate new movie or project ?

2. - I will also want to do this above process too for the camping scenes, pet scenes, sport scenes etc,,, all the similar bits and pieces need to be pulled out of the main long 6 hour movie that is now on my PC and put into separate categories and made into several separate smaller movies ...

- Is it possible to do this, and what are the steps to do this?

- is there already a post somewhere detailing this process?

I would appreciate any help or direction as to where I can find info on this process...

thank you .....cheers.

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 6/18/2019, 7:01 AM

@VHS_guy_2019

Hi and welcome to the forum.

In a nutshell you are in for a lot of manual work with your project.

My recommendations are:

Break the capture up into about 1 hour sessions, this will enable editing and export scenes easier - although you can capture the entire 6 hours in one go, you will find trying to edit is slow and laborious.
You can used Scene recognition to detect and mark scene changes, however this is not 100% reliable

Export the scene by setting a range for a scene and then export this - see setting a range and exporting a range in the programs Help.

HTH

John EB

VHS_guy_2019 wrote on 6/19/2019, 3:58 AM

hi and thank you Johnebaker.

"setting range" and "exporting a range" is very helpful starting points, I had no idea what I was looking for, now I know where to begin so that I can read up on it, and try it out.

( its the terms they use to describe things in the software that I still struggle with in the prompt windows and the manual , its still a bit confusing to me when I read the manual,,,,,, term such as "scene" ... "movie" .... "project" ... "object" etc... makes me a bit apprehensive about proceeding with some commands in the software...not always sure of which is which, and I don't want to accidently wreck the work by clicking the wrong thing...)

So now i will cut and drag all the similar categories in the movie into groups, and then as you suggested Johnebaker I will give it a try at using the "setting range" and "exporting range" and see how it works out..... I will repost in a few days and let you know how it went for me...

Thank you very much for the help.... 😊

side note - originally I thought i could just cut and drag all the different topics/parts in the movie onto their own separate tracks . For example cut/drag all the sports stuff onto one track , the family stuff onto another track , and pet stuff onto its own track as well ,,, then burn each track separately by itself somehow onto its own dvd , but i couldn't figure out how to do that, and i guess the software don't work that way,,,that would have made it easier for me,, oh well wishful thinking 😊

johnebaker wrote on 6/19/2019, 5:29 AM

@VHS_guy_2019

. . . . the family stuff onto another track , and pet stuff onto its own track as well ,,, then burn each track separately by itself somehow onto its own dvd . . . .

You could do it that way - once you have each 'topic' on the tracks and there are no gaps in between the clips - use the Solo button, the S at the left end of the track to select the track to be burned, all the other tracks will not appear on the DVD, and burn the DVD. Click the Solo button again to turn it off and then repeat for the next track and so on.

object = video clip, image, audio clip, title that is in a . . . .

scene = one or more clips that relates to a . . . .

movie = individual timeline, there can be more than one, in a . . . .

project = everything above

Do note that the project files not contain the actual video, titles and other objects, it only contains some settings for the project and a 'list' of what is on the timeline, where it is positioned and where the source file is and what effects and titles are used.

HTH

John EB

browj2 wrote on 6/19/2019, 8:17 AM

@VHS_guy_2019

Hi,

I presume that you're using MEP2019, correct? Do you have basic, Plus or Premium?

To get more familiar with the terms and tools, I suggest that you watch my tutorials on Basic Editing in MEP. Pretty much everything still applies.

Further to your method and what John EB said, I would suggest that once you have your video clips (objects) on separate tracks and before removing any gaps, that you do a Save as and append a suffix, like R1 (revision 1) or something in case you mess up and want to go back to a previous version, then select all of the objects on one track, copy them to the clipboard (shortcut Ctrl+C), then click on the + to add a movie, and paste (Ctrl+V) the objects to that movie. Click on the pop-down beside the Movie tabs and rename the movie to be the subject. Then you can close up the gaps. Save often.

Repeat for each subject, copying everything from its track to a separate movie and giving each movie a name.

When you've finished and saved, and are satisfied that you have everything from the first movie in its own movie by subject, click the popdown beside the Movie tabs and delete the first movie. Warning, you should have done a Save As with a different name, like I mentioned, in case something goes wrong.

Now you have separate movies, each with their own tab.

Here you have another choice:

Continue editing in one big project with multiple movies, and creating DVD's with just one movie select in the Burn screen, or
Export each movie separately with its own name.

Exporting a movie will give you a file with the extension .MVD instead of .MVP.

Now you can start a new project for each movie then importing the movie, that is, the MVD file from the popdown beside the Movie tab.

This may sound complicated, but it isn't.

Either way, go ahead and do any editing that you want. Add titles, music, remove any bad parts, etc.

What you may find is that you will want to add in photos, other video material and narration to a project. Thus having separate projects facilitates this.

BTW, who are those people in your video? I add a credits type trailer to my videos with a screen capture of each person and put their name beside it.

As you can tell, there is no real automatic way to do everything.

A plug here for Magix Video Pro X and its Project Temp Folder (PTF is not in MEP).

In VPX, what I do, is create separate folders in the PTF for each movie (subject) and then with the correct one selected, I right-click on the object and insert it into the correct movie within the PTF. Then I export the PTF and start a new project for each subject, import the PTF, eliminate all but the folder(s) that I want to keep, and then import the objects from the PTF to the timeline.

There is a bit more to it, but I like this method. As the video clips are added to the folders, I change the colour of the video clip so that I know which ones have been done, especially if I can't do it all in one session.

Let us know how it goes.

John CB

VHS_guy_2019 wrote on 6/19/2019, 5:06 PM

hi , I just got home from work and I see your posts , you guys are awesome 😊 ....

I have a bit of time now, so going to watch the above tutorials while keeping in mind what I just read in your above posts , between the tutorial vids and the above info you both posted I should be able to get this worked out. Come the weekend I will have more free time to give it a shot, will keep you posted on my results.

I presume that you're using MEP2019, correct? Do you have basic, Plus or Premium?;

John CB - I have "movie edit pro MX plus" ....actually its a older version , I bought it a while back , its been sitting in the box on my shelf forever (im finally getting around to using it before VCR dies and my old vhs tapes turn into dust...lol ), ... I got it from a store that was closing down, so it was reduced for sale , don't know how long they had it before I bought it....on the software's cd it says "copyright 2001-2011" ... so yeah its definitely not a 2019 version ... the reason It caught my eye in that store is I new one day I would have to save my vhs tapes to dvd before they or my VCR dies...

Big thanks again.

cheers.

VHS_guy_2019 wrote on 7/5/2019, 5:56 PM

hi,,, been very busy lately, but finally got around to watching the tutorial vids and trying out the tips you folks gave me .....

And it worked out great 😃....

its awesome , I am using the multi track and solo button method ,,,

It works perfect for chopping up one very long vhs tape into several smaller categorized tracks, which can then be "SOLO" burnt onto separate dvd's as one chooses ...

I like that only the solo stuff gets sent to be burnt the rest of the tracks remain unaltered and waiting for their turn to be SOLO'ed and then burnt to their own separate dvd later...

whats great about this method is its simple enough for me to grasp right now at my stage in the game...

How I did it for those who want to try it...

FIRST - I set magix timer to record my long vhs tape onto tracks 1 and 2, leave it to do its thing, and come back later when its auto timer is done copying the vhs tape....

SECOND - I simply cut the clips of hockey out of the long original which I recorded onto tracks 1 and 2,.. And I drag the clips straight down and drop them onto tracks 3 and 4,,,

THIRD - I do the same for any camping clips contained in 1 and 2, except the camping related stuff gets dragged and dropped onto tracks 5 and 6,,,,

FOURTH - I do the same for the family clips except I drag and drop them down onto tracks 7 and 8,,,,

FIFTH - to all of the tracks I do some simple cut editing , and then horizontally slide/drag the clips together and may add some simple cross fades by over lapping the edges of the clips as I choose to...

LAST - I select and then isolate the specific tracks i want to be burned to dvd by clicking the SOLO button of those tracks (as Johnebaker suggested) ,,,, and thus I can now proceed to burn only the tracks that I want to burn onto a dvd...

RESULT - 3 separate topics scattered about on one long vhs tape are now separated and turned into three dvds , with each dvd containing and being a separate topic....

For now this is a good basic starting point for me ,,,later as I get free time I will explore more of magix's features/methods . Now that I've done this and had good results, it has me thinking about other ideas I might like to try in the future(time permitting).... But for now one step at a time,,,and this first step with you guys helping has been a positive step...

and yes browj2 as I went along I kept hitting the save button alot just in case I messed up... ty😄....

Big thanks guys for the help... im a happy camper 😂