Capture Software Needed with the Canopus ADVC-110 ??

[christopheramos]

Hello, I am in the process of transfering some old video tapes to my laptop. I just bought a Canopus ADVC-110 to link up my VCR to my laptop.

My question is, once I do that, will I be able to capture using just the laptop, the vcr, and the Canopus? Or will I still need a software program in order to record what will be shown on my laptop's screen?

Thanks!!!!!

[nwo]

I use WinDV which is a great free program for capping video, apart from that all you need is a video editor.

[christopheramos]

Cool, thanks NWO. I have Vista x32 and I am not sure if WinDV will work with it or not. It doesn't mention being compatible with Vista.

Does anyone use WinDV with Vista?

[bendixG15]

WinDV is the popular one around here. Just take a few minutes to configure it properly.

During the "capture" process, you will see the video but no sound. You end up with a DV AVI file on your hard drive, about 13gb per hour, so you do need the drive space.

The AVI file can be edited or not and made into a DVD.

[christopheramos]

Wow! 13 GB per hour? That sounds HUGE. I am new to capturing, but am pretty knowledgeable about editing and authoring.

Is there no way to compress (Divx, Xvid, etc) in the capture process?

[nwo]

Wow! 13 GB per hour? That sounds HUGE. I am new to capturing, but am pretty knowledgeable about editing and authoring.

Is there no way to compress (Divx, Xvid, etc) in the capture process?

I would stay will DV-avi as you will be compressing the data into something that hard to edit with, once you have done your editing then make a divx or xvid file, here is another free program SimpleDivX

[2Bdecided]

The ADVC110 gives you DV - that's what it is - an analogue > DV converter.

Some software will convert on-the-fly. It only works well if your PC is fast enough, and is never as efficient (in terms of best picture quality per kbps) as (much slower) encoding after capturing.

13GB per hour is already compressed 5:1 from raw video. Many people capture raw video to get the best possible quality - though the benefit of doing so with VHS is debatable. However, if you're going to process it later (e.g. fix noise), there's no point capturing to Xvid or similar - you encode to Xvid after you've processed the video.

If you just want to capture straight to Xvid (or even H.264) with no processing, there are hardware devices that will do this in real time.

Cheers,
David.

[christopheramos]

Okay, thanks. Here is what I have: (1) Mitsubishi HS-HD2000U (high-def VCR), (2) the Canopus ADVC-110, and (3) Dell Latitude D820 laptop with firewire connection (about a gig of memory and 75 gigs of free disk space), running Windows Vista Ultimate x32.

The Mitsubish 2000U is a pretty darn good unit for TBC and correcting video noise. Thus I should be able to hook it into the ADVC-110, then firewire that to my laptop, and capture from there.

Based on my setup, should I use WinDV to record the video to my laptop? Or would there be a different program I should use, based on my setup?

Thanks so much (still learning about video capture. This part is new to me).

[lordsmurf]

WinDV

[nwo]

When using a Laptop the hard-drive will not keep up with the capturing you will need a USB2 hard drive.

[christopheramos]

Oh crap, that sucks! I have sunk a lot of money into the Mitsubishi and Canopus, now I'm tapped out and couldn't possibly afford an external (USB) hard drive. I have no choice but to capture to my laptop. Is there nothing I can do to make the laptop capture work smoothly (aside from buying the external hard drive)?

[nwo]

you could partition the hard drive and make a 2nd drive.

[christopheramos]

Okay. Actually, my hard drive is already partitioned (C: drive and D: drive), with the D: drive being the one that has the 75 gig of free space. So if I run the capture processes off of the C: drive, but record to the D: drive, it should work?

[nwo]

yes it will work, but don't use up all the space or you will run into problems.

[christopheramos]

Right, gotcha. I'll capture some video to the D: drive, edit it and burn it to DVD, then delete it and start the process all over again. That should work ...

[edDV]

A Dell Latitude D820 should do fine to the internal drive. Just don't load the drive from other apps while it is capturing.