What software will capture MPEG-1 ?

[Palmer Eldritch]

Hi all,

I work in legal video and I videotape depositions. Depositions are always delivered to the client as MPEG-1 files. Law firms don't want anything else except MPEG-1. What I do is shoot in DVCAM and then I later encode the video in realtime to MPEG-1. This is time consuming. I have looked high and low for a piece of software that would allow me to capture directly to MPEG-1 in the field but have had no luck. Probably because no one would normally want to capture directly to MPEG-1. Any help, Thanks...

[DB83]

This is a wind-up. Right ?

But if you are serious...........

ANY video capture software, Ulead as an example, will do a MPEG-1 direct capture. What you are asking is a means to store a video stream that would be seen through a camera's lens but then viewed on a laptop or some other mobile PC and then captured in real-time with this software.

All you now need is a cable to connect your camera to the capture device and the answer to that depends on what outputs your camera has.

[Palmer Eldritch]

I will give it a try. Vegas, Premiere and Adboe Onlocation will not capture to MPEG-1. I need the captured video to have a constant bit rate and I need to be able to adjust the bit rate. A lightweight piece of software would be best. My camera has fire wire, s-video and rca outputs. I will give Ulead a try, Thanks.

[Palmer Eldritch]

You are correct that Ulead (Corel Video Studio) will do an MPEG-1 direct capture. I downloaded the trial version but it kept crashing every time I tried to capture even though I have a quadcore with tons of RAM. Does anyone know of a good, lightweight inexpensive/freeware app that will do a direct MPEG1/VCD capture? Thanks.

[aedipuss]

you keep saying "capture". how are you capturing? are you using a capture card or are you transferring the dvcam over firewire? 2 different things.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Some DV cams pump MPEG-1 via USB. What model(s) do you have?

[El Heggunte]

Ever tried VirtualDub + ffdshow

P.S.: And then you could re-wrap the m1v stream in a proper MPG file.

[M Bruner]

Or VDub frameserve to TMPGEnc as a MPEG-1.

[Cornucopia]

What machine are you running? Because I've been able to encode MPEG1 at faster-than-realtime for at least 6 years now...

Scott

[lordsmurf]

Law firms don't want anything else except MPEG-1. What I do is shoot in DVCAM and then I later encode the video in realtime to MPEG-1. This is time consuming. I have looked high and low for a piece of software that would allow me to capture directly to MPEG-1 in the field but have had no luck. Probably because no one would normally want to capture directly to MPEG-1. Any help, Thanks...

Capturing directly to MPEG-1 from interlace sources will lose quality and look like crap. I'm not exaggerating, we're talking ruined video quality, similar to pirated movie theatre cams.

You'd think with all the money in the legal industry, they'd live in 2009 instead of 1999, with their video tech.

I've always found it ironic how the people most in need of video quality also tend to be the biggest pains in the ass, when it comes to their formats, media, chain of custody, etc.

[2Bdecided]

I think lawyer live in the dark ages, scared of change. They insist on exchanging contracts by fax. They exchange confidential information daily via email, but refuse to encrypt it. And now this MPEG-1 thing.

Mind you, giving the number of times that a new IT component "breaks" certain old functionality, I can half sympathise.

But fax...!

Cheers,
David.

[jman98]

You'd think with all the money in the legal industry, they'd live in 2009 instead of 1999, with their video tech.

My best friend is a lawyer and from talking to him I've learned that the legal world has a lot of unusual requirements, so this doesn't surprise me at all. I can think of 2 logical reasons for using MPEG-1 though. One is that it's not patent encumbered. The other is that everything supports it. I was even able to get MPEG-1 playback working on an old Sparc workstation and that was the only video format I could get it to play.

[Palmer Eldritch]

My camera is a DSR-250. The idea is to send audio/video out of the camera via firewire to an application on a laptop that can capture directly to MPEG-1 at 352x240, 1150kbps. I want to create MPEG-1 files directly from the camera. I don't want to have to do any file conversion after the deposition is over.

My current method for creating MPEG-1 files is to take the DVCAM tapes back to the shop at the end of the day and create MPEG-1 clips from the tapes using a DSR-11 and an MPEG-1 capture card. This method is time cosuming.

So far Corel/Ulead VideoStudio seems to be the answer if only I could get it to stop crashing after 10 seconds of capture time. I have checked out Virtualdub but it appears to capture to .AVI only.

I agree that MPEG-1 is not the best format around but we are slaves to the applications that we use to create our deliverables such as Timecoder from inData or the Yeslaw product as well as the software that trial technicians use to present video in court such as Sanction or Trial Director. These are industry standard applications and although they are starting to inocorporate some MPEG-2 functionality, they only work well with MPEG-1. Also, depositions can go over 7 hours in a single day which often creates storage issues when you have several weeks of depositions on a hard drive.

[olyteddy]

You might also look to a hardware encoder, such as Hauppauge USB2 PVR. I have one and it does a pretty good job encoding MPEG1.

[DB83]

I do not have the latest Ulead/Corel Video Studio ( I use V 10) and I also do not use Vista but I have no problems in doing a direct capture at MPEG-1.

A few considerations. Has Ulead/Corel recognised your camera. What are the capture settings for the software ?

There is, unfortunately (not sure if it has now been addressed) an issue with the latest Corel/Vista marriage with some type of capture. But I though that only affected analogue captures.

It could well be complaining since there is no physical video being passed to it as the camera is not running. It that case I suspect you would also need a capture device sitting between the camera and the laptop. These would range from the simple easycap or the haupage USB PVR as has been suggested. But I do not see why you aslo could not use a Canopus ADVC. I have actually done some super8 transfers using an analogue video camera through a Canopus so no film runs through the camera but Ulead still captures a moving image.

But with all these scenarios, you will have to pay. Nothing is for free.

[Palmer Eldritch]

Thanks for your replies and DB83 for your suggestion to try Ulead VideoStudio. I couldn't get Version 12 to capture without crashing but I was able to get a copy of version 10 and it captures MPEG-1 video to my laptop with no problems. I will test this in the field and then attempt to synch the video to the transcript with InData's Timecoder. I'll let you know how that goes. Thanks.

[Palmer Eldritch]

Update:

I had a videographer take an old laptop to a 7-hour deposition and capture the proceedings to MPEG-1 using Ulead Video Studio 10. There were no problems capturing the entire depo this way and the MPEG-1 files the videographer brought back look as good or better than what we get when going from DVCAM to MPEG-1 in post, using a rack mounted computer and a DRC-500. I played back the footage on several different computers and there were no issues with Kung Fooing (audio/video out of synch) using the Ulead software.

When the transcript came in, I ran all seven hours of the MPEG-1 video through a synching application and it worked near perfectly with very few errors.

This is a very cost-effective way to create MPEG-1 files at the deposition in real time and saves me the time and headache of having to go back to the shop and convert to MPEG-1 from giant AVI files or worse yet, tying up all my decks encoding from expensive hardware systems which costs time and money.

Using a software application on a laptop to capture MPEG-1 files at the deposition eliminates the need for expensive capture card based systems, produces excellent quality MPEG-1 files and the laptop fits nicely into the camera package.

[DB83]

Another happy customer then