Analogue or Digital?

[cwbenz]

Hi all... I am confused. I have a Sony Hi-8 camcorder. It does not have a firewire output, only coaxial vid/audio out and SVHS socket. The video signal that comes out from this camcorder is digital or analogue, avi or dv (are these the same?)? I wld like to use premierre 6.0, so what type of capture card shld I choose...? A Dazzle salesperson told me if I hook up my camcorder to DVC 2, the signal captured on the pc's hdd is compressed mpeg. If I use a DV Bridge, the cap signal is uncompressed (not sure avi or digital or dv). Both of these vid captured is recognised by Premierre 6.0, is he correct? Thanks for your help.

[Vejita-sama]

You have an analog camera If it was digital it would most likely say so on it and it would have a firewire output. As for which capture card to buy (firewire is out), you have two chooses.

1) TV turner, capture
2) " + hardware video compression

Partly it depends on what you want to do with your video once it's on your HD. I assume you want to make x(S)VCD or DVDR.

For the best quaility results you should just capture uncompressed or using a near lostless codec like huffyuv. Then convert/compress w/ TMPGeng or CCE using either the highest bitrate supported by your DVD player or multipass VBR.

For the fastest, easiest results. Buy a video capture card w/ hardware compression that can do on-the-fly captures to MPEG1/2 (don't know any that do to DVD format).

However, you said you plan to edit the edit after you capture it? If that's the cause I'd really recommend getting the a seperate HD (just for capturing), the fastest CPU you can afford, and capture uncompressed/huffyuv -> edit -> encode.

[cwbenz]

Thanks for the info. Now, which card is suitable? I intend to use it for camcorder-edit-(s)vcd.

[lmichiel]

I have used the Miro DC10plus which is a good card but the software is a bit buggy. The new Studio 7 software should resolve this but this package isn't availble for the DC10 yet (probably within 2 months it wil)

I just turned my analog Sony in for a Digital 8 which makes live a hell of a lot more easy. Using a firewire card (eg Studio7 DV) capturing is a breeze

Cheers
Leo

[cwbenz]

Thanx to all
This is a great forum. Till I get my card... Take care

[cwbenz]

oops..I'm back. I have a Creative GeForce graphics card in my pc, if I install the ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 32MB DDR, will they conflict each other? The GeForce does not have any input for VCR or camcorder. Or should I get a simple (which?) capture card for my camcorder? Or is there a gadget for hooking up between my Hi8 cam to the USB port? So many questions begging for answers... Thanx for any help u can give. Goodday.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: cwbenz on 2001-09-17 14:54:51 ]</font>

[thxkid]

Get a Hauppauge WINTV Go PCI card its $49 and will capture 352x240 Uncompressed Avi for a VCD finished product or 480x480 for a SVCD finished product, plus you can take your captured AVI's and use either Adobe premiere or Ulead Media studio to edit and mix your captured shots. Make sure you set either editing program to uncompressed AVI or you will lose some quality with your finished product after editing.