Confused on AVI capture settings

[caveman]

I am sure this have been discussed before but I could not find what I was looking for. My capture card has many setting to chose from. Using movie studio plus DVD which reconized my capture card I captured a 1hr 15 min file which produced a file at 29 gb. The capture setting was 320 x 240. Generally my files are less than 1 hr. I could have used the setting 720 x 480 uncompress avi. My camera will not connect direct to computer I have to use a capture card using a svideo connector. Its my understanding that if you are going to do a lot of editing you must capture as avi. So any suggestion, 720 x 480 or 320 x 240. Also, most of what I read a hr of avi uncompress should be about 14 gb. Seems to me a 1hr and 15min file at 29 gb is too large. Can't fiqure that one.

CP
Thanks

[FulciLives]

DV-AVI is about 13GB (give or take) per 1 hour but uncompressed AVI is even bigger because DV is a form of compression so DV-AVI will be smaller than uncompressed.

What alot of people do is capture to AVI using a video codec that does some compression. For instance a popular choice is HuffyUV which should be roughly half the size of uncompressed AVI.

You should capture Full D1 resolution i.e., 720x480 for NTSC or 720x576 for PAL and NTSC captures are at 29.970fps whereas PAL captures are at 25fps.

It would help alot if you tell us what type of capture card (model/make) and fill in your computer specs while you are at it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
You should not capture to DV-AVI unless you have a digital camcorder or a hardware DV-AVI box such as the DataVideo DAC-100 or the Canopus ADVC-110 etc.

[jagabo]

320x240, 29.97 fps, uncompressed RGB ~ 24 GB/hr
720x480, 29.97 fps, uncompressed RGB ~ 112 GB/hr

I don't now of any cards that directly capture uncompressed RGB. Most capture YUY2 (or similar) and convert to RGB if you ask for it.

320x240, 29.97 fps, uncompressed YUY2 ~ 16 GB/hr
720x480, 29.97 fps, uncompressed YUY2 ~ 75 GB/hr

HuffYUV is fast and can compress YUY2 video losslessly but only reduces the file size by about 1/2. This is a good choice for editing if you can live with the large files.

[Nelson37]

How to capture depends a lot on your (unknown) capture card and your (unknown) source type, along with your (unknown) computer specs and your (unknown) intended viewing device.

The one you have chosen is just about the worst possible. Not in DVD spec, single field, low resolution, yuk. Is VCD your goal?

You may have performance issues due to increased throughput at higher resolutions.

Huffy would be a good choice. Lossless compression.

As for AVI vs MPG, depends on your definition of "a lot of editing". For simply cutting out commercials, both Cuttermaran and Mpg2Cut (both free) do fine with real-time MPG. Depends on your cards capture quality and the amount of time you wish to spend encoding.

[caveman]

Please excuse me for my late replies but when I didn't receive any email notices I realize I hadn't updated my profile to my new email address. Done now.

My capture card is a leadtek WinFast TV 2000 xp. My camera is a sony TRV 328 analog. It does have a svideo out which is attached to the capture card. I use to use the ulead software that came with the capture card and capture my video as mpg2. But I brought sony Movie studio + dvd plat as I plan on updating at Xmas to a new digital camera. In the mean time I wanted to learn some about the new program and it will only capture avi. It does regconize my capture card just find but will only capture at 320 x 240. When I try to capture at 720 it will not work even thought the card does support that setting. My computer is one I built my self. Here are some of its spec.

P4 3gb.
1 mb ram
ati radon 9800
sound blaster 5.1 card.

I have completed a couple of projects and they were not bad. However I must say the old version of ulead movie studio was easyer to use. I can't seem to get the fader offset to work on still image overlays with the movie studio. That s another problem. At this point I think I am expecting to much as analog is the problem I'm sure. You all have made great comments. Thanks all of you. If any of you are experenced veges users maybe you can comment on why I cant get the fader to work on still images.

caveman

[jagabo]

That appears to be a BT878 based card.

http://faq.arstechnica.com/link.php?i=1659

Find the generic BT878 drivers and you should be able to capture at full D1 (720x480) resolution. You probably won't be able to capture uncompressed at that resolution though -- the bitrate is too high to capture without dropping frames. Try capturing as YUY2 with HuffYUV as the video codec.

[FulciLives]

That appears to be a BT878 based card.

If this is true then you need to determine the "capture area" of the card. BT based cards are a bit "funcky" this way.

Most manufactures include a driver that only sees a window of 688x480 for NTSC so for a proper aspect ratio you need to capture 688x480 then (assuming you are making a DVD in the end) you need to pad the sides of the capture with pure black to make it 720x480. The usual way to do this as jagabo said is to capture YUY2 using a codec such as HuffyUV or PICVideo MJPEG (those are the two most popular). Then after the capture is done you convert to a MPEG-2 DVD spec file and that is when you pad the sides out to get 720x480

Please note that the 688x480 may not be 100% accurate ... it depends on how your card manufacturer implemented the driver. However most seem to be at that resolution for NTSC. Oh and again this is assuming you have a BT chipset based capture card.

Now there is a "generic" driver for these capture cards called the BTwincap driver. If you decide to install this driver then you need to capture at 712x480 then pad it out to 720x480. This driver tends to give you more control and is worth trying if you do in fact have a BT chipset based capture card.

BTwincap driver webiste ---> CLICK HERE

You might also want to read the doom9 guide on analog video computer capture. That guide can be found at the following URL: http://www.doom9.org/capture/start.html

The doom9 guide has a section (section 5) that covers all of this in much greater detail although I suggest of course that you read it all.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman