Capture to DV1 crashes. Capture to MPG2 works. Need advice.

[Holden]

I'm practicing capturing from DVD sources to prepare for capturing from Hi8mm video tapes.

Here's the problem:

If I capture to MPEG2, things go well. Sonic MyDVD creates a good 720x480 29.97fps 8000kbps video with 48KHz 128kbps audio. ArcSoft Showbiz will take the same input and create another good file, albeit at a slightly lower bitrate.

If I capture to AVI / DV-1, whether I use the above mentioned tools or Window Movie Maker, the capture appears to go well until I stop capturing, at which point the capture software crashes. An invalid .AVI file gets left behind with approximately the right size for the capture length.

I'd like to capture with the best quality, so I want to get AVI capture working. Any suggestions? It seems to me that the problem is with the OS or with the capture software since the DAC-100 is working great.

Could I have conflicting codecs? I have installed many.

More Info:

Athlon2600
1GB 333 memory
DataVideo DAC-100
WinXP SP1
Capturing to a ATA100 NTFS 80GB drive, very empty and defragged
On board firewire controller (epox motherboard)

Thanks in Advance! And thanks to all who built this site. It's great.

[aklendathu]

What happens if you set up a TIMED capture ? (i.e., you tell the program to capture for 5 minutes)
I don't think Sonic MyDVD is the best software for doing captures, in particular the OEM version that gets bundled with hardware. Ditto for Windows Movie Maker. What exactly is the capture setup you're using ?
If you're capturing DV directly, I'd suggest using Ulead Movie Factory or
Pinnacle Studio to do the capture.

[Holden]

What happens if you set up a TIMED capture ? (i.e., you tell the program to capture for 5 minutes)

I'll try this.

I don't think Sonic MyDVD is the best software for doing captures, in particular the OEM version that gets bundled with hardware. Ditto for Windows Movie Maker.
If you're capturing DV directly, I'd suggest using Ulead Movie Factory or Pinnacle Studio to do the capture.

What is the deficiency of Sonic MyDVD?

What exactly is the capture setup you're using ?

Sony DVD Player -> S-Video Cable -> Datavideo DAC-100 -> Firewire cable -> PC Motherboard.

Thanks again.

[henk schuifkaas]

You could also try another "capture" program (Firewire doesn't capture, it's just a matter of filetransfer).
Try DVIO, it can "capture" dv type 1 and 2

[aklendathu]

I don't think Sonic MyDVD is the best software for doing captures, in particular the OEM version that gets bundled with hardware. Ditto for Windows Movie Maker.
If you're capturing DV directly, I'd suggest using Ulead Movie Factory or Pinnacle Studio to do the capture.

What is the deficiency of Sonic MyDVD?

What exactly is the capture setup you're using ?

Sony DVD Player -> S-Video Cable -> Datavideo DAC-100 -> Firewire cable -> PC Motherboard.

Thanks again.[/quote]

The problem with MyDVD (at least the OEM version I got with my HP DVD writer) is that you can only capture MPEG at constant bit-rate or AVI uncompressed. Maybe the problem you have is that it does not support DV capture ?

Also, if you want to test Analog-to-Digital Video conversion perhaps you could try capturing from a TV broadcast instead of DVD player. Does the DAC-100 remove the Macrovision DVD protection ?

I use Pinnacle Studio 8 for DV captures from my camcorder using a PCI Firewire Adapter and it works quite nicely.

Good luck.

[Holden]

I have assumed that uncompressed AVI was in fact DV1 format. Am I wrong?

Yes, the DAC-100 removes/ignores macrovision.

When capturing to MPG via Sonic MyDVD, the resulting bitrate is 8000K! I can live with that constant bit rate... but I would like to be capturing uncompressed AVI / DV1 and encode later with exactly the settings I want.

I'm not trying to test analog to digital, per se. I'm just learning how to capture with an easy source (DVD player on shelf) instead of with a messy setup of CamCorder and Power supplies all over the place.

[henk schuifkaas]

DV1 or 2 not uncompressed, I believe it's 5:1 compression. Uncompressed video would be really HUGE.
The difference between type 1 and 2 has something to do with the audio track, not exactly sure what though

[aklendathu]

Uncompressed video usually shows as UYUV or something like that.

And the files are reaaaly BIG: 720x480x16x29.97xcapture time in seconds / 8 in bytes... DV1/2 is compressed but quality is virtually untouched (better than 8000kbps CBR MPEG-2 anyway !).

You may want to try using the (free) Huffyuv codec which gives you lossless compression (2.3 ratio) or a MMJPEG codec such as PicVideo or Morgan Multimedia.

I use the PicVideo codec, and at quality 19 (i.e.,95%) I get a compression factor of about 7 and the quality of the final DVD video when played on my TV is at least as good as that of the VHS source... I usually encode the MMJPEG AVI files as 5800 kbps 2-pass VBR.

[Holden]

It appears that I had been trying to capture uncompressed AVI.

I tried DVIO and successfully captured to DV1 and DV2 and the resulting files were much smaller than the files that were crashing the capture apps.

I tinkered briefly this morning looking at the two output files (DV1 and DV2) with an AVICodec identifier (AVICodec???). It listed audio quality differently for the two files (99% quality for one and 50% quality for the other, whatever that means), but I don't remember exactly which file was which, so I won't comment at this point.

Since I'll be capturing from a camcorder with a built in view screen, DVIO's lack of a video stream viewer will not be a problem. DVIO will be my tool for this task.

Thanks again.

Greg

[yg1968]

You can also try DVapp (freeware).