What is the "BEST" way to capture VCR?

[Augster]

Hey,

I have done a LOT of reading, and haven't found the answer yet. I have read at LordSmurf's a LOT, but he uses and ATI AIW so his route isn't available to me at this time.

I have an AverDVD capture card. Currently, I use Premiere to capture with it. Is this about the best I can hope for? At what resolution should I be capturing? Compression, no compression on capture?

I have been going VCR-->AverDVD-->Premiere-->edit in Premiere-->output to TMPGenc Plus!---->compress---->TMPG DVD Author. This has worked out OK. I am just trying to maybe get a bit clearer on the initial capture. I'd like to make the captured AVI better if I could. Or is this about good enough? I am moving over 14 year old VHS tapes, so there's some degradation anyway....crap in/crap out. I am just trying to make the "crap" a bit clearer, and making sure I'm doing EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to get the best capture I can.

Thanks for any advice.

Augster

[lordsmurf]

Look for BT chipset information. You should catpure 720x480 on that card, then downsize to whatever at encode. That card cannot handle anything other than high resolutions very well.

[Augster]

Thanks for the reply LS. I love your site!

When you say, "Look for BT chipset information", where do I look? ON the card?

If that's the case, and I do find out what chip I have in there, then what? Re-post back maybe?

Capturing at full DVD (720x480)is what I have been doing, I think Check my other post for those problems.
Thanks!

[Zetti]

I have made several, countless tests to compare real-time MPEG-2 capture with the longest way AVI-TMPGENc-MPEG2; using TMPGEnc lots of settings (2 pass VBR, etc, etc);

I have easily found out that real-time MPEG2 works best for me, apart from being more quick;

Also, note that there's no problem in cutting/joining MPEG2 streams;

I use Ulead Video Studio to capture VCR to MPEG2 real time, LPCM audio, on a 8500DV AiW card;

Zetti

[lordsmurf]

Thanks for the reply LS. I love your site!

When you say, "Look for BT chipset information", where do I look? ON the card?

If that's the case, and I do find out what chip I have in there, then what? Re-post back maybe?

Capturing at full DVD (720x480)is what I have been doing, I think Check my other post for those problems.
Thanks!

Yeah, on that card. BT 878 or some similar chip. Or CX 878. Or CONEXANT.

[jarin]

Zetti I do the same as you, except i use DVD movie factories MPEG2 capture, which I think is the same engine anyway as video studio

Works fantastic, makes COMPLIANT audio and video! unlike Winfast PVR which makes wierd Audio formats which gives you out of synch problems when you use something lie TMPGenc dvd author that re-encodes your audio.

SO yeah Uleads MPEG2 capture is great for me, I also use a winfast card with the 10bit chip (expert I think)

So if you can help it go straight to mpeg2, saves heaps of time and as long as the capture is DVD complaint (audio and video) you should be fine and TMPGenc dvd author will only take like 30 seconds to make a DVD.

- Jarin

[stk]

have been going VCR-->AverDVD-->Premiere-->edit in Premiere-->output to TMPGenc Plus!---

Augster did you mean that you frameserv to TMPGenc Plus?

if thats what you do, what frameserver client did you use?

i use the pluging pac filter.. its kinda good but i dont like it much...

wich one did you use?

[Augster]

Stk, I really don't know what the hell I'm doing. In premiere, I just go File-Export timeline-movie, then have a REALLY big file somewhere on the desktop. Then I open TMPGenc and encode it.. That's what I meant.

Jarin, Zetti,

Thanks for the replies! I would do that, and I have before, I just have to find my copy of Ulead, but I want to do transitions/fades/ and a bunch of other stuff. Isn't it a LOT better to do that in AVI?

But, if I'm just doing a straight VHS to DVD capture, limited editing, no transitions, special effects, I'll definitely look into straight MPEG-2 capture. The "quality" is about the same? Huh, Quality. I'm capturing 14 years old and OLDER tapes. LOL!!

LordSmurf, I'm opening my box now. I'll take a look at the card and post back!

Thanks.

[MrMungus]

But, if I'm just doing a straight VHS to DVD capture, limited editing, no transitions, special effects, I'll definitely look into straight MPEG-2 capture. The "quality" is about the same? Huh, Quality. I'm capturing 14 years old and OLDER tapes. LOL!!

Learn about the different ways to do video capture and the pros/cons of each. Basically, there's analog capture, Firewire capture to DV AVI, and MPEG-2 card capture to an MPEG-2 file. If you're just going to be doing tape to DVD transfers, look into getting an MPEG-2 capture card. You just capture, author the DVD, and burn the DVD without having to transcode from AVI or DV AVI to MPEG-2.

[Augster]

Okay, I took the card out and looked at the chip. It's a Conexant Fusion 878A. What that tells you, I have no idea. LOL!

mrmungus,

Thanks for the help. I do a couple of different captures. My DV via Firewire, and VHS via this AverDVD card. In each capture, I put transistions, effects, etc. Everything I've read has said in order to do the editing, special effects, titles etc. you're best off in .AVI with no compression. Is this right? I know I used to use ULEAD and try to capture straight to MPEG, but when I added transistions and such, it really didn't look so good. But that was for MPEG-1 VCD's. Can you "play with"(edits, transitions, titles) MPEG-2 files just the same as .AVI? I bought Premiere so I could do all this stuff seamlessly. But if I could do it in MPEG-2, at least for the VHS, and still have it work, it would make the whole process much quicker.

Thanks.

[Augster]

One other thing.

In premiere, all it says is that I am capturing at 320x240. What the? Is there a way to capture any bigger than that? Or is this just an MPEG-1 card? I think those are the dimensions on MPEG-1, right?

Is there a way to make this capture at 740x480? Or do I need to get a different card that will? Any suggestions? I'm not really in the market for a new video card, so it should be a PCI card, or a hardware capture based firewire/usb2.0 something or other.


Or is there a way to "unlock" the card I currently have? Drivers or otherwise?

Thanks.

[duhmez]

Your card can capture 720x480, but the drivers may not let you.. Also you cant user overlay with tat hardware while capturing highres, so use preview or tsink for seeing what you are capturing. If you want to add effects etc to the video best way is use huffyuv codec for avi, lossless codec, and 2-3x smaller than uncompressed. If yo must do mpeg and want to do effets, and you dont want the entire movie recompressed again (mroe loss) ulead dvd movie factory pro i think its called, smart mode, will only reencode the frames where the transitions are applied and will not recompress the rest. that's a really slick feature. however, ~$500.00 for it.

If avi use huffyuv lossless, I recommend avisynth for resizing, (Or virtualdub's frameserver) to feed the croped/resized/filtred video into your NLE for final export. no loss then until final encode. hit lordsmurf's site for more info, it's all there with respoect o resolutions etc.

[shdwsclan]

The best way to capture from VCR.
You will need a multisystem VCR (as the head is made for wider scanning)
To get the best quality, get a VCR with a diamond/crystal head.
I use the Panasonic NV-HD680.
You could look for a VCR with FrameSync output, but its not really necessary if you are capturing to DV and encoding in POST.

The best program for capture is Adobe Premier Pro (7.0) with 2d3 Steadymove. It supports DV2 which gets rid of most of the frame "grating" of DV1. 2d3 SteadyMove makes sure that each frame is well transitioned to further reduce "grating".

Dropped Frames can be fixed manually because video is constantly buffered, even if you see that the video stops, that doesn't mean that its not capturing the frames after the dropped frame. Dropped frames occur from bad tapes, old tape, damaged tapes, etc.

I use the Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge because it supports framesync and has goldplated contacts.

I use Adobe Audition and Sony Sound Forge 7.0 to edit sound.
Hard drives and ATA controller cards are cheap, if you dont have the room on your machine, I suggest that you invest.
120GB Seagate and a Promise Controller cost $200.
You can also try those USB -> ATA converters but I dont recommend them, because I have a Parallel -> USB converter and it dies after the computer has been on for a while.

[lordsmurf]

You will need a multisystem VCR (as the head is made for wider scanning)

What? No way. Multisystem VCRs use shared components, which is a big no-no. Get a VCR dedicated to your application. NTSC-only or PAL-only is best. My purchase of a multisystem was an expensive mistake made when I still was new to this some years back.

And even then, one with audio/video filters and hopefully an embedded TBC. Panasonic is great, but overpriced, and Matsushita owns both Panasonic and JVC, and it's likely (but not confirmed) they share technology and/or parts. The JVC systems are much cheaper and do just as good.

I don't think you answered his question, just gave some random suggestions for things he go buy.

I fail to see how this addresses his problem.

I think the biggest issue here is learning how to man-handle that AVer card, which has a huge number of quirks ... see the "Amazing Discovery in Capture Resolutions (IMHO)" thread for AVer tips..
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=199669

[kupton]

Works fantastic, makes COMPLIANT audio and video! unlike Winfast PVR which makes wierd Audio formats which gives you out of synch problems when you use something lie TMPGenc dvd author that re-encodes your audio.

- Jarin

You can create a new recording profile in Winfast PVR and use LPCM for audio. I haven't had any OOS issues when going to TMPGenc dvd author...

[xtreemkareem]

Hey Lord Surf. Great site first off. I know that I shouldn't be asking opinions on forums but what the hey. Since I can't afford an ATI AIW just yet, I was personally thinking of getting an analog video capture card with the afore mentioned Conexant Fusion 878A chipset. What is your opinion on that and what would be your reccomended capture resolution if I want to output y files as VCD or CVD?