capturing analog video

[photohiker]

I have recently had my first attempt of capturing analog video.I used a Plextor PX-AV100U digital video converter with a usb2 cable.I have been capturing it to mpeg-2 .I am trying to capture home video from a analog sony camcorder.The video that I captured does not look very sharp to me when played back on my computer. I can get a clearer picture by dubbing the video to vhs tape.Are my expectations too high? is there anything I can do to get a clearer picture? thanks!

[canadateck]

When you say not a ClearPicture ,What do you mean?

[ima2hd]

photohiker if you want to capture quality why are you capturing mpeg2? Capture AVI then covert to Mpeg2 using a avi 2 dvd converter with an mpeg encoder like cce or tmpgenc.

Cheers,
Will

P.S. Remember that any captures in Mpeg2 are Lossy while Avi with the right codec such as Huffyuv is Lossless.

[BayouBoy]

Hello, I am very new to the DVD/Video conversion world. I have 2 questions that I need to be pointed to the right forums topics if someone could please.

I was concidering the purchase of one of these Plextor PX-AV100U digital video converters. I was wondering if there was some special topics as to the pros & cons of an almost do-it-all external box verses a PC capture card plus each it's related software? Remember that I am a newbie and I would like to take the easiest road. Quality is something that I would like, but much of the VHS videos that I would to preserve to Digital are homemade concerts tapes etc. Hopefully I won't need some sort of Macrovision remover box for a newer VCR either. Because this is related to my second question.

My brother purchased a LiteOn LVR-1001 to record our old bootleg video collection. But for some reason there is a block on even non-commercial VHS. what I was wondering is, do we need to put some sort of descrambler box between the vhs & LiteOn LVR-1001? Or can we enter some sort of codes like those that i have seen for newer models of lite-on?

Can someone help or at least point me to some direction for answers. oh BTW it burns movies off satellite okay, the picture is somewhat not so great, but i could settle for anything just to preserve these old videos. also it sometimes will go ahead and record a recorded VHS to vcd or svcd, but it's picky about doing it twice. Also is a VHS that was recorded with a Macrovision VCR encoded to the VHS Tape or is that only an internal mechanism? Please point me to previous topics if they exist. Thanx and I apoligize for so many questions in one. BB

[photohiker]

When I say it is not clear, I mean that the image seems fuzzy or grainy.How would I capture this as a avi file? Would it improve the image quality? Thanks for all the help!

[MOVIEGEEK]

I think the problem is the USB cable,use firewire and transfer DV-AVI instead.