How you do THIS? :)

[kb1985]

What are your "capturing habits"?
I often capture video from my Sony DV camera and then compress it to 2pass 720x568 Xvid, with file size determined to 24 MB per minute (eg. 10 minutes video has 240 MB). Then I can fit 1 hour video in 1,4 GB, so I can record about three self-made videos to one DVD (don't have dvd yet, but i want to be prepared... now i store them on my hdd). Of course, concerning the quality it would be best to store it as DV video, but of course it's impossible due to the size and file size limit on win98 (fat32). I can't risk loosing too much quality of the video, and reducing it's size to circa 1,4 GB per hour seems to be acceptable. These is how i do it for self-made videos.

While capturing something from TV I do it two ways.
350 MB for a 720x568 45 minutes TV show
700 MB for a 720x568 90-110 minutes TV movie
16 MB / minute for a 720x568 tv series trailer

I wonder what are your "compression habits" and if you could recommend something to me.

[guns1inger]

I use NTFS, so I don't have the same file size limits you have. I also have a pair of dedicated 80 GB drives just for video capture and editing. I leave the masters as DV, use huffyuv lossless for itermediate files, then encode to Mpeg-2 and author.

You would better off killing win98 and converting your drives to NTFS. There is really no need for 98 nowadays, given compatability mode in XP can make it look like 98 if a particular app requires it.

Where did you get the resolution from ?

[Cunhambebe]

You would better off killing win98 and converting your drives to NTFS. There is really no need for 98 nowadays, given compatability mode in XP can make it look like 98 if a particular app requires it.

- I agree with this........No need to Win 98 anymore...Get rid of it.

[SLK001]

IIRC, there is a driver that will allow you to convert your FAT32 file system to an NTFS file system for WIN98. It's been discussed before here, so do a search.

But I agree, upgrading your files system will be of great benefit to your video capturing.

[kb1985]

My mistake in the resolution. Of course I meant standard DV resolution.

I have to use Windows 98 because of my cd-writer which has some problems with working under XP (it kill's cd's). I'm planning to buy dvd-writer but everytime i collect appropriate sum of money i buy something else. :-]

And what do you think about this:

DV 12-16 GB (splitted into smaller files because of fat32)
|
v
MPEG2 file 3-3,9 GB (because of fat32 4 gb limit)
|
v
waiting until i have dvd-writer and be able to record these mpeg2 files to *.vob files. Actually one vob file, because I don't need them to split video into separate scenes.

Is it fine? Or should I create the MPEG files smaller/split them?

[reboot]

Actually one vob file, because I don't need them to split video into separate scenes.

Wrong. DVD Spec is for each .vob to be 1 gig, no matter how many (or few) scenes you have.

[kb1985]

So it is better that I split my 4 GB video file to 1 files?

Wrapping mpeg files into vob's won't make them much bigger?

[reboot]

You don't need to split anything.
The authoring software looks after it automatically.
A .vob is just an mpg in a different wrapper.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I only capture from VHS &/or SVHS and my AIW's tuner.
I capture YUY2 at 352X480 with no codec ("uncompressed" so to speak).
After capture, I edit as needed and resize to 480X360.
At that point I either watch & delete (time shifts) or I use TMPGEnc to convert to DVD compliant .mpg and burn to DVD (backing up my VHS library, for example).

[reboot]

Why would you resize to 480x360?
352x480 is a valid DVD size (half D1).
Just encode at the same aspect, and save a ton of time (and possibly quality) by having the encoder resize during encode.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

because it won't play correctly
it's tall & skinny when I play it back

[MOVIEGEEK]

"it's tall & skinny when I play it back"

On what?
352x480 should play back perfectly with PowerDVD or any DVD player.

@kb1985,
I agree about ditching Win98 when working with DV,XP isn't the problem...it's the burn software.

[pfh]

kb- your comp profile says you have winXP why are you torturing yourself with win98 limitations.?
Time to get a dvd and migrate all your s/w to xp so you can make an already complicated process less so. I'm confused by what it is your trying to accomplish and at some point your drive space will be at a premium. You'll also run the risk of one of those drives crapping out before you've made the first dvd.

[reboot]

Tall and skinny...in the wrong player.
Author it to DVD and see what it looks like.
An mpg is just that, and the player will play it in it's aspect, until the dvd structure is written, telling the player what video aspect it has, and how to play it properly.

[DarrellS]

>>there is a driver that will allow you to convert your FAT32 file system to an NTFS file system for WIN98. It's been discussed before here, so do a search. <<

I don't think so. If there was, there would be little reason to upgrade Windows 98SE to XP or Windows 2000.

There is a program that will let you read NTFS files with a FAT32 system but you can't do anything with the files. It's for a dual boot system where your Windows 2000 partition has to be FAT32 since It uses the 98 boot.ini to load Windows 2000 and 98 can't read NTFS. It allows you to see what is on a NTFS partition (seperate hard drive) but you can't move or alter the files unless you've booted to Windows 2000 which CAN alter NTFS files.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Tall and skinny...in the wrong player.
Author it to DVD and see what it looks like....

I'm playing it in Media Player Classic
authoring something I'm just gonna delete seems like a waste of time

I guess I could just cap the time-shifts at a different ratio...

[DereX888]

Xylob LOL youre posting an opinion on something you obviously have no clue about

look here: (I know, yours is even more squeezed coz you captured at CVD specs, while this one is SVCD specs)

thats how it probably will look on your crappy media player, right?
While this is how it should look on a normal player capable of keeping proper aspect ratios:


see the difference?
No authoring, no reencoding, nothing - its the same file...

[SLK001]

>>there is a driver that will allow you to convert your FAT32 file system to an NTFS file system for WIN98. It's been discussed before here, so do a search. <<

I don't think so. If there was, there would be little reason to upgrade Windows 98SE to XP or Windows 2000.

Well, I do (although I have never used it...). Here is the url to a site that offers a NTFS file system for Win98 - and other FAT32 systems.

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfswin98.shtml

Reasons to upgrade? I can think of many others.

[DereX888]

>>there is a driver that will allow you to convert your FAT32 file system to an NTFS file system for WIN98. It's been discussed before here, so do a search. <<

I don't think so. If there was, there would be little reason to upgrade Windows 98SE to XP or Windows 2000.

How could I miss that
(see under my nickname )

So - in your opinion the only reason (or a main reason) to ditch win98 in favor of win2k (or any other nt-based) is just the file system?

Do you work for pcmag.com and your name is Bill or Lance?

[DarrellS]

>>Well, I do (although I have never used it...). Here is the url to a site that offers a NTFS file system for Win98 - and other FAT32 systems. <<

Well, I have used it and it is used for exactly the reasons that I posted. If you don't believe me, then install it on a 98 machine and see what you can do with it.

[DarrellS]

>>So - in your opinion the only reason (or a main reason) to ditch win98 in favor of win2k (or any other nt-based) is just the file system?<<

I said little reason. I'm sure that all the people who use resource hog software will swear that XP and W2K is way superior to 98SE but I have no problems with my 98SE machine in the other room. Keeping 98SE maintained will solve most memory issues but there is nothing you can do to solve those problems in W2K.
I can't say for XP but I can say that W2K is a nightmare on this machine. NTFS systems aren't supposed to have memory issues buy I see the blue screen of death alot on this machine. Something I never see on the 98SE machine.
I have two printers and two scanners and neither one will work on this machine although they both work fine on the 98SE machine. Thank God I'm not a gamer or I probably would've already smashed this machine.
Windows 2000 Professional may be a great operating system for running a business but for a Graphics and Video Editing machine, it sucks.
The only reason I bought this software was because I built a new P4 machine and everyone on here was praising Windows 2000 as the best video editing OS. If 98SE would handle bigger files, I would still be using it for video editing.

[FulciLives]

I capture with a BT based capture card using the BTwincap driver.

I was "bored" so I decided to capture my widescreen LaserDisc of THE OMEGA MAN ... yes it exists now on DVD in a 16x9 widescreen version but I don't have a 16x9 WS TV and this gave me something to do

I capture at 712x480 using HuffyUV then I use AviSynth and CCE SP for the final MPEG-2 DVD spec file.

With THE OMEGA MAN I cut off a lot of junk on the sides (image didn't go completely from left to right) and the black on the top and bottom and added "fresh" black with AviSynth scripting.

Here is the AviSynth script from VirtualDubMod ... then resized to proper 640x480 aspect ratio for 4:3 viewing on a computer monitor. This is not yet converted to MPEG-2 DVD spec with CCE SP. This is the "raw" HuffyUV capture file filtered with AviSynth ... next step is the CCE SP encoding step.

This is the only capture sitting on my HDD right now ...













This will do for me until I get a 16x9 WS TV or a new HDTV DVD format comes out etc.

And to think people suffered for a good decade with VHS while I had a LaserDisc player (since 1990 myself) before DVD

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I capture audio as 16-bit 48k Stereo PCM WAV and I use iuVCR as my capture software.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Xylob LOL youre posting an opinion on something you obviously have no clue about ...

where did i post an opinion?

i have stated the facts as they are
and not once did i proclaim to be an expert

[DereX888]

I was "bored" so I decided to capture my widescreen LaserDisc of THE OMEGA MAN ... yes it exists now on DVD in a 16x9 widescreen version but I don't have a 16x9 WS TV and this gave me something to do

I capture at 712x480 using HuffyUV then I use AviSynth and CCE SP for the final MPEG-2 DVD spec file.

With THE OMEGA MAN I cut off a lot of junk on the sides (image didn't go completely from left to right) and the black on the top and bottom and added "fresh" black with AviSynth scripting.

I don't understand why do you need 16x9 TV to watch widescreen DVDs?
And I don't get it why do you ADD black bars at all (thus youre making it widescreen 4x3) and waste a bit of video bitrate on them instead of cropping them out and making 16x9 dvd?

You do know that dvd players can be hooked to a 4x3 tv and watching 16x9 widescreen movie is automatically shown as 4x3 with *fresh/pure/perfect* digitally generated black bars on top and bottom of picture (that aren't in the picture on a disc), right?

[FulciLives]

I was "bored" so I decided to capture my widescreen LaserDisc of THE OMEGA MAN ... yes it exists now on DVD in a 16x9 widescreen version but I don't have a 16x9 WS TV and this gave me something to do

I capture at 712x480 using HuffyUV then I use AviSynth and CCE SP for the final MPEG-2 DVD spec file.

With THE OMEGA MAN I cut off a lot of junk on the sides (image didn't go completely from left to right) and the black on the top and bottom and added "fresh" black with AviSynth scripting.

I don't understand why do you need 16x9 TV to watch widescreen DVDs?

And I don't get it why do you ADD new black bars (thus youre making it widescreen 4x3) and waste a bit of video bitrate on them instead of making 16x9 picture?
You do know that dvd players can be hooked to a 4x3 tv and watching 16x9 widescreen movie is automatically shown as 4x3 with *fresh/pure/perfect* black bars on top and bottom of picture, right?

The DVD of THE OMEGA MAN is 16x9 WS with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio but my LaserDisc is 4:3 WS with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

Since I don't have a 16x9 WS TV all I was trying to say is that I feel no need to upgrade by buying the 16x9 WS DVD when I can simply capture my 4:3 WS LaserDisc and make my own DVD.

Also it makes no sense to encode the capture with the original black that is on all 4 sides of the image. Thus I cut it out and replaced it with "fresh" black.

I decided to keep it 4:3 WS because I don't have a 16x9 WS TV. I could convert the 4:3 WS LaserDisc to 16x9 WS but there is no benefit in that for me. When I get a 16x9 WS TV then I'll just go buy the DVD.

I don't see the confusion here

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[SatStorm]

FulciLives, your first screenshot shows the title of the movie and the letters are having that degrade or something...
I have sometimes to deal with this issue, mostly on commercial VHS tapes. I use spatial filters to "fix" that flow, which unfortunatelly is not the best ones. How you deal with that kind of "noise"?

[FulciLives]

How you deal with that kind of "noise"?

To be honest I just ignore it!

I seem to only notice that "cross-hatch" pattern on RED-ish colored titles and it is there to begin with when it comes to VHS and even LaserDisc. The BT chipset might be adding to it a bit (it sure doesn't help) but mostly it is there already.

I just ignore it. The titles are just the titles. Not like you get this through out the movie.

The only filter I really ever use is Convolution3D and it was used for the screen shots I posted above.

The only other filter for AviSynth I used once (with great results) was DeSpot which I used on a VHS capture that was a recording of a cable TV channel that had a lot of static. It almost completely removed the static.

Oh and sometimes I will use DeComb when I need to do IVTC etc. but usually I just leave NTSC captures interlaced even when they have a 3-2 pattern. Nothing worse than an IVTC that doesn't work well.

But that is really about it when it comes to my filter use.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[SatStorm]

This problem appears on some music videos that have "pure" blue or Red areas. So, I have this problem -rarelly- on video too!
I "manage" to solve it with filters, but not perfect (and we all want perfection, right?). Since I see this "noise" only on certain commercial tapes, I bet it is there the first place and I try to solve a problem which is a part of the picture now!

[SLK001]

I notice these artifacts too, on mostly "pure" colors on laserdisks. If they really bother me, I apply a spatial smoother to these sequences to "average" them out.

[SatStorm]

I use spatial filters too (the only way to make an average of it) but that **** up the whole to a point that I don't know what is better.
This kind of "artifacts" are among the few things I don't know how to solve completely, or without a quality waste