capturing video

[rouch]

I´m buying a Canopus ADVC-110 analog to digital external video converter. I´m gonna use this to convert old VHS to DVD.
The thing is that this product has very good quality but no mpeg2 hardware encoders and gives to the computer dv(.avi) format via fireware. So because of the space on the HD and because it´s the compression used for DVD, I need to capture the video directly in a mpeg2 file. I´d like to know which program could i use to do this with quality.
Is the speed of my internal HD a problem for this (details below)?. Using the external HD to save the files would be better?.
I´m thinking of using Vegas Video to edit the videos.

I owned a laptop Toshiba Tecra A4 1.73 GHz. Memory 512 Mb. Internal Hd 5400 rpm. External HD Lacie 250 Gb 7200 rpm 8 Mb buffer.

Thank you.

[redwudz]

You could use Mainconcept encoder to convert DV to MPEG-2 on the fly. Your hard drive may not be a problem, but CPU speed might be. It is very CPU intensive. The second problem is editing MPEG-2 is a lot harder than DV. You would probably be better off using a larger external hard drive for saving the DV and encoding the DV from that after editing.

[edDV]

If you haven't purchased the ADVC yet and are determined to use that laptop, I would recommend going to an external MPeg2 hardware encoding device instead.

Your laptop has limited speed for realtime software MPeg2 encoding. Mainconcept's own MPeg2 encoder product has "issues" with the ADVC. It has no provision to turn off device control so hangs when capturing from the ADVC, waiting for it to cue tape (i.e assuming it is a camcorder).

The best Mainconcept implementation for realtime MPeg2 capture from the ADVC that I have found is ULead's as found in Video Studio and DVD MovieFactory 4, but that laptop may not be up to the processing job. My 2.4GHz desktop seems just fast enough. Mileage will vary.

Transferring ADVC DV streams to an external drive should work but may not. A firewire external drive stands a better chance than a USB2 drive for long DV transfers. CPU processes could interfere with the transfer.

If you go with the ADVC, you would still need to encode the MPeg2 after editing. That will take a very long time on a 1.7GHz laptop and your machine will be running very hot.

So all in all, I think an external hardware MPeg2 capture device would be a more practical solution for a laptop.

That said, I capture NTSC via an ADVC and transfer to ULead Video Studio for real time MPeg2 encoding (7Mb/s) with very good results using a 2.4GHz Celeron desktop. Any higher compression results in buffer overrun and frameloss. I would need a faster processor for higher MPeg2 compression.