Slow laptop, how to make a DVD from camcorder (Composite)

[wolfmangk]

Hello,

I have a Pentium III 800 MHz w/ 512 M of ram, and 6 free gigs of HD space. Integrated video card. I just bought a PCMCIA video capture card that has a tuner and built in composite/svideo/ r/l audio inputs.

Instead of using the program that came with it, I am using virtualdub. I have about an hours worth of video I need to put onto a dvd. Unfortunately, whatever file I output, the video is choppy, and the audio is choppy as well. This is sort of par for the course with this old laptop, as hardly any video plays well on it at all. However, usually the audio is played back pretty well, which makes me cautious to burn any video I make onto DVD.

Vdub says it has not dropped any frames, and it seems to be recording alright, and the audio that is captured is definately from the video... but I have some questions, actually..

Should I set the output file as large as possible to be burned to DVD? I am using a composite RCA output from a High-8 camcorder.

I simply do not have a faster computer and cannot afford one. Is there any way to tell if the video I recorded from the camcorder is going to come out right, without actually wasting a dvd on it?

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for recording my video this way? I really would like to maximize my setup based on my existing hardware, I am trying to do this as much on a budget as possible.


Thank you for your help.




Edit-I opened the video in the vdub program, and it seems to play pretty well. However, all of the audio is compressed, and played back real fast, all in the first seconds of the video. How odd!

[edDV]

Keep trying uncompressed capture in segments and see if it works for you. Odds are slim at full resolution. Try 352x480. Hard disks of that vintage have limited space and will allow only short segment capture/processing. Consider Huffyuv software compression to get data rate down to a range acceptable for a PIII notebook hard drive.

The modern solution to your problem would use an encoding capture device like a Hauppauge PVR-USB2 or equiv.
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvrusb2.html

This kind of capture device takes capture and MPeg encoding load off the computer by delivering fully encoded DVD spec MPeg2. The computer can then be used to edit, author and burn the DVD.

A PCMCIA (PC card) USB2 adapter would be required.

[SingSing]

A P3 laptop normally don't come with DVD burner, so capture card only get you half way.

I will return the PCMCIA video tuner card, and get a DVD recorder.

[wolfmangk]

Thank you for the replies! I installed the Huffyuv, and will use it. I just noticed however, that my video camera has an svideo output (duh) and my capture card has a svideo input (duh). The audio is still seemingly all jumbled up and only at the beginning of the video. And yes, my laptop has a dvd burner, I purchased and installed it myself. Will i encounter even more problems with the svideo than I will with the composite, or will it make things easier?

[edDV]

...Will i encounter even more problems with the svideo than I will with the composite, or will it make things easier?

No S-video bypasses the Y/C splitter on the capture card thus improving quality with no affect on computation. Use S-Video over composite for everything other than Laserdisc.

[wolfmangk]

Excellent. Any ideas on why the audio is so weird? I have tried different sources and messing with the sync, but it always comes out the same.

[edDV]

Excellent. Any ideas on why the audio is so weird? I have tried different sources and messing with the sync, but it always comes out the same.

Probably the computer isn't keeping up and frames are being lost. Also, simple capture devices have no audio to video synchonization. The longer the capture the more likely audio will drift out of sync.

[wolfmangk]

Are you aware of any solutions for this? Itdoesn't seem like the audio is out of sync, so much as it takes the entire audio file for the whole video clip, and compresses it into the first few seconds of video.