Widescreen capturing problems

[jjjamiem]

Tools:
DVR: SA8300HD
Capture device: DAC-100
Software: Vegas 4
Using: S-Video

Problem: I can't get a real widescreen capture, despite Vegas telling me it's 720x480.

Even if I change the aspect ratio in the capture preferences, I'm getting gray bars on the top and bottom of the video and it just stretches it out as though it's 640x480 stretched.

Is it a limitation of the DAC-100, Vegas 4? Or am I not finding the right settings?

[jagabo]

Your source isn't wide screen. It's 4:3 with black bars at the top and bottom of the frame leaving a wide screen image in the middle. The DAC-100 is capturing that as the 4:3 image it is.

If you want to convert that to widescreen DVD you have to crop 60 lines off the top and bottom of the frame, resize what's left (720x360) to 720x480, and encode as MPEG telling the encoder it's an anamorphic 16:9 frame.

[jjjamiem]

Yeah, I also just read that elsewhere that 8300hd s-video (and composite) is always 4:3 output. Too bad the firewire port isn't good on mine yet.

I'll have to just edit or try and use composite (which I'm leaning towards to get better quality anyway).

Thanks for the reply.

[edDV]

Yeah, I also just read that elsewhere that 8300hd s-video (and composite) is always 4:3 output. Too bad the firewire port isn't good on mine yet.

I'll have to just edit or try and use composite (which I'm leaning towards to get better quality anyway).

Thanks for the reply.

S-Video is better than composite, stay with that for recording. Maybe your DVD player or HDTV will display 480i 4:3 letterbox as widescreen. Check the zoom functions.

[FulciLives]

Pretty much all the cable and satellite boxes out there will only output HDTV in 16x9 WS when it is outputing it as a HDTV signal.

As soon as you tell it to output 480i ... no matter if you are using composite, S-Video or even component ... the output will be 4:3 WS instead of 16x9 WS.

That's just how it is with just about all the cable/satellite boxes.

The only "real-time" work-around that I know of is to buy an external scaler which can take the 16x9 WS HDTV output of the cable/satellite box and scale it to 480i while keeping it 16x9 WS ... of course the problem with an external scaler is that they are like $1,000 or more last time I checked into the prices.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[MozartMan]

Problem: I can't get a real widescreen capture, despite Vegas telling me it's 720x480.

jjjamiem,

If you are trying to capture real widescreen it means you are trying to capture Hi Definition, becasue all SD from cable is 4x3.

Why don't you just use Firewire output from your SA8300HD to Firewire input of your PC and use CapDVHS program.
This way you are going to have orignal widescreen MPEG video without re-encoding and then you can downconvert to SD with HDTV2DVD if you need to.

I have HD DVR from Comcast and it works like a charm.
I made a lot of DVDs for my kid using this method: recording in HD and then downconverting to SD with HDTV2DVD.
What's interesting that quality of resulting DVDs sometimes better than original DVDs.

Or may be your SA8300HD doesn't have Firewire???

Look at this thread:

SA 8300 HD Tips & Tricks -- SARA: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=471859

[jjjamiem]

I'd love to be able to do that, but I just can't get it working.

I have XP SP1 and installed the drivers from here. It installs the tuner fine, but there was a problem installing the Tuner AV/C Panel "Cannot start this hardware" (code 10).

I can open up CapDVHS and it sees the tuner, but if I hit "rec" everything stays blank under "data info" and it records an empty mpg.

[MozartMan]

I'd love to be able to do that, but I just can't get it working.

I have XP SP1 and installed the drivers from here. It installs the tuner fine, but there was a problem installing the Tuner AV/C Panel "Cannot start this hardware" (code 10).

jjjamiem,

In my setup with Comcast Motorola DCT-3416 HD DVR I have three devices in Device Manager on my PC:

Tuner AV/C Device (under Imaging Devices)
AV/C Panel (under Other Devices)
Unknown Device (under Other Devices)

WinXP couldn't install drivers for the last two, so I disabled AV/C Panel and Unknown Device because I don't need them. I only need Tuner AV/C Device (not AV/C Panel).

I can open up CapDVHS and it sees the tuner, but if I hit "rec" everything stays blank under "data info" and it records an empty mpg.

It happened to me too several times. So, what I did, I reset DVR and restarted my PC. And I was able to record after that.

[jjjamiem]

After a shut down of my computer and hard reboot of the cable box I was able to get CapDVHS to get data info but then it crashes right away I guess I'm one step closer if nothing else.

Ever run into this?

[MozartMan]

After a shut down of my computer and hard reboot of the cable box I was able to get CapDVHS to get data info but then it crashes right away I guess I'm one step closer if nothing else.

Ever run into this?

No.

One idea. Upgrade to XP SP2. As far as I remember, original XP and XP SP1 had some issues with Firewire.

[jjjamiem]

I have a laptop with SP2 I can test out, but this computer can't be upgraded. I attempted it once and nothing ran properly afterwards. I plan on getting a new one within a month or two anyway, so if my laptop can handle it, I'm set anyway.