Newbie to capturing - quality of capture in question?

[IanJ]

Hi all,

I'm new to video capture, couple of questions about quality.

I have a VHS VCR, composite output from Scart driving my Radeon 8500DV and a small 15" portable television.

I'm running Win2k with a desktop res of 1152*864 (17" monitor). If I use say PowerVCR to view at DVD PAL profile, and viewing 1:1 on screen the display isn't nearly as clean and as nice as on my portable tv. There seems to be far more detail on the tv, and if I go full screen on my PC monitor it's just plain full of artifacts and colour bleed. Why is that? I know composite isn't the best thought at least since I was driving from the same composite source I'd get at least the same result, if not better on my PC monitor.

Years ago (Win98 days) I had a Tekram VideoCap C210 capture card, and I just remember it having far better quality (it was 640*480 max capture). In TV mode (also using the composite input) it would render a lovely TV picture in a box on my PC's display, better than my actual portable TV.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Ian.

[Mavrick]

Your monitor is MUCH higher resolution than your TV or VCR. When you blow it up to full screen (or larger than the source resolution), you will get a distorted image, just like blowing up a photograph to big. The reason you don’t see this on a regular TV, is they have the same resolution, be it a 12” or a 52” (unless your talking HDTV).

I have the AIW 8500DV card too... It does a great job 4 me.

Just remember to capture in AVI mode and not MPEG, or your quality will suffer. Use uncompressed AVi or Hufyuv codec to capture.


Hope this helps.

[IanJ]

Hi,

Thanks for the tips, I'll give AVI a go.

My current workflow has been:
VideoStudio5 (PAL DVD at highest res) to capture to Mpeg,
SpruceUp DVD to build a title and import the Mpeg,
Burn to DVD-R using Nero.

I'd take a guess that with all this manipulation of the Mpeg I'm losing quality because on playing the DVD on my set-top DVD player on my widescreen TV it's absolute rubbish quality compared to the original VHS video on the same TV.

Ian.

[Mavrick]

Yepp… You’ll want to do it something like this for best results:

1. Capture AVI

2. Edit video

3. encode to MPEG
(you can use Video Studio for this. Just make sure you have the latest updates from Ulead. OR you can use TMPG to encode…)

4. burn


The results will be far better than what you’ve been getting so far…


If you need anything else... Just post it.


Mavrick

[dvfan]

Mavrick can you tell me how to capture to avi using Media Studio Pro the Capture program?

[Mavrick]

Uhmmm... What r you having problems with? Give me a lil' more info, and I'll give it my best shot...

[dvfan]

Well i want to capture to avi using Media Studio capture app, then i want to edit it with media studio then burn of course but my concern is capturing to avi

[Mavrick]

Well i want to capture to avi using Media Studio capture app, then i want to edit it with media studio then burn of course but my concern is capturing to avi

Uhmm.... Well... I try and give you things to check...

When you open up the capture video app...

Goto:

SETUP - Video Format - Frame Size: 640x480
SETUP - Video Source - (tuner/composite/svideo)
SETUP - Video Properties - Video Capture PIN - Output Size: 640x480
SETUP - Video Properties - Audio Capture Filter: Line In

Change Capture Plug-in to: Direct Show


Then capture away... Then pull capture video into the Editior and edit then save as MPEG...

Done...

[dvfan]

Thanks one more thing please, im having problem capturing using Svideo, all the video comes out Black & White, do you know what causes that?

[Mavrick]

Sorry.... not off hand... did you try another cable?

[IanJ]

Mavrick (and others),

You've been a great help, I'm getting to grips with capturing and am using VirtualDub with the Pegasus PicVideo codec, however, one small question.

I tested a minute or so of AVI capture and the results are great.....but the file size is HUGE.

I'm set for 720*576 (PAL and with a view to burna DVD later) and 25fps.
Audio is speech mostly so 11k, 8bit Mono.

1gb after just a couple of minutes!!!, this is a 90minute VHS video......I thought my 120gb was bug.....but!

Any suggestions, is everyone else playing with HUGE Avi files?

Ian.

[Mavrick]

IanJ,

Sounds like your capturing uncompressed video. Nothing wrong with that, so long as you got the disk space for the project you’re working on.

If you want to make the capture file smaller, but want to keep the quality of a looseless avi. Then you need to download and install the Huffyuv Codec. You can find a link to it under tools... This will give you 3:1 compression, but keep the quality for encoding with TMPG or whatever you encode with.


Hope this helps...

Mavrick

[medievil]

I've had the best results with the Main Concept DV Codec. It's more like 8.6 to 1 compression, but looks completely lossless in every respect.