capture my dv camcorder film

[tvandang]

is there an application out there beside windows movie maker that i currently use to capture my dv camcorder film.

the best setting for my video film using windows movie maker would be "video for broadband ntsc (768)" at resolution of 320x240

i also have pinnacle 7 but the film is too big.

any suggestions!

thanks!

[bugster]

Windows movie maker will capture DV at full DV spec, certainly under XP anway. As capturing this way is really just a copy of digital data from one place (tape) to another (HD) then the capture App really shouldn't matter. Can't remember the exact details right at this momeent and can't check coz I am at work but IIRC, when sett capture quality you select 'special' or something like that, the another set of options appear which allow you to select full DV at 25Mps.

Hope this helps.

[tvandang]

you are right but i have tried each setting(Other...) even DV at 25Mps for a minute clip, it is quite large. there is no setting of divx or mpeg using windows movie maker.

so the only one that give me a quality movie clip is "Video for broadband NTSC (768 kbps)" but the resolution will only be 320x240. with this setting i can capture a 1 hr and 30 min of clip that will be about 483 MB.

the only thing that i don't like about it is the smaller resolution.

any suggestions! or are there other dv camcorder capturing applications that i can use that is better than windows movie maker.

i have captured so far 7 tapes of my vacation but i just hate the resolution

let me know...

thanks for your reply!

[sdmoore]

Hi tvandang,

DV is large (about 3.6MB/s) but full uncompressed analogue capture is a lot larger - something like 25MB/s !!

Many people (including myself) capture DV at full DV resolution and then convert it down to MPG or DIVX later using something like TMPGEnc or VirtualDub.

Cheers,

Scott

[tvandang]

with dv capture, a hour of movie, you will be a huge file and convert it to MPEG or DIVX using virtual dub or tempgenc will be still a file.

i have vacation movie tapes that are 90 minutes each(12 tapes). with windows movie maker, i can fit each tape on a cd with each clip about 483MB but the settings in this application are not many. so the best quality i can get out of this at a resolution of 320x240 with setting "video for broadband ntsc (768)".

any suggestions!

thanks!

[bugster]

tvaandang, yep DV footage is quite large, about 13G for an hour. But that said, if you want the best quality, that is how you must capture it. Compared to a lossles analog capture such as uncompressed or huffy it is relativley small. With the low price of HD's these days it shouldn't be much of a problem. Once captured you can re-encode to mpeg or divx and delete the original, freeing up all that disk space.

[miketree]

I agree with Bugster. Get a large HD, capture, convert to mpg ro divx etc, then delete your original dv files.

That's what I do.

If you want recomendation for video editing s/w try Video Factory. Great value for money!