Computer speed for capturing

[finnigan001]

I was just wondering what would be the minimum and recomended computer requirements for capturing lossless from a camcorder or video recorder through a capture card.

I have a athlon1800+ and 512mb of sdram. I was wondering if this was alright.

Thanks in advance, TIM

[djmattyb]

You should be just fine. I have an old Pentium III 733 with 512 MB RAM and I can capture 720 x 480 Huffy Encoded video without dropping frames. If I can capture high quality video then almost anyone can do it!

-Matt

[Fozzee]

I take it mpeg2 capturing is far more CPU intensive?

Fozzee

[djmattyb]

Actually, I just recently downloaded the newest version of MMC. (I have an AIW Radeon 8500) They made changes to the software that now allows you to capture 720x480 in full dvd quality and it never drops any frames on my computer. I don't know how they did it and why the software didn't do it before. I read on an earlier post somewhere that the video card has hardware that helps the encoding, but the software didn't implement that feature and now it does. I don't know if that is true or not, but I am just glad it works!



I just captured this at 720x480 at 8 M Bit/Second variable bit rate and it's MP2 compressed. The photo had to be resized 50% so that it would be under 50K, but still, I can capture full DVD quality in realtime.

[Bstansbury]

Djmattyb,... What version of MMC did you get? What OS and system are you using? What capture settings are you using,... MPEG2, VBR, delinterlace,?????

Thanks for the info.

[djmattyb]

My MMC is version 7.6, OS - Windows XP Professional. My hard drives are formatted with NTFS.

The capture settings I use to capture full DVD in real time are the default settings in MMC. I just select 'DVD' under Recording Quality. It's 720x480, MPEG2, 8Mbit/sec variable bit rate, and it has deinterlacing and visual masking turned on.

It works, but for something to look really good on my system, I like to run it through TMPEGEnc beacuse it has such a good noise filter. If you can get really clean video into your computer, (which I can't ) then recording straight to DVD quality MPEG2 using MMC is a great option.

[oldfart13]

Running it through TMPGEnc introduces an additional encoding step that many people want to avoid. If we're going to go that route again it's best to cap as a Huffy or MJpeg AVI and run it through VirtualDub as it has the best filters, then frameserver into TMPGEnc or CCE for final rendering. Too bad TMPGEnc can't just load up the VDub filters. It would make that program so much better...

[djmattyb]

Every week, I record 24 at 720x480 using Huffy compression using VirtualDub, then I cut the commercials and encode with some custom settings. This produces a super high quality XVCD. I agree that if TMPGEnc only had the editing capability of VirtualDub it would be the perfect piece of software. I wish that you could select an area (section of commercials) and cut them out, and do this as many times as you want in a file. TMPGEnc allows you to do this with the merge and cut feature (which you can only do once in an open file), but it's not as easy as VirtualDub's mark in, mark out, delete, repeat.

[G-man]

Maybe I don't quite understand what you mean, but .... recent versions of TMPGEnc have an excellent linear editing function under SETTING... ADVANCED... SOURCE RANGE (check it and then double click on it). Its very quick and easy to do multiple cuts; I use it all the time to remove commercials.

[djmattyb]

Using source range, say I want to cut out 2 sets of commercials. How would I do it? In virtual dub I set a beginning and an end and hit delete. Then I move further down the timeline to the 2nd set of commecrials and select the beginning and end and hit the delete key. Then I can save the new file that doesn't have commercials.

In TMPGEnc you can only select one range at a time. That doesn't help because all TV shows have more than one commercial break. If you know a way around this let me know. Also, to me --> selecting a source range, outputting it, then selecting another source range and outputting that, repeat, repeat, and then join all the files at the end seems like the only way to do this in TMPGEnc, which is why VirtualDub is so much better.

[paulgab]

@ djmattyb

You can also cut multiple commercials in TMPGenc. Right you can only select one range at a time but using Cut editing, Cut currently selected area, you can remove all the unwanted portion (ie commercials) on a video clip. Works just like VDub. The problem is if your editing MPEG you have to be very accurate, must cut only on the Key (I) Frame and TMPGenc doesnt show whether frame is I, P or B.

Oh best alternative when editing MPEG, is to use VDub_MPEG2. It shows info of the frame (I,P or B) you want to cut in to.

[djmattyb]

paulgab said

using Cut editing, Cut currently selected area, you can remove all the unwanted portion (ie commercials) on a video clip. Works just like VDub.

Where do I get to that? I don't think I've ever seen that in TMPGenc before! I am running TMPGEnc Plus 2.510.49.157, Core version 1.94.144. Setp by step directions on how to get to this part of TMPGenc would be appreciated! Thanks.

-Matt

[G-man]

djmattyb -
See my post above on how to do mutliple Cuts in TMPGEnc ....

The key is to both select "Source" (put a check mark next to it) and then double click on it to actually invoke the function.

[djmattyb]

Found it! I think I didn't see it before because I didn't have the most recent version! Oops!

This is schweeeet!