Analogue Capture Problems - Need Help!!

[jupita]

Hi

I am capturiing from my analogue camcorder using my Nvidia VIVO card. I am currently using VideoStudio 7. I read a guide on here which was linked to DV capture and I believe that there are parts which do not apply and that I am possibly not doing the right thing.

My overall target is quality on DVD. In videostudio I originally captured to 720x576 (PAL) MPEG2. I've got some nice sized files. Not too big.

After reading a guide which advented using VirtualDub to edit the video afterwards to clean it up, I have tried capturing using VideoStudio 7 to AVI. I selected the cinepak codec as I'm going to use CCE to encode it to DVD and I know this works. Unfortunately after specifying quality @ 100 % I get a file which equates to a GB a minute. Hence after obtaining a 60GB file I have decided that its going to be unworkable as I only have 100GB available for all my videos and my editing needs to take different scenes from 4 different tapes as the tapes were not used chronologically and I need my scenes in time order on the final DVD.

So the crux is

Should I be using VS7 for this? Would VirtualDub do a better job?
Bearing in mind that quality is a major issue, what is the best approach so that I lose very little in the conversion. Nothing is fixed in terms of my approach and I'm in need of some serious guidance.

Thanks

-Darren

[Gees]

My overall target is quality on DVD.

That is everyone's target. :cD You won't see many posts that say otherwise. :c)

If you can not buy another (dedicated) drive right now, why not continue capturing to mpeg? Your source is analog? VHS? You can't improve any source, so straight to mpg would be fine for that.

Most everyone agrees capturing in avi is the ideal, but if your time/space are limited, you may not be able to. I always considered the cinepak codec very poor. If I need avi, I use huffy.

PS - I learned on VS7 and Tempgenc. If you can have large avi files on temporarily, you can still capture avi and edit then frameserve to Tempgenc through VirtualDub. That skips an interim step having to produce a 2nd, edited avi. Saves space and time.

I would have to recommend using PicVideo's MJPEG. I captured a movie that was just under 2 hours with the file size ending up just over 26 GB. The quality was maybe a hair under the original input. I then normally use Dr. DivX to convert to AVI. Overall quality through the whole process is the best I have ever seen (coming from VHS that is).

Oh, I forgot. I would use VirtualDub to put them in order. My recommendation would be to capture them individually then convert each to DivX (or your choice of MPEG-4 codec) then piece them back together with VirtualDub. You should get a very good production that way.

[Gees]

Hangover- You went from PicVideo's MJPEG to avi? What format & why? So, that was not for eventual use on a DVD?

I've seen a lot of people recommend PicVideo's MJPEG as well. :c)

I've never used it.

Well, I don't have a DVD writer, so my final product is either a DivX disc or I would make a VideoCD with TMPGEnc. You would just have to feed the captured video into whatever DVD writing program you use.

I do have a little transmitter/receiver set that "broadcasts" (if you can call 100 feet a broadcast) the video signal from my computer to my TV, so I can run DivX video off my computer. I am seriously considering getting a standalone DivX player (those look so sweet!)

[Gees]

Ahhh, I see. Thanks :c)

Jupita could skip that step since he/she wants to go to DVD mpg.