Capture card quality

[fredandfred]

I have a firewire capture card in my PC that I purchased through eBay. I think I paid less than $10 for it. Is it true with capture cards that you get what you pay for. I am using a Sharp digital camcorder that does an excellent job but when capturing to my hard drive and take the resolution to 640x480 or higher it looks terrible. Is that possibly from being cheap and not spending decent money on a good capture card or is digital digital no matter what card I use?

Thanks.

[FOO]

A Firewire card is not really a capture card. It's just
a digital interface. They all have (almost) the same
chip in them, and are really all the same .
Unless yours is actually broken, which is unlikely.

[fredandfred]

That is true. Bad wording on my part. I wonder then why my video seems so compressed when I don't have any compression set on the PC.

[FOO]

The DV specification is 720 x 480
You should transfer it raw like that.

....if that camera is sending DV .
What sofware are you using to grab it ?

[fredandfred]

I have tried Windows Movie Maker, MovieShop, MyDVD they all just don't seem very clear and distinct like digital should.

[SeeingMole]

I think it would be a good idea if you told the model of your camera so we could check whenever it's actually a DV camera or not....

[FOO]

Try DVIO. its too simple to do anything but get raw DV.

I have sony Hi8. It compresses to MPEG1 and sends it down
a USB 1
needless to say , that's useless. Looks terrible.

[The village idiot]

Is what you are seeing interlaced video?

[AmeliaK]

. . . .take the resolution to 640x480 or higher it looks terrible. . . .

When you say the quality looks terrible what are you using to view the video and what OS are you using. The reason I ask is when I first captured Firwire it was on a Win98SE machine and media player by default displayed the avi capture in Half DVD format, so when you increased the size of the window the quality was very poor. Win2000 and XP also tend to do the same.

Cheers
Amelia

[fredandfred]

I am using a Sharp model VL-WD250. My OS is XP. Whenever I play a video I have shot to a TV the picture seems fine. As soon as I upload it to some software and enlarge it, it stinks. Maybe I'm just being too picky but I have burnt one DVD and it looks the same.

[zanos]

Not sure what you are doing wrong but it's not the firewire card. That's just a means for your camera to communicate with your computer nothing more.

[FOO]

Why do you have to enlarge it. There's a clue.
what size does it start as ?

[fredandfred]

Only that when I want to watch it full screen it's nasty. I have watched some examples, such as on this web site, that looks decent. I was wanting to at least come close to that. I did download DVIO and it helped but still no cigar. Shouldn't digital video be pretty much clean and sharp?

[FOO]

I just read the manual. The first time they discuss
a PC they want you to connect it with a RS232 cable !
When they discuss DV they have 2 camcorders connected together.
Weird .

[FOO]

You may want to get the Panasonic DV codec too.

[lordsmurf]

A Firewire card is not really a capture card. It's just
a digital interface. They all have (almost) the same
chip in them, and are really all the same .
Unless yours is actually broken, which is unlikely.

I wish more people would realize this.

[AmeliaK]

Try this:

1. Double click on one of the avi files and Media Player will open up.
2. In media player go to the Menu and click on TOOLS => OPTIONS
3. Now Click on the PERFORMANCE tab then click on the button ADVANCED
4. You will see a slider bar for DIGITAL VIDEO slide it to LARGE.
5. Now apply this setting and exit and re-play your AVI's

Did this help?

Best Regards
Amelia

[fredandfred]

Sorry it didn't. I wish there was a place I could place a sample for all to see. This way I would know if there is an issue or I am just being too picky.

[slnorth]

I'm kinda new at this still but it is my understanding that DV cams record at a 480x540 resolution give or take and I think that is at the high end on today's models under $2000.

I understand the problem lies in the original resolution and that is why the TV looks better than the computer. How exactly this works I don't know but perhaps someone can explain it better.

I have the same problem with my kids' football game video in transferring it from my Panasonic pv-DV701 to DVD. It's a few years old and I think the resolution is even less than I mentioned above.

Good luck.