Canopus ADVC-100 into Windows Movie Maker question...

[rmnowick]

All,
I have been using the Canopus ADVC-100 for a few weeks now. Primarily for 2 purposes. First is capturing from my Tivo and encoding into Pocket PC 240x320 format for transfer to Pocket PC. Second thing I have done is capture and encode into:

Windows Media Video 640x480 at 30fps

This last I use for playback on the computer. There appears to be a higher resolution selectable, which is:

Windows Media Video (NTSC) 720X480 at 30fps

I haven't used this setting yet. The question that I have is as follows. I am borrowing a friends Hi-8 camcoder over the weekend to transfer all my old Hi-8 video onto the computer for eventual conversion to DVD's. I don't have a DVD burner just yet, so I will just store it on the computer for a few weeks.

What format should I do the capture in to get the best possible resolution in Windows Movie Maker? And secondly, I have looked through this forum periodically and believe that there may be much better capture software available than WMM. If there is a better free solution for good hi rate capture can someone please recommend the program, and also the settings?

Thanks in advance,
Robert

[redwudz]

The ADVC-100 does a native transfer of 720X480 at 29.97fps. I use DVIO or similar to transfer to my harddrive. That would be your best resolution. You can encode it to DVD specs with TMPGEnc or leave it in the native format for future encodes. WMM is not a good choice for encodes.

[FulciLives]

You aren't gonna be able to do this quicky and easily by borrowing a camcorder for a weekend ...

The problem is a proper DV capture (see post by redwudz) is about 13GB (give or take) per hour.

So since most Hi8 video tapes are 60 mintues that 13GB per video tape.

How fast before YOUR hard drive fills up?

Even if you only do a few at time, convert them to MPEG-2 DVD and then BURN to a DVD ... well you don't have a DVD burner yet and even if you did it can take a LONG time to encode the DV to MPEG-2 DVD spec using a program such as TMPGEnc or CCE etc. The encoding time depends on the settings you use etc. but if you want to use MAX settings to get the best image possible then you are probably talking an overnight encode for each video just to get it from DV to MPEG-2. Again encoding time is also dependant on your computer speed too. But the point is it will always be a lot slower than real time unless you lower the quality by using simple MPEG-2 settings and you do want good quality right?

So you can't possibly put ALL of your Hi8 video tapes on your HDD at once.

So you might want to re-think your strategy here.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[rmnowick]

Redwedz,
Thanks for the good info. I used the DVIO.exe software to do the capture to an AVI file. For some reason I kept getting garbled audio in WMM when capturing to AVI. I spent a couple hours trying to debug it then tried the DVIO.exe program which I will use for capturing. Even when I use WMM to edit the AVI from DVIO and then save it I find it is still corrupted.

I'll do the capturing today then try the TMPGenc software for MPEG2 encoding and/or something else for the actual DVD authoring. Thanks for the tips. Any further advice for encoding/authoring would be appreciated. I ended up buying a cheap ($230) new Samsung Hi8 to use over the next few weeks for the project. I'll just sell it on Ebay when I'm done as I don't plan on doing any further video acquisition. I might get $120 for it so the use of the new machine will only cost me about $100.

Robert

[akrasna]

I am using DVio - but it is a bit too plain for me.
I want the raw cature of dvio with a bit more ...
preview screen a timed capture.

It looks like Scenalyzer has it , but I was hoping for a free product.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Allen