Capturing Video Problems

[tghinis]

When I Rip a video from my panasonic DV camcorder via firewire to a DVD, the results are as good as the DV tape. When I try to capture to an avi files and then edit the Video, my burns to dvd are very blurry. Almost like image lag or ghosting when there is any motion on the screen. I have tried ulead video 7 and the latest nero 6 free demo with the same results. What can I do to get the same qualaty after editing when I burn to DVD. HELP!

[Tommyknocker]

You may have to change your AVI codec. Although DV has very good capturing quality, other AVI codecs can become very close in quality. Huffyuv does a good job, as well as some of the later DivX codecs. Although if you check your Video Studio Project Settings, there is also a seting for quality, and is defaulted at the 70% range.

[tghinis]

I downloaded the Huffyuv codec and installed it in my computer and then proceeded to encode edited video captured and created with ULEAD video 7 and then burned it directly to a dvd-rw to test. IT WORKED! It took care of the image lag and appeared fairly sharp on my 27 inch TV. I now have another problem. MY 40 gig hard drive could only hold about 30 minutes of the file output by the Huffyuv codec ? It seemsed to average about 1 gig of harddrive space per minute. Is this normal! Is there a setting for compression with this codec that I did not set. Is there another codec that might work as well with better compression? Thanks for all your help so far.

[FOO]

Try the Picvideo MJPEG codec. it's not free but has a demo
Makes much smaller files I use compression #19

[indolikaa]

You will have massive file sizes even with Huffyuv. Follow FOOs suggestion and you'll probably be pretty happy with the results.

[tghinis]

I tried Picvideo MJPEG and it does work well and creates a slightly smaller file size. Being that I only have 40 gig HD dedicated to video editing, I went ahead and bought a 120gig HD today to use Just for my video projects. I do have two more question. What is the penalty in terms of video quality if I save my edited video in MPEG 2 format on my HD utilizing the ULEAD video 7 MPEG 2 converter set at variable encoding at a max of 9meg a second. And secondly... What software package do you find offers the best capture edit and burn functions if such a thing does exist in one box!!! Thanks to everybody for all your help so far.

[Dreath]

I haven't used Video Studio 7 yet but if you convert it to MPEG2 with a high enough bit rate, the video quality will be much better than MPEG1. The only drawback is that the file will be bigger in size. I've recorded video via firewire from my DV camcorder into Video Studio 6 and then saved it as a MPEG2 DVD format without any major problems.

Remember that the higher the bit rate, the larger the file. The only thing a higher bit rate will give you is better images during fast moving scenes. For example, if you are recording a lot of still images or slow moving objects, a max variable bit rate of 3000 should be fine. However, if you a recording a football game or a racing event with a lot of fast moving objects, I would up it to 7000 to 9000.

Do some experimenting and have fun. Good luck.