What are the capabilities of my canon cam+++

[Hunter69]

I have a Canon zr65

I have read that it support Analog to DV conversion.

I am beginning to setup to capture home videos on my computer.

I love a good cature.

I am adding a firewire card to my computer. For my home videos I plan to capture via firewire. Now does audio and via transmit via firewire or is audio connected via a different connection??

Eventually (not long) I am going to want to capture and transfer VHS to DVD. On the Canon ZR65 it has Svideo I/O and firewire I/O. I am wondering how a standard vcr would connect via these ports??? I read on a thread here that a person had a vcr connected to there cam (it supported analog to dv conversion) via firewire, how did they do that..

For software/hardware I have looked at:
1. Pinnacle Studio AV/DV 9
2. Canopus ADVC-110 Advanced Ditigal Video Converter (a little out of my price range but I keep wondering if the capture would be that much better than finding a way to get my cam to do the conversion???)+ I would need to buy more software on top of the $299.00
3. ADS Pyro AV-Link Video Capture Device- don't know much about this item. 159.00+ i don't believe it comes with software
4. Video magician- have not been able to find much on this product.


I want nice captures but I don't want to spend a fortune. I am kind of a videophile on a low budget.

Thanks for your time, experience and knowledge.

[daamon]

Hi Hunter69,

Welcome to the forums.

Q1: Yes, audio will (should) be transmitted via firewire.

Q2: Connect your VHS to the S-Video - that'll be your analog input. The firewire will then be the digital output. Have the camera in "Player" (playback) mode.

Software / hardware: Can't help as not familiar. Sorry. Check out lordsmurf's site: www.digitalfaq.com for all things capture. Maybe even PM him and point him to this thread - he'll be able to help.

Good luck.

[Hunter69]

Great response. I appreciate the link.

One other question that comes to mind. Svideo is video only, so does a person connect the sound through the input on the soundcard?? I get it for best capture quality a person would need a SVHS vcr or convert the composite to svideo, am I correct in my thinking??

Thanks again

[redwudz]

For hardware to get the video to the computer, you just need the Firewire card. Sound is on the Firewire cable.

If the camera accepts SVHS input, then you also need to plug in RCA cables for the sound into the camera. You would then plug in the Firewire cable to the computer for passthrough.

Yes, you would need a SVHS VCR to get the benefit of the SVHS output, though there may be adapters that would work with a regular VHS deck, with reduced quality.

You can also output the Firewire video to some DVD setttop recorders directly.

No need for the ADVC if the Firewire passthrough works.

Software for cheap: WinDV for transfer, Virtualdub Mod for simple edit, filtering, frameserving. Frameserving saves you hard drive space.

For quality encode, authoring of DVD, TMPGEnc encoder, TMPGEnc DVD Author (Or equivalent) Or you can use something like Pinnacle, etc.