Blurry Captures and Burns

[akita256]

I am a novice and have tried a number of capture devices and editing software to convert old 8mm videotapes to DVD's. I thought I could buy software that would do this simply and straightforward. It has been a horrid and frustrating experience. I have a 2.4Ghz Celeron processor, an MSI FX5700LE video card, a new 160g hard drive, a new Creative Audigy sound card, 512M of RAM, running Windows XP PRO SP2, and a new Sony DVD writer. I have tried Pinnacle v9, ULEAD VideoStudio 8, Windows MovieMaker, Nero Vision Express, ATI TV Wonder Pro capture device, and Plextor's ConvertX PX-M402U capture device with their WinDVD software. All of my captured images end up blurry on my PC monitor when in full-screen display. My monitor is set at 1024x768. When burned to DVD, the images are not crisp at all on my TV....the are "washed out" looking. The pixelation is just bad! Any clues as to why I cannot get sharp, detailed images? Do all people have these kind of problems? Many Thanks!

[victoriabears]

without wishing to generalize like crazy-the main advntages of using a computer against a dvd recorder are that you can do more than 2 hours in good quality and use hardware processors for poor source image quality.

If you are happy to record two hours at a time and the source (vhs or whatever) is good, use a good dvd recorder.

My suggestions are ILO/Daytec, not panny.

[thecoalman]

All of my captured images end up blurry on my PC monitor when in full-screen display. My monitor is set at 1024x768. When burned to DVD, the images are not crisp at all on my TV....the are "washed out" looking. The pixelation is just bad! Any clues as to why I cannot get sharp, detailed images? Do all people have these kind of problems? Many Thanks!

You can't judge final output by how it looks on a monitor, I see you have burned a disc, How does it compare to the original when viewed from cam to TV. If it's close then that's about what you can expect, you can't make it better, at least not significantly.

For further advice you need to suplly more informaion such as your capture settings, what your encoding settings are etc. There's many reasons why your not getting good results.

[edDV]

You only gave us clues to your problem. As coalman said, watching on a computer monitor introduces all the TV to progressive RGB display issues and is no help.

Create a DVD, play it on a DVD player and compare it to the 8mm camcorder connected to the same TV and tell us what the problem is.

[Nelson37]

In the ATI software, Video section, you will find controls for changing the color saturation and brightness and tint, as well. Increasing color saturation (try 8 right cursor taps from the default setting) should cure the "washed out" look.

However, you cannot use the PC monitor to judge the results of these changes. You must make a test disk to play on the DVD player. After a few dozen of these, you will be able to make allowances for the fundamental difference in the display characteristics of the two systems.

Pixelation is the result of the bitrate being too low. Nowhere in your post have you given the specified capture bitrate. Also the resolution is very important, as bitrate must rise for an increase in resolution.

The problems you are having are not unique, they have been mostly solved by dozens of users here. Try doing some searching, and LOTS of reading, you will find what you need.

The simple point that you have not mentioned the bitrate tells me you need a deeper understanding on the mechanics of what you are trying to do.

[junkmalle]

The Plextor Convertx uses a blend deinterlace by default. That will make any capture look a bit fuzzy and any time there's any motion the picture will look like a double exposure.

Do not adjust the caputure device so that the brightness, contrast, and colors look good on your computer monitor. If you do so the image will be washed out and de-saturated on TV.

[edDV]

Try the test capture with ATI TV Wonder using VideoStudio 8 or Nero Experss using default settings. Most of us can duplicate that process and compare.

You might want to start with capture settings AVI, YUY2 or UYVY at 704x480 or 640x480.

You might also want to capture the same clip from Pinnacle Studio 9
and Nero Express and compare results.

Import all capture files into the timeline of one of the programs and burn a DVD. Play back the DVD on a DVD player. Then compare the results vs the original camcorder playback on the same TV.

[akita256]

Thanks for your responses. I took my ATI TV Wonder Pro capture card back a couple of days ago and am now trying the Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U. The only thing I know about the settings is that I set it to NTSC DVD HQ, 720x480, frame rate of 29.97, bit rate of 7200kbits/sec, aspect ratio of 4:3, and the video codec is Intervideo MPEG video encoder. Actually, the DVD I just tried burning looks pretty good on the TV. I just want to do some simple editing of adding titles and chapters. I wanted to edit using Windows MovieMaker but when I load it and pull in the MPEG file, I can hear the audio but cannot see the video in the player screen.....it is just a blank screen. Is there a way to have MovieMaker read the MPEG file made by the PX-M402U?

[edDV]

Windows Movie maker is not a MPeg editor. It will try to convert everything to WMV and has no MPeg2 encoder.

Use any of the other three which will work with MPeg2 files.