Low quality capturing

[cezar1973]

Hi,
I tried to capure video from my camera SONY DCR-HC22E to my Toshiba Satellite A60 using firewire but the quality is almoust as bad as capturing via USB.
Should I buy more RAM since I only have 192 out of 256 the rest being video sharing?
Should the problem be the hard speed which is only 4200 RPM?
I tried also to capture from other video cams but the result was the same: the image is unclear and it frezes every few second (due to frame drop??).
Could any of you give some advice?
Sorry for my english.

[greymalkin]

what software are you using to capture with? I use winDV and I notice while capturing the quality looks awful (when it's "previewing" what it is capturing), but when I go and play the actual file back it looks fine. perhaps this is what you are seeing? Just a thought.

[redwudz]

Your computer specifications are a little slow and your memory is minimal, but that should have little or no effect on the quality, although it may contribute to dropping frames.

What are you doing the transfer with, which program? I would try WinDV and it should tell you if you are dropping frames. As for the quality issue, what are you playing it back with, which program? Your problem may be more with the viewing than the transfer. If you are sharing memory with your video card, then it may be the video card that is causing the playback problem by low memory. More memory could help in this case.

Transferring the video from a camcorder to a computer hard drive is similar to copying a file from one computer device to another. The difference between DV over a FireWire link is that there is no error checking like there would be on a computer file transfer. But that just means that dropping frames can happen, it shouldn't effect the video quality. You should get a exact copy of the video that is on the DV tape, maybe minus some dropped frames.

Try playing it back on a different player, maybe VLC. Watch your Task Manager and see if you are overloading your CPU or memory. If so, try putting a short DV file on a disc and see if it will play back properly on a faster computer.

And welcome to our forums.

[edDV]

Capturing is one thing. Playing DV video on a slow machine is quite a bit more difficult.

As redwudz siad, the capture-transfer process is a datastream from the camcorder to the computer hard drive and doesn't load the computer to a great degree. You may experience dropped frames if the computer can't keep up. The preview process does add load to the CPU but this is usually done at low quality with a small picture. Another free program called DVIO will do the transfer without preview.

Playback of DV video will swamp a slow computer and does require more than minimal memory and will play in 480i (interlace) causing the split line effect during motion on an LCD monitor. Faster computers can play DV through a deinterlacing player for better progressive display but those players need a fast CPU. VLC will have the best chance of playback on your machine. If you specify "discard" under deinterlace under video, the player will only play a single field which will look better on an LCD.

Your Toshiba Satellite A60 should have enough CPU power to try a deinterlacing player like PowerDVD. Otherwise, experiment with the other deinterlace modes in VLC.