Vegas Video Capture at 352x480 How to do it?????

[Paul Simmel]

Hello all!

Been working in a different thread on best quality captures from Hi-8 source, to make VCDs for right now, with the idea of using my work/captured files for future DVD burning. I’m using a WinTv PVR card at present. We have narrowed it down to a 352x480 cap, encoded to 352x240 Mpeg-1 (for VCD), with GOOD quality. However, since I use Vegas Video 3.0, and particularly like the ease of the Capture software, I have not found out how to pre-set for Custom Format Captures (like can be done in VirtualDub.) Is it possible to take a custom formatted cap in Vegas???? My Capture card defaults at 640x480, and this is the res I get in Vegas capture. That’s a lot of extra resolution and disk space I don’t need for what I am doing.

Also, I can’t seem to find out where to pre-set codecs in VV. Any help on this and the above????

Thank you very much!!!!

Paul

[pixel8or]

Hi,

I think Vegas Video 3 is an outstanding program, but I only use the capture app for getting miniDV thru firewire. I get no options for codecs when I have the capture card set as the device, just RGB, YUY2, etc. It caps uncompressed. I'm using the btwincap drivers, btw. The resolution options are all preset, nothing custom.

I think VirtualVCR and Huffyuv is the way to go for a capture card. Problem is, Vegas doesn't like those captures... the image is scrambled and inverted. But, if I filter it thru Virtualdub, say, crop and resize to 352x480 and save it using Huffyuv again, Vegas likes it just fine. Don't know why it works that way, but it does. It's extra time, but it works. The PICVideo MJPEG codec works good with Vegas, but I think Huffyuv is better as it's lossless. But, if you want to save the time of the extra step, MJPEG might be the way to go.

Just my still-somewhat-newbie opinion.

[Paul Simmel]

Pixel8or,

Thanks for the input. I suspected Vegas Capture was primarily for firewire (more contemporary), but wanted to know for sure.

It seems that what I have done so far with all the help here on this forum is to at least make a DECENT VCD test, cap’ing at 352x480 in V/Dub, encoding down to 352x240 (VCD). In a month or two I will hopefully be looking for a DV camera with DV pass-through, so I will be able then to go back to Vegas Capture without the hassle of all these settings. With the DV pass-through, my Hi-8 source material will be cap’ed at 720x640 DVD format with Vegas. That will be sweet. So ITMT, unless I hear otherwise, I will probably stay with V/Dub for the present, as all this is temporary until I upgrade my hardware.

Yes, I am a HUGE fan of Vegas! WOW, what a great piece of work THAT is. I started this a year ago or so, and had/have Adobe Premier. I learned a lot in Premier, but was never able to output “correctly”. Back then when I started, I thought I’d focus on the video-editing aspect of all of this, and leave the output for last. Well, who’s to say whether I was right or wrong, because from what I learned from Premier I easily transferred over to Vegas, but with Vegas, I can now use the MainConcepts MPEG 1-2 encoder right from within the TimeLine. And Vegas is easier to use and just as powerful, IMO. Then again, my biggest learning curve right now is OUTPUT to viewable, decent media. Just as hard! It’s all a pain in the ass, but my view is that what I learn now I will be able to transfer to future projects with DV pass-through and a DVD burner.

Thanks again,

Paul