What to do to get best quality by capturing from 8mm videcam

[vvrok]

Newbie here. I spent a lot of time reading FAQ and various guides posted on the site. I want to digitize my family videos. I have 1.3Duron, ATI AIW 7500 and 120GB of harddrive space. I installed VDub and made it to work with my ATI card. I only have CD-R/RW, so I think I want to start with SVCD. So, how do I get the best quality video with my setup? I tried capturing with VDub using 480x480 with Huffyuv. This seemed to work and there were no dropped frames. During the process of caturing the quality of video showing in VDub preview window was ok, but when I tried to play the resulting file on my PC the quality was noticeably worse. Is it expected? How can I fine tune my capturing to get better quality video? Should I go for 720x480 capture resolutiuon or is it just waste of space because I will eventually put on SVCD in 480x480? Please help me.

[drewson99]

no, you want to cap at the highest resolution possible before downsizing/encoding, so 720x480 is going to give you best results. with home movies you want every last possible scrap of quality becasue this is for posterity, it's not something you can just cough up another 15 bucks for.

are you sure the difference in quality isn't just that the preview is in real time, so you aren't getting the interlacing lines while capturing? is it the interlacing effect that you are seeing in your video after capturing? it looks like fine lines and waves on just about everything that moves. these go away when watched on a tv.

the truly best thing to do is complete the process. capture, encode, and author an svcd (or DVD, whatever you are going to do in the end) If it looks satisfactory, go nuts. you can never tell until you do though.

Andy

[vvrok]

Thanks. You made a good point about interlacing, I did not think about it. Now about your second point about using as high resolution as posible. If I have space on my harddrive (120GB practically empty) can I go even higher in res? Let say, 1024x728 with huffyuv? Will I get a better quality at the end when I put the video on SVCD (which is 480x480)?

[Fozzee]

720 x 480 NTSC or 720 x 576 PAL are the highest settings you can capture at. These are DVD resolution.

Fozzee

[drewson99]

foz said it.

[pijetro]

Now let Pijetro say it. If you capture at 480x480, you should have no problem. If you insist on listening to the guys above, then go to 640x480. The only reason you would cap at 720x480, is so your encoder doesn't have to resize for DVD resolution, and a 480x480 cap lets your encoder work a bit faster for SVCD resolution.

That being said, you weren't clear on the playback issue. Without guessing what exactly you mean, you should know that Huffy isn't a good playback codec. Don't worry about playback at this point until you've created your SVCD. Try a sample clip of 10 seconds and play it in WinDVD and you'll see why people like to use Huffy (especially with interlaced sources).

You're doing everything okay so far, now get encoding.....

Good luck.....