Frame resolution is suddenly much lower when capturing?

[dimitri_vdh]

Hello,
I have 2 dv tapes with the video of my last holiday. A few weeks ago I captured and edited the first tape onto my hard disk, with Windows moviemaker. There I picked following options:

- PAL 16:9
- High quality video (large): 640x480 pixels, 30fps
- output file is a WMV file (I cannot choose the DV-AVI format option in moviemaker. Do I need a special DV-out cable for this option?)

That worked fine.

Now I wanted to capture and edit the second tape. I used the same settings (left unchanged), but when I am capturing the video now, I notice that the movie resolution seems to be much lower. (the pixels on the frames are much more visible and much bigger, quality is very poor)

Anyone an idea how this is possible? What has caused this? How can I solve this?

I checked and doublechecked already all the settings in movie maker, and also the settings of my camera (which is a sony handycam) but I cannot find anything. The method of transmission between the camera and the pc is 'USB stream'.

Maybe it's due to any setting on the camera itself???

Thanks for helping!

PS

[Baldrick]

Your camera might just send low quality video through the usb2 and even lower through usb1.

Use instead the firewire connection.

[yoda313]

- PAL 16:9
- High quality video (large): 640x480 pixels, 30fps

Those two don't match. Pal is 720x576 for dvd quality resolution.

Could this be part of the problem? It might be trying to convert to sub ntsc level because 640x480 isn't even dvd level for ntsc (its 720x480).

Try the same steps again but in addition to choosing pal 16x9 be sure your video resolution is 720x576 for pal.

Hope this helps.

Oh and bladrick is correct - transfer via firewire whenever possible - then it will essentially be a realtime file transfer (it will transfer the file as the video plays).