Capturing From Analogue Camcorder.

[Fozzee]

Hi

I have a canon analogue camcorder.
I connect it to my capture card via composite.

Does anyone know the specs of the video produced by an analogue camcorder.
For example what resolution is it?
Bitrate??
Interlaced/Deinterlaced??

Any advice in helping me decide what settings to capture to would be appreciated.
I would rather capture straight to a format I can burn e.g. CVD/DVD.

Cheers

Fozzee

[pijetro]

You'll get lots of suggestions for capture resolution.
I've toyed with everything from 720x480 to 352x240....
To get the best balance of quality and space on H.D, I capture at 352x480. Ideally you should use YUY2 uncompressed, but if you don't have the space, then Huffyuv is the way to go for interlaced captures.
If you're encoding for DVD, 352x480 is an accepted framesize, and you can fit two hours of decent quality VCR footage. The reason for this is the lower bitrates required to fill 352x480 rather than 720x480, lets you get way more play time.

The important thing for analogue transfer is to capture both fields (ie. ???x480). To save encoding time, capture and encode the same resolutions. MPEG 2 supports interlacing...In your case DONT DEINTERLACE ANALOGUE.....

If you wanna get decent video, this is the best way to go. If you're gonna sit in front of your TV with a magnifying glass to see pixelation , then perhaps go to 720x480....
Test and see for yourself....In the end, this is where you'll end up anyways.

[Fozzee]

Hi
Before I carry on I'm in a PAL region so CVD is 352 x 576 for me.

So what you are saying is capture to either......

352 x 576 AVI (Why YUY2 ?? I thought RGB24 was better??)
352 x 576 Mpeg2 (What bitrate??)

And you say mpeg2 supports interlacing, but unfortunately (so I've been informed) most mpeg2 capture programs don't support interlaced captures.
That is one of my issues at the moment (see my other current threads).

Cheers

Fozzee

[pijetro]

YUY colourspace is the most widely accepted. It doesn't require heavy CPU power when capturing, and your final output is in YV12 (yuy's cousin), so you don't need the colour conversion...RGB is the preffered space that Premiere, and many editors use 'cause of the calculations used to make transitions. The human eye doesn't see all this mumbo jumbo, so YUY (which takes up less space I believe), is the answer.

Yes 352x576.

Capping in .AVI gives you the most flexibilty with cutting, cropping, editing, etc.....but requires space.
I surprised to hear that your MPEG 2 captures aren't supporting interlace....That's blasphemy.

Look at it this way. If it takes an encoder 4-8 hours to convert to MPEG, what makes you think that capping in MPEG yields the same quality? Obviously something has to be give way. Unfortunately information within your MPEG capture is dropped, although you can't see it. In some cases, only I frames are kept. Many people have run into troubles authouring their final MPEG capture, because it didn't meet compliancy..MPEG is a bitch to edit properly also, unless you have the cashish to pay for the software.

As far as bitrates go, if you decide to capture in MPEG (for the love of God, don't do it. Think of the children)... I would say that a bitrate of 5000kb/s should do. That'll depend on you GOP structure though...

My advice. Cap in .AVI, and use Huffy if you don't have the space. Huffy natively works with YUY colourspace...

[Fozzee]

I surprised to hear that your MPEG 2 captures aren't supporting interlace....That's blasphemy...

Well no-one seems able to confirm or deny this!!

Look at it this way. If it takes an encoder 4-8 hours to convert to MPEG, ...

I appreciate that but my aim was to capture to mpeg2 and not re-encode.

As far as bitrates go, if you decide to capture in MPEG (for the love of God, don't do it. Think of the children)... I would say that a bitrate of 5000kb/s should do. That'll depend on you GOP structure though......

I usually capture at 6000-8000 mpeg2 (looks good in my eyes)



So it looks like capture in avi then re-encode to mpeg2 correctomundo??

Fozz

[pijetro]

Well then if your aim is not to encode, (you're not reencoding. AVI is like water before turning into icecubes), then cap in Mpeg, and if you say you that 6000-8000 looks good in your eyes, then go with it. If your authouring program accepts it, and your settop plays it, you're off to the races........
Some people like to push the quality envelope.

You asked, you got an answer.......

[Fozzee]

Well then if your aim is not to encode, (you're not reencoding. AVI is like water before turning into icecubes), then cap in Mpeg, and if you say you that 6000-8000 looks good in your eyes, then go with it. If your authouring program accepts it, and your settop plays it, you're off to the races........
Some people like to push the quality envelope.

You asked, you got an answer.......

I think we're at cross purposes.
1) I wasn't saying I didn't want to re-encode AVI because there will be quality loss. It's more a question of HD space.

2)I mean my source captures are 6000-8000 before re-encoding.
(I don't have DVD burner to test if they would be compliant)

3)I am admitting that avi to mpeg2 seems to be the way to do it.
(That's what i wrote at the end of my last thread)

4) I never said I wanted perfection.

5) I am creating CVD to place on SVCD (XSVCD) so that later on i can transfer to DVD with a compliant file.

My CVDs are .....

352 x 576
2520 CBR
48hz

It's the only way my DVD player will play them.

Fozzee

[pijetro]

I agree, there's a misunderstanding. You seem to have the concept that .AVI to .MPEG encoding creates quality loss. When people refer to "encoding", they mean .AVI to .MPG, or one format to the other. Re-encoding is understood as .MPG to .MPG, and this is where you experience quality loss...And consequently, this is what you're doing...

I never insinuated that YOU wanted perfection. That was a generality for many people on this this forum. It's a good thing.

I must plead ignorance with CVD's, but as far as MPG structures are concerned, it isn't a wise idea to cap at those high bitrates and output them again to 2520 CBR like you've stated. Cap at the same bitrate that you're gonna be done with....If your quality isn't good with those captures, I would suggest .AVI to .MPG and see what you get..

As far as capping .AVI, there really isn't a bitrate per say, because it's an Analogue to Digital transfer. MiniDV on the other hand (which consequently is .AVI), does have a bitrate ('cause it's already digital), of about 4500kb/s...
On your 80gig H.D. you should be able to capture 3 hours of 352x480, using Huffy compression, and 'bout 5 hours with DV compression (@720x480). With AVIsynth and CCE as tools to encode with, I can get 1.4 encoding time (with no filters), on my P3 1ghz, which is super duper....

BTW, you make CVD's that go on SVCD's?? You mean to say that that's an acceptable frame resolution and audio sample rate?? Wow!!!!!!!

Sorry for all the posts, but everytime we reply, there's a new bit of information that throws a wrench in the system...

[Fozzee]

I agree, there's a misunderstanding. You seem to have the concept that .AVI to .MPEG encoding creates quality loss.

I don't think that at all LOL It's just a space issue.

On your 80gig H.D. you should be able to capture 3 hours of 352x480, using Huffy compression, and 'bout 5 hours with DV compression (@720x480). With AVIsynth and CCE as tools to encode with, I can get 1.4 encoding time (with no filters), on my P3 1ghz, which is super duper....

I may have a 80gig HD but the capture partition is only 10gig.
The rest of my hard drive is full of movies, games and videos.

BTW, you make CVD's that go on SVCD's?? You mean to say that that's an acceptable frame resolution and audio sample rate?? Wow!!!!!!!

Yep I just turn off standard complaince in Nero and they play fine my DVD player (only CBR tho)


Well thanks for your time

Fozz