Dell Movie Studio Bundle

[dimentia]

Hi

I'm new to this capture thing and I wanted to get some input from you guys. I bought a new Dell Dimension 8250 2.53GHz 512MB 120GigHD Video card is NVidia GeForce 4MX 440 and the biggest thing I want to do with my machine is back up a ton of home video's to VCD or DVD.

I got the delux movie studio bundle which basically comes with a firewire card with a special external contraption that plugs into the 1394 card via a DB15 connector. this external "tentacle" has an AV input and output to hook up a VCR to. you can either use S-Video or the standard red white and yellow AV jacks.

Does anybody have any experience with this. I tried capturing a video and with 60 minutes of footage I dropped about 150 frames. I just purchased an extra hard drive (western digital caviar wd1200jb) hoping that will take care of my frame dropping problem but I wonder about the quality of the analog to digital conversion using this dell hardware. I would appreciate any input and pointers.

[Rich927]

60 minutes, 150 dropped frames. Not bad for capturing A/V. Try closing all non essential programs. turn off screensaver. Disconnect from Cable/DSL/Network if you have it. turn off virus checker/firewall. Be sure drive is not fragmented. If you have second drive, capture to it. 150 frames equals about 5 seconds.

[dimentia]

thanks for the feedback rich927. as soon as I get my new drive I'll try it out. after reading through these forums I'm beginning to think there is a better way to do this than by using this "cheap" dell solution. does anybody have any experience using this dell capture card? would I be better off buying a canopus or ATI solution. the quality of these VHS tapes are not that great and I would really like to preserve them as best I can. possibly even repair the image quality. suggestions anybody?

[Rich927]

VHS tape resolution is around 280 lines of resolution. That analog capture is 320X240. It's not going to be really good quality. About the same as when you view the tape. When you make your VCD's, resolution will be 320X240. You might be able to clean it up a bit. Look at the How to guides to get more info about VCD's.

[romoco]

I have very good results with mine. I use Virtualdub to capture with and Tmpenc to convert to mpg. I then use Besweet to convert audio to AC3. Then I author it and burn a DVD. I did the orginal Star Wars VHS tapes and they are very good. The Roxio software won't capture any Macrovison encoded video.

[dimentia]

okay, I installed my new western digital wd1200jb 7200 rpm with 8mb cache and I only dropped 130 frames this time. I even exited all TSR apps in my system tray including my virus scan, disconnected my internet connection. I am now convinced this dell capture card is a POS. So Romoco, you say you use this dell capture thing? I wish I sent it back but it's too late now. can anyone suggest something really nice for about $200

[romoco]

Using Virtualdub I only get about 15 dropped frames per 1 hour capture. I turn everything else off, disable indexing and antivirus. You have to capture audio thru the sound card input because Virtualdub does not recognize the Emuzed sound driver, but it works fine. If you are intested in the details I can send you all the settings I came up with my trial and error.

[Gazorgan]

I'm using a $29 cheapo card with the BT chipset. In a 2 hour capture I average 0 (that's Zero) dropped frames. Your hardware is better than mine, so that shouldn't be it. I capture with IUVCR to Huffyuv (shorter clips under 1 hour) or MJPEG at 19/20 (longer clips from 1-3 hours). You have the space to do Huffyuv for a full length feature.

IMHO the firewire device is stalling on you. I'd check for updated drivers (yeah I know it's new). In XP, you can bump up the priority level of your capture software, you can try going 1 higher (only 1, realtime will lock you up) to 'Above Normal'. This can help with XP Home, since it defalts to raising the application in the forground one priority (this means if you minimize during capture, something else may have a higher priority).

[ptmurphy]

I use Pinnacle Studio Deluxe to capture and virtually NEVER drop a frame. I am using a 1.5 Ghz machine with a dedicated drive for capture.

What really causes dropped frames?

[Fomalhaut]

dimentia, what exactly is the "special external contraption" ? If it is one of the Dazzle products like I suspect, foeget it. That is junk. It doesn't drop frames in my case, but the A/V gets out of sync in a few minutes. Get the Canopus ADVC 100 if you can afford it.

[BowlPacker]

I have almost the exact same Dell set up with the Dell Movie Studio Plus, and the same ultimate goal to archive home videos to DVD...and I finally scrapped it. If you are within 30 days of your invoice I suggest you return the Dell Movie Studio plus package for a full refund and invest the money in a real capture solution - I finally determined the hardware sucked but I was outside 30 days and Dell stiff-armed me. I finally took the crap emuzed capture card out of my system and uninstalled the Roxio software. I happened to buy an ATI TV Wonder at the same time, mainly to watch TV but now I use that to capture from and even though it only costs $70 it blows the Dell crap outof the water.

I use the ATI TV Wonder with the drivers from sourceforge.net (don't even bother with the ATI MMC drivers that come with the card). I capture with VirtualDub (free) and encode with TMPGEnc Plus ($50) and author/burn with Ulead DVD MF2 ($50). I have very few dropped frames (I think it comes from the MJPEG codec since I only have one 80GB HDD and have to compress as I capture). But using this hardware and that combination of software, I am able to convert 2 hrs of analog home videos to DVD+R with excellent results - just as good to my eye as the source material.

Knowing what I know now (after the research I've done) I would follow the advice given above and get the Canopus ADVC-100 and a cheap firewire card. Either that or a Digital Camcorder that can do passthrough analog capture, or a Digital-8 camcorder, if you also happen to be in the market to replace your analog camcorder.

[jtoolman2000]

This may not be in the same are of disscussion so I apologize in advance. I turn all of VHS and 8mm video collection to DVD+R with a Phillips DVD recorder. I realize some of yoou do not like this type of machine but if you just want to "Save" your oll VHS tapes, it is a very convenient way of doing it. The negative point is that yoou can't do any fancy editing or authoring and it does cost more than any of the capture solutions thus discuused.

[subclubkid]

If its from Dell there is a good chance its just a Dazzle DV80/ or higher, and your probably running VideoWave....dear god if your using Videowave I will pray for you.....

[BowlPacker]

Minw was an "Emuzed Atlantis PCI" capture card...I know because I finally yanked it out of my system. The software was "Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 5" or somesuch, and it got yanked, too.

[Fomalhaut]

Since the original poster mentions 1394 card, I'm guessing it's the same as mine: Dazzle Mojave, which captures to DV via firewire. The capture software is Videowave. I have no problem with Videowave. I've used it with several other capture cards and works fine. It's the Dazzle thinger that is crap!

[Switchback]

May you all be blessed many times over. I am a newbie and have already spent countless hours over the last week get educated, thanks to the hardware guy at the local CompUSA who pointed me here. I just picked up a new Dell 8300 a week ago. Decided to spring for the Dell Movie Studio plus. Looks good, right? First attempt, capture from satellite using Videowave, but before I even hit capture the live feed has A/V sync problems. Several hours on the phone with tech support, chasing patches, modifying settings, etc., ending in little to no support. I actually felt I knew more then they did. Made a capture - A/V sync problems gone? No, it started off good and deteriorated the longer the capture (8min). Made a burn to DVD using MyDVD, no movement - decent picture, movement - blurry. Unfortunately, it seems that many of you got slammed, due to the 30 day deadline. I am only a week in, trouble already, better options available, time to send back. I sent an email in asking if I have to send the whole box back or can I just pull the card and the composite in contraption, throw them in a box and send it back to get a full refund of my $130 bones.

Hopefully, with your help, Dell now has one less notch on their sucker belt.

SB

[dimentia]

yeah guys, I finally came to the same conclusion and I'm trashing the movie studio delux crap. unfortunately I'm beyond my 30 days. so is that canopus a good buy? where can I get it?

[Ron B]

Hello-Dell makes good computers, but their choice in video production packages is questionable. I'm not sure if you checked out the DellTalk Forum, you will find many situations similar to yours there. I have a little video help site for problems with Dell video, it is not as big as this website, but judging by the number of visits, Dell users have lots of questions. You can check it out if you want: http://www.geocities.com/delldvinfo/index.html

[dimentia]

okay I took a look at the canopus site and looked at the ADVC-100 but I noticed some other cards too. the ACVC-1394 look pretty attractive plus you can get it bundled with Premiere 6.5. has anybody looked at this. they advertise it for ~$400. doesn't premiere cost about $650. is this a scaled down version of premiere? I would be interested in this but I want to know more about it.