5 min = 5 gig??? What's the secret? Cap'ing to avi on HD?

[dojenman]

Okay, Joe Newbie here...I've been reading and reading.....I've captured stuff now for 5 minutes and am aghast at the 5+ gig of space just used. How the heck is everyone else doing this? My system's got 40 gig free space, but if I do the math that's only like 40 minutes of capture time, uncompressed, to avi. What, does everyone have like a network or something to drop huge files to?? What am I missing here?

I've read about how best quality (by the way, I'm converting my old vhs tapes and hi8 camcorder --all analog-- to digital) is uncompressed. Sure, I've experimented w/ cap'ing right to Mpeg 2 using Roxio. Looks fine, but I'm wondering if I could get better (and it does look better) to avi then convert to SCVD mpeg2.

I also just downloaded Vdub too, but there's no magic there either.

any help for me? thanks.

[txpharoah]

Codecs, resolution, bitrates. Lots of things you're missing.
Take a gander at the guides on the left.

<--------------------------------- OVER THERE

[dojenman]

hi and thanks, txpharoah, for the tidbit on guides, but I've read and re-read the "how to capture to mjpeg, huffyvu, etc." and no where do they mention "oh, and 5 gigs = 5 minutes."

Yes, they say you need a lot of hd space, but then they go on to say the thing about the 4gb limit on files, etc.. something doesn't add up in my head.

Why doesn't the huffy codec come up in vdub? I've got the darn thing on my Hd. Will this compress more?

My resolution = 352X480. My bitrate is 500Kbs.

[housepig]

I capture 720x480 avi, with Huffyuv compression, It's about 450Mb per minute. So every hour is about 27Gb.

In Virtualdub, if you go to Video, then choose Compression, you should see the Huffyuv codec listed. If you don't, maybe you need to re-install it.

The probable reason for size not being listed in the guides is that the size of your captures in Gb is going to be dependent on so many variables - frame rate, capture size, etc...not just codec.

personally, I use iuVCR for capture (I tested several capture apps, and this had the least amount of problems with audio sync), then convert in TMPGenc (again, after head-to-head with a bunch of diff. encoders) to a dvd-compliant mpeg2 file.

I agree with capping direct to mpeg - no matter what capture app I tried (NeoDVD, PowerVCR & WinDVR off the top of my head) the results weren't as good as capping in avi and reencoding. Maybe if I had a nicer capture card...

anyway, I hope some of this helps. good luck.

[fmctm1sw]

Two more things:

Windows 2K does no have a 4GB limit. I make captures routinely that are 60GB+.

Picvideo Mjpeg will compress more than huffyuv. Albeit at a cost in quality....

[You_Are_Alive]

1:1 uncompressed video for NTSC means 20 MB/s (so no confusion here, thats twenty megabytes per second). So thats why you have such huge files. But often times if pressed on disk space and when your source is low quality to begin with, lowering the data rate between
4 - 10 MB/s almost gives the same quality depending on your hardware.

Although I have not tried it, I think I remember reading somewhere in the forums that ppl use Virtual Dub with noise filter on when capturing from low sources like vhs and it gives excellent results.

[dojenman]

Hey, just wanna say thanx to all who gave me some heads up!!

I feel better now.

--dojenman

[Airjrdn]

I've just started getting into this as I just recently purchased a DVD burner. Here's what I've been doing so far.

My sources have been DVD's, Direct TV/Tivo, and my Camcorder (Sony TRV-530).

For the DVD's, I generally use DVDXCopy.

For the Camcorder, I do firewire to my PC, and capture it with the software that came w/the ~$35 firewire card from NewEgg.

For the Tivo, I use RCA's out passing through the Camcorder (into it, then out it's firewire port) into my computer. The software used here is Ulead Video Studio 7. Capturing straight to what they call DVD (MPEG 2 is another option, and the one used by DVD I believe), it takes about 3G/hour of audio/video coming from Direct TV (Tivo). I can let you know the quality as soon as it's finished with this first attempt. It should finish in a couple more hours.

Bear in mind, nothing is recording on the camcorder, it's used as a passthrough.

[amdworld]

after making an avi, you should convert into avi divx.
really.
i've seen 400mb vids of friends that are like 20-30 mins long.
one of the best qualities i've seen at that size
(my opinion)