Crop during capture

[jellied]

When I capture DV from my Sony video camera using a Firewire card and Windows Moviemaker, I see a slight blue line at the edge of the screen (just a few pixels wide, but still noticeable). I exchanged cameras and still saw the same thing, so I assume it is just a capturing artifact. Is there any free capturing software that can crop the frame slightly to remove this during capture? Virtual VCR has such a crop function, but I have been unable to get it to capture the audio portion of the DV input. Thanks.

[ImaWeTodd]

What are you trying to do in the end?

• If you view this on your TV, you will never see the line. At 720x480 you probably don't see 5% or 36 pixels on both the left and the right.
  
• If you crop, you are filtering, therefor you are decompressing and recompressing the DV. You would be better doing this in an editor after you copy the DV via Firewire to your computer.
  
• If you crop, you should add a border to keep the same size.
  

[jellied]

I just want to make movies that I can view on my PC (no DVD burner yet). I have been using Windows Movie Maker, simply because it is free and seems to work quite well. Unfortunately, WMM2 does not allow you to crop once you have captured the DV. I wanted to try using Virtual dub, but it seems that it doesn't work with Firewire-captured DV due to the problem with Directshow filters vs. VFW. I haven't yet bought an editor, but if this is the only way to crop then I will.

[ImaWeTodd]

Virtual Dub is an editor. No need to buy one. Use the fill filter to put black over a few cols.

Edit:
I just re-read your post and I'm not sure I follow you. To do what you want.

1) Capture the dv via fire wire. This is really a copy from the cam to the computer.

2) Open the file in VDub, add a filter, pick a compression, and save a new file (with no line).

You may be having trouble with one of these steps. Let me know. By the way, on my slow machine, these both take realtime to process, so a 1 hour video would take 2 hours to create.

[jellied]

Thanks for your reply. I can't open captured DV (captured using WMM2 or DVIO running on Windows XP) using VirtualDub: it gives me a message about needing Video for Windows (VFW) drivers. This seems to be a well-known limitation of VirtualDub based on posts I've seen elsewhere on this site. I think older versions of Windows (98 and Me) use VFW drivers, so they don't have this problem. When I try to open an avi in VDub, I get an error message that says:

"Couldn't locate a decompressor for format 'dvsd' (unknown)
VirtualDub requires a Video for Windows (VFW) compatible codec to decompress video. DirectShow codecs, such as those used by Windows Media Player, are not suitable"

So, I can capture DV-AVI nicely (and it plays in any video player), but I can't open it in VirtualDub. What to do?

[somebodeez]

I think you need a DV codec

https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=193#comments

[ImaWeTodd]

Actually, the diver problem has to do with capturing analog with a capture card, not already captured avi's. The error you describe is because you do not have a compatible dv codec installed.

Here is a link to interesting info about codecs http://www.fourcc.org/. Click on 'Codecs' and search for dvsd.

I believe if you install the Main Concepts codec, it will work. According to this post.

You can get a demo here. Unfortunately, it cost $50. But if it works, maybe there is another DV codec 'like the panisonic one', that somebodeez mentioned.

By the way, I have a Sony Cam, I capture via firewire (with whatever free program I curently have), and I am fairly sure I can open the files in VDub. If you are still having trouble, I would be happy to run a test and write up the details of what works for me.

[ImaWeTodd]

For Kicks, I did a search for 'dvsd virtualdub' and found all kinds of things.

This post has all kinds of info in fixen this. It even tells you how to get the free codec to work.

[jellied]

Thanks!! I'll try to install the Panasonic DV codec tonight and see what happens.