Pinnacle Studio 8 and analog camera

[John Cleese]

HI all,

After a long search I finally managed to capture my holiday video's from an analogue camera in combination with a Pinnacle PCTV Pro card and Pinnacle Studio.

All went well, no problems, burned it on DVD, so I couldn't be more happier because I haven't got a digital camera and wanted to secure my holidayvideo's on DVD, but the problem now is that it's pretty difficult to enjoy the DVDfilm.

Each time when I zoomed in or out with camera it seems like the dvd movie keeps having trouble, because during and after a moviescene where I zoomed in or out, the movie shakes during playback, trembles during and after the zooming, when in the past I converted my movies on VHS tape It never happened, okay you can see the in and out zooming of the camera, no problem there, but now next to seeing that, playing teh movie keeps resulting in the screen shaking pretty badly when the camera is zooming in and out.

Does anyone know if there is a solution in Pinnacle Studio 8 or maybe another programm, to resolve this matter ?

[Will Hay]

Are you using Pinnacle to convert to mpeg2?
What bitrate setting are you using?
It sounds to me like the fast moving scenes are suffering as a result of low quality encoding.
Post back with your step by step settings, including the codec you use when capturing your analogue footage.
I use Pinnacle Studio 8.5 but know nothing about the PCTV Pro card you have, how do you transfer the footage from the camera to the PC?
Will

[John Cleese]

Hi Will,

I'm using this card : http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage_n.asp?Product_ID=512&Langue_ID=7 to capture my video from my Analogue camera, a Sony Handycam Video 8.

I connect to my videocard ( see pc details ) and to my soundcard with tullip plugs.

I'm not sure which codec I use, I connect the camera and start up Studio 8 and then select as videosource PCTV which sends through my videoscenes.
So I guess Pinncale Studio indeed converts the movie afterwords to MPG2.

The datarate in studio is set to : Reading 35936kb/sec, Writing 39428 and Max Saving 32432.

When I select Videosource I see it's set to NTSC but I have Pal, so don't know if that causes any problems.

Encoding is set to Best Quality.

I hope this info is sufficient.

Greetz

[Will Hay]

When I select Videosource I see it's set to NTSC but I have Pal, so don't know if that causes any problems.

I can't imagine it will help, I'd suggest changing it and trying again.
Will

[John Cleese]

Any other suggestions anybody then ?

[ebenton]

I have Pinnacle Studio *, and I recently tried using it to capture and burn some video from a VHS tape, which should be similar to capturing it from your analog camera. However, I have an ATI 7500 All-In-Wonder capture card. I had audio synch and other quality problems on the resulting disc.
I tried another program for capturing video, Magix Movie, which is listed in the tools section of this website. It's a $30 US download. It's made in Germany, so it has a few German phrases and syntax show up here and there in the instructions. However, one thing that it enabled me to do, which Pinnacle Studio did not, was to play back my captured video before I burned and accurately see all of the imperfections and hear if the audio synch was good or not. Pinnacle seems to play it back perfectly, and you don't know if it's any good until you view the finished disk.
The program has a few eccentricities. After you capture, it also tells you if it thinks you have dropped too many frames and that you should lower your capture quality.
You might be able to use this to play around by just capturing a snippet of the video where the zooming occurs and adjust your quality until you get a decent capture.
I am no expert on Pinnacle Studio, and I have only used Magix a couple of times, so I am not completely familiar with all of it. But for 30 US bucks (download only), it might be worth a try.

[John Cleese]

Yeah, maybe but I'd like to know first if it works before i buy it.

On the other hand it must be possible to make the movie in Pinnacle I guess, still don't know how to solve this problem now.

[John Cleese]

Anybody ????

[javadog]

Fisrt, let me say that I have had nothing but trouble using Pinnacle boards and software. It works on some systems, and not other others. I eventually gave up using their Analog capture board and went for a Canopus AVDC 100 external box and just LOVE the thing. If the capture board is working fine for you, then great.

I would suggest giving SCLive (Scenalyser) a try. It comes highly recommended by many users here, and it is now what I use for the capture phase of my projects. They have a trial version you can check out that works like the full version except that it inserts little "sclive" banners in the lower right hand corner of your stuff every minute or two. It's good enough demo to determine if it will work fine for you. You probably only need to capture the "problematic" portion of your film as a test. SCLive captures to AVI, so you'll need to convert that to MPeg2 or whatever other format you want.

[northcat_8]

Why not just use studio 8 to capture the video and use a different software to edit and create the DVD.

I capture and edit with S8 (premiere 6.5 sometimes to edit), then I use Ulead DVD workshop or DVD movie factory to create the DVD.

Just some advise here, go to doom9.net and download "Daemon Tools", this is a program that sets up a virtual DVD drive on your computer and it allows you to watch your DVD through PowerDVD, WinDVD 4, etc, while the DVD is still an image file, so you can check it before you burn it. (hopefully you write the image to disc before burning it) anyway, this will save you a lot of wasted DVD-R discs. And every one I have done has came out just like they looked when I played them through Daemon tools.

Now once the DVD is in a ISO file then I use either the Ulead programs to burn or I use DVD decrypter, usually decrypter it's quicker.

Pinnacle S8 is good in theory, but just go check out their message boards to realize that if it's not working for you, it's not worth the hassle of fighting with it, use it for what you need it for and move on. I worked and struggled, adjusted 9 million settings in my computer and S8 does not work properly for me. It captures, it edits, I render out to DV-AVI 720x480, my files are huge and from there I use other software.

Just a suggestion.

[j1d10t]

I have both a Pinnacle PCTV Pro card, and Pinnacle Studio 8. If you are using the "best" capture setting, that may be your problem. I've found that the best setting isn't good enough - it uses a compressor that I think $uck$- it's PCLEPIM1, and whenever there is high motion in a scene, something happens, it becomes blocky, or starts to be jerky, or the sound goes out of sync... I ended up going with the custom setting, and using YUV2 as the compression - the captured video takes up a TON of space (and I do mean a TON of space), but it comes out really well. Since you are capturing from an analog source, I'd try capturing at SVCD resolution (since Studio 8 won't let you capture at 1/2 D) and then convert down to 1/2 D when encoding to MPEG. By using the SVCD resolution you are saving HD space, and then by converting and burning at 1/2 D you will be able to fit more on your DVD. Also, I use TMPGEnc to convert to MPEG, because I think it does a better job than Studio 8. Just something to think about - this is what I have to do to get acceptable results

[John Cleese]

I'll give Ulead a try, i'm having a problem with Ulead in the Newbie Conversion threads so i'll sort that first, maybe it makes a difference.

Perhaps the Idea of Custom Setting might solve the problem, i can always try, I did indeed chose for Best Capture setting so perhaps.

Any more ideas are always welcome, i'll let you all know anyway the results of above.

Thanks

[j1d10t]

I found that ULead won't work with the Pinnacle PCTV Pro card, and when I contacted Pinnacle's tech support about it, they told me that they didn't even recommend having ULead installed on the same system as the PCTV Pro card. Whenever I tried to use ULead it would either crash, or it would say another program was using the capture device, and to close the other program - and I never had another program open. I tried closing everything but what was required to keep Windows running, and it didn't help.

[John Cleese]

Euhm that sounds like a lot of fun.

I usually get those things like you described so i know what i'm waiting for : Fun Fun Fun.

[Will Hay]

Personally I love Pinnacle Studio 8.5 but I'd never, ever use it for anaolgue capture, it's horrendous.
Have you tried any other capture software?
I capture analogue using Virtualdub, edit with Studio 8.5 and then encode with TMPGEnc.
(For DV I 'capture' with Studio).
Will

[northcat_8]

You can't use Ulead or Adobe to capture using the Pinnacle card.

I was merely suggesting that you use the Pinnacle card to get the video into your computer. Once the video is in the computer, what you use to get it out is up to you.

I've used several different DVD authoring programs, I just found Ulead's to be the easiest to use.

As far as the Pinnacle warning about "I wouldn't have any other capture software installed", I run WinXP, 512 DDR and I have Pinnacle Studio 8, Ulead VideoStudio 6, Ulead DVD workshop, Ulead DVD movie Factory, Vegas video, My DVD, Ulead Gif aninator 5, Ulead Cood 3D, Xara, Adobe Photoshop 7, Adobe Premiere 6.5, Adobe After Effects 5, TMPGenc, DVD2AVI, Flaskmpeg, Virtualdub and several other video softwares and they all work just fine together, I can have almost any of these running at the same time unless they are calling on the same functions in the computer.

The Pinnacle cards only capture using Pinnacle software or SClive. Or at least that's all I'm aware of. But like I said before, I just use Pinnacle to capture, the DV-AVI clips are crystal clear for me no matter whether I capture analog or digital.

That warning is just like the "only have one DVD player installed" I have 3, all work just fine.

I personally think it is a "corporate" thing not wanting you to use anyother software than theirs.

More to the Pinnacle side of things, I noticed back when I was posting questions on the Pinnacle "support" board that almost everyone could capture with the pinnacle card they were all having trouble with the software after that point. Everytime I suggested using a different software to do anything I was shunned like I had just burnt a cross or something. The moderators also deleted all of my posts where I suggested using different software.

I have also never had blockiness when capturing high motion video. I make high school highlight films for every sport and corporate training videos, which I put out to either VHS or DVD depending on what they want and I've never had problems with the graphics or the look of the capture, not even the sound. If you are experiencing blockiness in high motion segments that issue is not in the capture card it is in your computer's processing of the video, which could be any number of things but usually either processor, ram or hard drive speed.

I'm running WinXP pro, 2.2 AMD Athlon, ASUS A7V333 MoBo, 60 GB OS HD Maxtor 7200 rpm, Two 80 GB Maxtor 7200 rpm HD's in a stripe 0 RAID array, with 512 MB DDR ram (which I'm upgrading to 1GB soon, very soon), and a 4 GB dedicated page file. My RAID array is formatted NTFS file system and my 60 GB is Fat32.

I'm not saying you don't have blockiness in high motion clips, I'm just saying that I have not experienced the same issue (yet...knock on wood).

[j1d10t]

I also have Ulead (MF2, and DVD WS) on my system, along with TMPGEnc, VirtualDub, VideoWave 5, Power VCR2, IU_VCR, and NeoDVD Plus, and Nero 5.5. I had the same thought about Pinnacle, not wanting people to use any software but theirs (and just thought I would mention what they told me), but theirs is one of only 3 that I've found that will capture using the PCTV Pro card. I've found IU_VCR will work, and Power VCR2 will work, but Studio 8 gives me the best results (I wonder why ), using the custom setting. I like TMPGEnc's MPEG conversion better than Studio 8's, but I like to tweak the settings when I'm converting to MPEG, on a per video basis.