You want quality + small file with firewire? Here is how!

[wmfv7]

You want great quality + small file with firewire? Here is how to do it!

A lot of people have purchased Mini DV camcorders recently but they just can't figure out how to get a decent capture to their computer. Some people are trying near Uncompressed .avi and then re-encoding to DVD, Divx, Xvid, VCD, or SVCD but the problem with this is that it takes way to much time. Plus the .avi file takes up most of a hard drive for just one hour of video. So finally we have a simple way of going straight from your camcorder through Firewire directly to a small file with excellent quality. The answer is to use Microsoft's new Windows Media Encoder 9. Just download the latest copy from the following link and then install the WME9 program.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/wi...er/default.aspx
Make sure you have installed your camera's DV drivers and then plug the firewire cable into your camera and set it to tape play. Windows XP should ask you if you want to open WME9 to transfer the video, say yes. If it doesn't then just start WME9. Cancel out of the WME9 start up wizard and just click the properties button. There should be two drop down boxes for Audio and video source. Select your DV device for both of them. Select the next tab. Make sure the push and pull from encoder boxes are not checked and that the save to file box is. Select a directory and file name to save it under and Select an amount of time to record for(A Mini DV tape is about 61 minutes). Then select the third tab. Click the Edit button and Select both VBR Windows Media 9 video and audio. Then choose the quality settings tab. Enter a resolution of 480x360 and a quality of between 80 to 90 (80 is about 2 hours per CD and 90 is about 1 hour per CD). Put the Key frames to 2 and the quality to auto. Then just go to the processing tab and select deinterlace. You must do this step or you will get the horizontal black lines in your recording. Most people do not do this and it basically makes your capture useless because of the distortion. Then click the start capture button and it should automatically start recording after a few seconds of prerolling time. If a message says that either the beginning or the end of the tape has been reached then click the step forward button once or twice and then press the start capture button again. After the recording stops because of the time limit or you stop it then you can view the file. It should look excellent at a quality near 90 and it should look good at a quality near 80. Then just click File save as and give these settings a name. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you. You can use ASFtools to cut and edit the video.

http://www.geocities.com/myasftools/

The 480x360 Resolution is key to making the file look good! If you try something other than 480x360 or 640x480 then the input resolution will drop to 360x240. Just go to the second tab in WME9 while you are doing the encoding. Look at the input resolution if your output is 480x360. It will be 720x480. If you make it something higher like 512x384 which is 80% of 640x480 then the input resolution will drop to 360x240. This will make your capture have a very low resolution. If you have a super computer then try a quality of about 85 and an output resolution of 640x480. This should be fantastic if you can do it without dropping frames.

If your output is to a TV you can try to maintain interlacing but it will still have the black horizontal lines when viewed on a progressive scan monitor.

[lal]

wmfv7,

Look at the input resolution if your output is 480x360. It will be 720x480.

Can you please eloborate this? I would like to capture with full resolution.
DV resolution is 720x480, right? Then what is this 480x360?

I am planning to make it as a DVD to view on TV.

Thanks.

[thayne]

First of all you don't "Capture" DV. It's already digital, you just transfer it losslessly from tape to PC via firewire.

Is this a joke? If not, telling someone to use Windows Media codec is awful advice! It's a lossy compresion and would only be suitable for final output, not editing and definitly not for DVD, SVCD or VCD.

[wmfv7]

thayne, I think you are missing the point. Yes the DV video is transferred losslessly in real time from the camcorder to the computer but the problem is that the resulting 61 minute file is huge. Everyone I have talked to has said that they don't have the money to buy a DVD burner so they just want a way to store some video in reasonably good quality. This is so that they don't have to buy a new Mini DV tape every time they want to record something else. You are correct WMV9 can be a lossy codec but it doesn't have to be. At bit rates around 800 kb/sec the video can look smoothed out on a PC but you absolutely can not tell the difference on a TV and higher bitrates 1400+ kb/sec(which is equal to VCD) look great. I output my videos to a TV through an ATI card and most people don't have a video out card. However, Panasonic is working on DVD player to play these files. Just check out www.HighMat.com. All I was offering is a way to quickly get your files from the huge MPG2 DV format to something that is manageable. As far as converting to other formats afterwords? I never said anything about that. That is a bad Idea. I said that you can edit(cut, join, remove scenes) with asf tools. Asftools will do the editing without re-encoding so there is no quality loss there. If you want to add effects then use your camcorders functions for that.

Look if you don't like WMV that is fine but don't knock it till you try it. I have already don't most of the legwork on optimizing the settings so just give it a try. However, if you have a better way of making a 800 kb/sec video from a 61 minute Mini DV camera in 61 minutes of encoding time. Then please let us know.

[svsmani]

Hi wmfv7

1) Could you pl.let me know how much space does the file occupy (approx.)using the Windows Media Encode 9 method you sugested for One hour of Video recorded on Digital 8mm Tape Using Sony TRV 320 Digital Camcorder ?

2) What is the file format? I mean extension of the file ?

3) What softwares can play this file?

4) Can my DVD player play this file if I burn a VCD of the above file?

If I can help it I want to avoid using DVIO for creating a huge .AVI file and then encoding it using TMPGEnc

My Setup is as follows

1) Sony TRV 320 didgital Camcorder.
2) Digital 8 mm Tape (The tap has 1 hour of Recording)
3) IEEE 1394 Firewire Adapter for Laptop
4) ULead 6.0 Basic Edition
4) Laptop with CD Burner
5) Sony HT-5500D DVD/ HomeTheater System that plays
CD/VCD/DVD/MP3
6) Sony 32" Flatscreen TV


The above software (4) is not at all user friendly and.
So I tried to transfer the Video from Camcorder to Computer
using Windows Movie Maker as .AVI file it occupied 130MB for
hardly 20 seconds.