Capturing for the first time

[Dalek]

Howdy:

I've been having a devil of a time getting a good first time capture with various software. All my wife want to do is archive home videos and some tv shows. Here's the deal, in case my profile doesnt show up:

1.2 mhz processor
DVC-80 capture device
Actually, 342 meg, not 512meg memory

Tried Sonic MuDVD -- jerky cpature. Tried Nero 6 -- Jerky capture. Amazingly, MGI Videowave gets a fairly decent capture, -- 1550 frames and 39 lost in a trial run over a 1 minute experiment.

I've read here and elsewhere about VirtualDub and my eyes glaze over with all the info and settings that need to be absorbed. I get the inpression it only does AVIs. Am I mistaken? The instructions I've found so far just aren't very specific.

I read all this about resolution, limits of the DVC80, etc. and I'm really getting overwhelmed. I need some common sense, plain English instructions with "Go here and read this", do this, make these setting changes to your computer, etc. I'm really tired of spending as much money as I have so far with my DVD writier (a nightmare in itself) and software, and then the only thing standing between me and getting this video finally on a disc is crappy capture.

Can someone give me the definitive solution for getting a decent capture? Is the reate I got above pretty good? Can Virtualdub do better (remember, though, too much technical jargon and too many variables and you'll lose me). I just want to record and do minor editing to the stuff I have on tape before it's too late.

Thanks.

[Tommyknocker]

Okay, what will be the final product, a DVD, a (S)VCD, or a simple AVI file on a disk?

[sacajaweeda]

Howdy:

I've been having a devil of a time getting a good first time capture with various software. All my wife want to do is archive home videos and some tv shows. Here's the deal, in case my profile doesnt show up:

1.2 mhz processor
DVC-80 capture device
Actually, 342 meg, not 512meg memory

Tried Sonic MuDVD -- jerky cpature. Tried Nero 6 -- Jerky capture. Amazingly, MGI Videowave gets a fairly decent capture, -- 1550 frames and 39 lost in a trial run over a 1 minute experiment.

I've read here and elsewhere about VirtualDub and my eyes glaze over with all the info and settings that need to be absorbed. I get the inpression it only does AVIs. Am I mistaken? The instructions I've found so far just aren't very specific.

I read all this about resolution, limits of the DVC80, etc. and I'm really getting overwhelmed. I need some common sense, plain English instructions with "Go here and read this", do this, make these setting changes to your computer, etc. I'm really tired of spending as much money as I have so far with my DVD writier (a nightmare in itself) and software, and then the only thing standing between me and getting this video finally on a disc is crappy capture.

Can someone give me the definitive solution for getting a decent capture? Is the reate I got above pretty good? Can Virtualdub do better (remember, though, too much technical jargon and too many variables and you'll lose me). I just want to record and do minor editing to the stuff I have on tape before it's too late.

Thanks.

"Technical jargon"?

There are other (read: easier) ways for you to put all your old tapes on DVD, record TV shows, etc. Standalone DVD recorders are great for that. If you are unwilling to learn what's involved then this isn't for you and you should consider purchasing a recorder and saving yourself lots of time and headaches.

If you're set on doing it with your PC...

You are going to have to learn some of the basics at least, and there are plenty of guides here that dumb it down enough for (willing) noobs to grasp the basic fundamentals and get some working knowledge. You are going to have to put forth some effort if you ever hope to get any decent results with your hardware/software setup. That means reading, tuning up your hardware & software, etc. You can't expect to get anywhere installing some program on a hammered computer, feeding it a captured video file and hitting the 'make movie' button. I don't care what the box your Dazzle came in says

Dropping 39 frames a minute is completely unacceptable, BTW. To me at least anyways. Even just half that number over two hours is way too many for my liking.

[sacajaweeda]

As for your question about VirtualDub.....check out VirtualdubMOD for editing your mpeg Dazzle captures.

[johns0]

I would find another capture device as the dazzle 80 only captures up tp 352x288 max on any computer.Not good for anything in my opinion except for low standard captures from poor vhs tapes.

[Dalek]

Okay, here's the rub.

Johns0 is saying that the card is not good enough. (And that's 352 x 288 what, again?) I didn't know that. Is that the opinion of others? I don't know if I'd know the difference. How much do I have to spend? Like I said, I really don't want to have to shell out more money. Why isn't this made clear?

Thanks to Sacajaweeda for the tip. I'll look into it. Didn't see that one when I first looked into it.
As for the "Technical Jargon" I mean it's all very confusing when talking about resolutions, color standards, blah blah blah when all I want is a standard to shoor tor. Give me a standard and I'll learn that. A lot of this is preferences of individuals that probably don't mean beans to me. It's like arguing with an audiophiole over whether a sound recording is any better with tubes or solid state. Unless your ear is trained, most people don't know, or care. I looked at all those settings and my eyes glazed over. How can I learn when there's no place to get a simple explanation? If you have some guides you can point me to, that's what I'm looking for!

Stand alone recorders are okay, but I want to do simple edits, and that's why I want to do it on my PC.
"You can't expect to get anywhere installing some program on a hammered computer, feeding it a captured video file and hitting the 'make movie' button. I don't care what the box your Dazzle came in says."

Swell. Sucked in by marketing again.

An friend of my wife and me can do it with just a My DVD 3.0. I'm waiting to hear back from him as to why he has not problems but we're struggling.

Tommyknocker: The final product I want is a DVD.

[Dalek]

Okay, now -- see, I've downloaded VirtualDubMod.

There's really no instructions on how to use it. Is there some online somewhere? AGain, it looks like it only produces AVIs. Am I wrong here?

[Dalek]

Alright! I just found http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html that explains all that I need to know.

Now, what's this about the quality of the DVC80 and why do I need something better for tv shows videotaped off air that are about 15 years old?

[sacajaweeda]

Your Dazzle should be fine for capturing/transferring VHS. I don't know about your Dazzle unit, but the one I had when I first started out was the DVC100 and it came with a utility that would let you capture to AVI instead of the Mpeg on the fly capturing you get with the MovieStar software that came with it. If you are going to use MPEG then capture at your target frame size. If you can capture to AVI with that unit you can get better results capturing a larger frame size than your target size, then filtering & cleaning up the source and then re-sizing it down to your target frame size. You should use a 352x240 (NTSC) or 352x288 (PAL) frame size for your VHS stuff when you encode, which is all the resolution you get with VHS source.

[sacajaweeda]

I just looked up the specs on that DVC80 and it's definitely geared towards VCDs. You'll get VHS quality results from it with the 320x288 max frame size, and the audio capability (32Khz, 44,1 kHz 16-bits) is not producing a stream with a DVD compliant 48kHz sample rate. In other words, you should upgrade

Edit: 352x288 max frame size

[Dalek]

Swell. Well, that's what I get for buying a device on sale. Fortunately, I didn't pay very much for it, but it's still annoying.

Thanks. Now, the next question is, how much more am I going to have to invest? I'm really getting tired of spending money on this endeavor.

[andkiich]

My firstcapture device was the DVC-80, droped it in a bout a week. The quality was not what I wanted and sync issues galore.

Spent $129 on an ATI AIW Radeon 7500 and have had outstanding results ever since.

[sacajaweeda]

I still have my old Dazzle DVC100 unit that I'd like to get rid of to recover some of my losses on, but to be honest I wouldn't wish that thing on my worst enemy. Dazzle isn't even around anymore I don't believe. I got a bunch of email from them telling me that Pinnacle now owns Dazzle and that they were offering support for the Dazzle devices for a limited time, but I mostly ignored all the notifications they sent me because I never touched that thing after I went with a PCI card. Too many drawbacks with that thing. I didn't like the fact I had to use crappy MovieStar software to capture with it. It was either that or the utility I mentioned earlier for capturing AVI. Those were the only things that would recognize it as a capture device on my system. Adobe supposedly came out with a patch for Premiere, but I believe it was for models beginning AFTER mine....the DVC150 & up. One of the biggest drawbacks/limitations of it was it was only USB 1.1 and not a 2.0 device. That could be another reason you are dropping so many frames with your DVC80 which is also USB 1.1....it's just slow. Another downer was that it was an unsupported device in Windows XP. 2000 was the last Windows OS it was compatable with. I fought with the thing for a while before I saw the light and replaced it with a $39 TV tuner card. All kinds of flexibility with it and the quality is just such that it really isnt even fair to compare it to the stuff I cranked out with the Dazzle unit.

MY $.02

[Dalek]

I've punted the Dazzle and gotten the Videoh! device instead. It works -- however now I'm having burning software driver issues. (sigh) It never ends.