stand alone vs. computer based capture

[glm1051]

Hello,
I have been doing some analog video capture using a canopus 100 with some success. My father in law just got a Lite on 5005 which I was surprised of the ease of use and for what he has shown me so far good quality stuff. I am looking at some unbiased answer here and a good look of the purpose of this very site. Has it not become simple enough now, in light of the technology that in order to get the best capture of footage from analog and even DV camera or VCR one should go through stand alone, or is there something that computer based capturing can do better, and how can we burn without degradation of quality directy to DVD using a computer, having an easy interface to capture and burn?
Thank you,
Gui

[thecoalman]

I am looking at some unbiased answer here and a good look of the purpose of this very site. Has it not become simple enough now, in light of the technology that in order to get the best capture of footage from analog and even DV camera or VCR one should go through stand alone, or is there something that computer based capturing can do better,

Recorders don't have the flexibility of computers. If your purpose is to simply copy your footage to DVD a recorder may be the way to go but if you wish to editing, complex menus etc. it can't be done with a recorder anywhere near what you can accoplish with good software. As far as quality goes my captures are superb and look nearly identical if not better than the original material.

and how can we burn without degradation of quality directy to DVD using a computer, having an easy interface to capture and burn?

If you mean plug it in and burn it to disc most attempts by people prove unsucessful but with good hardware, good software and most importantly good knowledge you can produce outstanding quality in 2 short steps.

Edit: I think as recorders become cheaper and mainstream you will see ashift to them as preferred method of recordingsimply because of ease of use. They will never come close the possibilities of using a computer.

[gshelley61]

The image capture quality of some DVD recorders is outstanding, and they are certainly much easier to use. If the source is half way decent, there are no dropped frames or audio/video sync problems to worry about. The quality of the video input, processing and sampling circuits built in to the name brand machines is pretty hard to beat, considering many of these companies have been in the professional and consumer video and audio business for decades. The biggest advantage of using DVD recorders is speed... they capture and encode straight to MPEG2 in real time, most with compliant 2-channel Dolby Digital (AC3) audio to boot.

As far as making fancier DVD's from video files created with a DVD recorder goes, it is true that working with MPEG2 video is less flexible than using the computer method. Still, capturing to AVI on the PC, editing, filtering, frameserving, encoding, authoring and burning is a time consuming process with a steep learning curve. Plus, after all that effort, sometimes the results aren't that great. It depends on the quality of the specific capture equipment, the methods used, and mostly the skill and knowledge of the person doing it.

You can perform simple edits and re-author MPEG2 video captured with a DVD recorder using software specific for that purpose, but currently there is no way of including fancy transitions or adding music and narration to such a project without re-encoding the whole thing (something you do not want to do because of quality loss). However, if you are simply transferring video to DVD and don't require lots of editing flexibility, the DVD recorder method is the way to go IMHO.

[jimmalenko]

yep, DVD Recorders are the way to go IMO if you're after a quick'n'dirty dump to DVDR, be it VHS, DV... whatever. However, the minute you want to do any manipulation of it (be it transitions, filters, custom menus, etc etc), then you're looking at using the PC. Then there's the issue of outputting to a file (Divx, XviD for example) if you use the PC.

So i guess it's basically a flexibility thing - if you need flexibility, use a PC. If you just want it straight to DVD, use a DVD Recorder.

[mpack]

If you are happy with the quality you get from a stand alone recorder then there's no reason not to use one. Also, the two options needn't be completely exclusive: if you want fancier menus etc for your DVD then there is nothing preventing you from ripping the recording to your PC, demuxing into elementary streams, and re-authoring using any of the authoring tools linked to this site. There are also apps which can edit MPEGs these days without re-encoding, and you could use one of those (eg.) to cut out advertising after the event.

The only thing you need to be sure of with a stand-alone recorder is that you will never want to re-encode. Quality was lost when the video was first encoded, even if this is not visible, re-encoding will lose more quality, and this time it might well be visible.

The main advantage you have when encoding on a PC from a captured source is: you know how long the movie (or whatever) is. Therefore (and after you have filtered out noise and so forth) you can choose a bitrate for the encoding that fills the disk and so gives you maximum quality. A stand-alone recorder can't do that: you have to choose from a small number of quality options.

Another advantage of offline encoding is that the quality of the encoding can be better for a given bitrate, because the encoder doesn't have to work in real time: it can take more time (or more passes) analysing the source video to get a better result. But this doesn't matter if you are happy with the quality and disk capacity you get from the recorder.