Capturing with Power Director 4

[cwbyup]

Hello,

I’m new to this forum and to Video Editing so please be patient with my newbie mistakes in terminology and procedures.

I recently purchased a HP 7170N Multimedia computer to get into video editing. Other than MS Office and Symantic antivirus there isn’t any other software loaded on the new machine.

Not being too happy with the software provided with the computer I decided, after much research and trial, to install Cyberlink’s Power Director 4 Editing software.

I confess to being very happy with the software except in one area – capturing.

My goal is to capture old home movies that are currently on VHS tapes and convert them to DVD for better preservation.

Once I get into the Capture mode on Power Director 4 I turn on the VHS and up pops the image I want to capture, complete with sound. I click on the red capture button and let it run for a few minutes until I get what I want from the VHS tape, but when I click on the Stop button the program stops and gives me the fatal 0x00000004 or whatever it says and do I want to tattle on them to Microsoft. The only work around I found was to double check the capture settings and turn on the timer instead of using the start and stop buttons.

I contacted the Techies at CyberLink and they suggested the standard fixes; update drivers, change screen to 1024 X 768, 60 mz, reinstall, and don’t run any other software for a day or two. Some of what they told me worked because I don’t get the fatal errors any more; the program just stops and disappears.

The editing portion of this program is great, but does any one have a suggestion for the Capture problem?

Thank You,
CWBYUP

[edDV]

What profile are you using for capture?

Capturing to DVD MPeg2 realtime is very CPU intensive.
Make sure all other software is closed and minimize background processes.

If you can't get MPeg2 capture to work try to capture to AVI, huffyuv, edit and then encode to MPeg2.

These menus are from Power Director 3





You will get best perfromance if you capture to a second drive. At least set up a second partition if editing on the main os drive.

[cwbyup]

Thank you for this information and the screen shots; I will try it and see if it makes a difference. I was trying to capture in MPEG-2.

I’m running on an Intel P4 3.0 Mhz with 1 Gb of Ram. I would have though that that would have been sufficient resources that not to have to worry about a lack of processing capability.

I know I have a lot to learn and I appreciate your help.

Thank You,
CWBYUP

[edDV]

Thank you for this information and the screen shots; I will try it and see if it makes a difference. I was trying to capture in MPEG-2.

I’m running on an Intel P4 3.0 Mhz with 1 Gb of Ram. I would have though that that would have been sufficient resources that not to have to worry about a lack of processing capability.

I know I have a lot to learn and I appreciate your help.

Thank You,
CWBYUP

MPeg2 encoders vary in ability to do realtime. The best I have found is the Mainconcept configuration in the ULead Video Studio Product. I can get that realtime encoding with a 2.4GHz Celeron @ 7Mb/s VBR. A 3GHz P4 will allow higher realtime compression (~5-6Mb/s VBR). I haven't tested whether ULead supports Hyperthreading but if it does expect a bit more boost with the 3GHz P4.

I've not had similar luck with the Cyberlink PD v3 or other MPeg2 encoders.

[victoriabears]

Windows xp loads MSN Messenger by default and with Cyberlink makes for an unhappy bunny.

If you have to use MSN messanger then don't use cyberlink, if you can do without msn messenger, so to c: drive, folder=program files, rename the msn messanger to garbage or something, and then reboot, if msn messanger is loaded , click crtl alt delete, and use task manager to unload it.

This is my practical experience, I would never buy an off the shelf computer again, the likes of HP/Dell as they have too much in built software and you do not get to make the choices of what hardware you'd like for your purpose.

As has been said a seperate drive for video capture is a must, if poss leave the pc doing nothing else, and unload anti-virus and actually take the network lead out to ensure no connection to the internet.

Or look at this thread.............

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=276789&highlight=&sid=2532ed4033947daa1...ec464439ab3a88

[StoneColdWhat]

Well I had a similar problem last week using the Hauppuage 150 card, when I pressed stop it would crash, saying was with the prdirect4.dll, anyways a week later i didn't change anythign except the video card and the stop works fine without crashing. About the msn thing, it didn't bother me when I was capping and one more thing since it is vcd, you might aswell just cap in vcd quality since it won't get better then the source anyhoo.