capturing "time" issue

[mikehende]

I have a Leadtek capture card and would like to know if there is any way to "auto" stop capturing when a video is finished? Most of the times when I am capturing from VHS, I won't know the length of the video so I can't set a time on the card to stop recording, I don't wish to set a very long "safe" time becuse then I will record a lot of empty space on the video file, how do you guys deal with this issue?

[yoda313]

Hmm.... Don't know of any software means for this one. I just bite the bullet and try to be around when the capturing is done. Usually I'll go do something in another room and check been in once in awhile to see the progress. If I end up recording a few extra minutes thats no big deal.

Basically you're stuck with "best guessing". Because I don't believe they have a scene detection technigue for capturing from a source like a vcr. You can do it once the video file is captured but those tend to be hit or miss from my limited experience with scene detection (on non-dv material).

[BrainStorm69]

Why don't you know how long the VHS video that you are capturing is? I always just make sure the VCR timer is set to zero and then fast forward to the end of what I'm going to capture. That gives you the length. Then I usually add a minute or two just to be sure it doesn't stop prematurely if the vcr timer is off a little bit.

[mikehende]

Why don't you know how long the VHS video that you are capturing is? I always just make sure the VCR timer is set to zero and then fast forward to the end of what I'm going to capture. That gives you the length. Then I usually add a minute or two just to be sure it doesn't stop prematurely if the vcr timer is off a little bit.

I don't have a real time counter on this older vcr and I cannot find a way to know what the counter means in minutes/hours?