The quest for perfect capturing and my conquest.

[monkey man]

I have an extensive of collection live and irreplaceable concert performances from my favorite artist. Many of these performances are first generation. After noticing that some of these shows were degrading in quality from repeat viewing I decided to do something about it. So I decided that I would like to preserve these show shows digitally. This by the way this started in 1999 where the only option was VCD and SVCD. So I went out like most people and bought a ATI capture card thinking my problems were solved. This only lasted momentary when my first attempt at capturing failed (500% dropped frames )due to my slow computer. So I built the fasted computer I could afford. Then I gave it another run set for VCD quality. Oh my, this looks worse than a VHS LP recording. So I then discovered TMPGE and I thought my prayers were answered. Well partly, but the VCD quality couldn't cut it. So like most people I moved up to SVCD which caused me to have to buy another DVD player to play that format. Still SVCD couldn't replicate the original VHS quality. Not to mention at 480X480 my computer stated dropping frames again. At that time now year 2000 home dvd production was far out of reach of my college budget hands. So I gave up until last month or so when I noticed that DVD burners were affordable. So I built another computer thinking that the dropped frames were due to slow computer. Also not only dropped frames but the dreaded A/V sync problems were also one of the reasons I dropped out of the vcd, svcd quest which I started out on. Well my new RAID and XP chip still dropped frames on settings like 720X480 which buy the way was the only frame size that appeared to capture ALL the VHS resolution; but how could this be VHS was only 352X240? Laugh, I don't care what anyone says, you need to go far beyond VCD frame size to capture all the picture for TV viewing. VCD is good only if you looking at a 352X240 window.

It became very apparent that the ATI was the weak link in the chain. So I did something quite daring I pulled out the ATI card and punted it across the room...okay I didn't do that but I felt I wanted to after all the failed attempts. By the way the A/V sync problems never went away. What's the daring part you ask? Okay I went out and bought a Sony MiniDV camcorder TRV17. This MiniDV cam offers a analog to digital pass though and the ability to record from a external source to miniDigital tape at DVD resolution. The results were amazing. The first time I recorded a show to MiniDV tape was unbelievable. I hooked the camcorder to the TV and did a A/B with the original tape in the new VCR I just bought (JVC HR-S9800). I could not tell the difference between the master and copy.

Now it's very easy to capture to my computer or shall I say transfer. I just hook the camcorder to the computer via firewire and transfer the data form the MiniDV tape or just with the pass through feature without the MiniDV medium directly to the hard drive with NO frames drops and perfect A/V sync. After compressing with TMPGE and burning to DVD-R I was finally able to make a perfect VHS and S-VHS dub to DVD format.

By the way I tried all kinds of capture cards under $500 before buying the MiniDV cam and they were all like the ATI card, in some cases they were worse. Now I know I could have bought a $1000 hardware encoder card that most likely would have worked but now I have MiniDV cam to boot I will get much more fun out of the camcorder than a hardware capture card.

Well this is my experience and I hope it helps some of the newbies just starting out. One side not is that the ATI card did okay captures. If you were doing TV captures then the ATI does well for the price. The thing is that I'm a perfectionist and obsessive when it come to my hobbies so the normal person doesn't have to run out and buy a camcorder for normal capture use. But if your looking for perfect captures then try my route if you have other uses for a camcorder besides video capture.
Cheers
MM

[Bud]

monkey man


OK Now you have my attention...like you, I want that PERFECT VCD, my only question would be, what software are you using to do the actual capture? By the way you are the second post in recent days that indicated SONY or Ishould say DV tannsfer, was the way to go, the other post indicated a Sony DCR TVR900 model camera.

Bud

[monkey man]

I use adobe Premiere 6.01 and have used Ulead Pro media 6. Both work well but of course Adobe is more advanced. One thing I should note is that I'm making DVDs now because the VCD format just didn't cut it. I have made some good SVCDs but the small storage of CD-r was the limiting factor. If you don't want to go the DV cam route then you could try the Dazzle Hollywood bridge. It does analog to digital pass through via firewire. But it doesn't use digital tapes for DV storage like you can use with a DV camcorder. I went the MiniDV route because it seems like Digital8 is on the way out. Digital8 being the other Sony model you mentioned

One more thing make sure you get a firewire card that is OHCI. That makes for less head aches.
MM

[LavaJockey]

You're wrong. You can't, in general, reproduce VHS quality on a VCD. There are simply not enough pixels to do it.

Either A) your original source material is very simple or B) your TV screen is junk or C)
its too far away to notice detail or D) you need eyeglasses.

[monkey man]

READ THE POST "DVD-R" not "VCD". I started with VCD but I dropped it and then went to DVD format. I realize that my first post wasn't articulated well but you should read more carefully before you post.
MM

"Now it's very easy to capture to my computer or shall I say transfer. I just hook the camcorder to the computer via firewire and transfer the data form the MiniDV tape or just with the pass through feature without the MiniDV medium directly to the hard drive with NO frames drops and perfect A/V sync. After compressing with TMPGE and burning to DVD-R I was finally able to make a perfect VHS and S-VHS dub."

[LavaJockey]

Hey! You're right.

[lowrider]

monkey man,

Anything special about your firewire card? I'm getting ready to order my new system (XP1700) and have a firewire card I just got for my old system (K6-450). It's an off brand, Kouwell or something, OHCI compliant though. I've had limited success capturing to my current system with Video Studio 5. I just want to make sure when I get this new system that I get the right video card and the right capture card to make this easy. I have a DV camera. I'm thinking I'll get an nVidia MX400 or a Matrox g550, I guess I'm leaning toward the 64mb MX400 (I'll probably never need dual monitors.) The rest of the spec's I think I have down (7200rpm ata100 drives, lots of ram, etc.) and I'll be running Premiere 6 as well.

Also, what DVD burner did you get?

Thanks.

[monkey man]

Try using adobe premiere 6.01. Make sure your using MS-DV driver. Check your hardware manager to find out. I'm using a pioneer a03 dvd burner right now. As long as the firewire card is OHCI then you should be fine. Chances are is your dropping frams from with the firewire card it's a IRQ conflict or the capture driver problem. Abobe says that you must use the MS-DV driver not he Texas instruments or the Sony driver. If you can't find Premiere then try one of those file sharing programs. Let me know how it goes.
MM

[ronbo613]

Hello-Use the Microsoft DV drivers with your Sony camcorder for best results(I have a TRV900). You need at least Win98SE for realistic DVcam operation. I have not tried the pass-through with my camera, but I think I'll try it.

[lowrider]

Thanks. Got the new system ordered yesterday from mwave.com:

XP1700
Gigabyte 266a board, ata 133 NOT raid
512 DDR
2 Maxtor 40gb, 7200 rpm, ata133
MSI MX400, 64mb card, TV out

I'm going to run this system with Windows 2000, NTFS and Premiere. Can't wait for DVD burners to drop a little more and stuff one of those in the new tower as well!!

[lowrider]

Monkeyman,

Got the new box yesterday and spent most of the evening hooking everything up. WORKS AWESOME!!! Man, I can't believe I even waited this long to upgrade my system. 98se is f-ing joke compared to 2k, ALL of the driver & software installs went off without a hitch...unreal.

I also got Premiere loaded up and did a quick capture of about 15 minutes DV via my $35 firewire card. Super slick capture, no dropped frames. I AM STOKED!! I too have a lot of stuff on super 8 tape & vhs and am anxious to try using my camera as a bridge as you did.

Now.....just need to find some good tutorials on Premiere!!

Thanks again!

[Bud]

You are goin' like Premiere!! . I have WIN2000Pro and Capture with Premiere 6.01, nothing short of great Captures, I use VirtualDub to frameserve to TMPGEnc in the standard VCD format, and the end result is GREAT VCD, I have a 61" Sony TV and the picture is great on it even better on the smaller TV's. The only problem I have with Premiere is that you can not set up a timer for recording later, I record off a Digital Cable system, would like to see Premiere add a Timer of some kind, unless somone out there knows how to set this up. Tried to Use VirtualDub Capture with the DV, can get picture but no audio, so I stay with the Premiere

Bud

[You_Are_Alive]

Bud

You say you record off a Digital Cable system, what output are you using from the receiver? Better yet, explain your set up, like how you get the signal and how you ouput the signal, ie. firewire, s-video, etc.

[Bud]

I use the Digital Cable Box from the company, connect the S-Video, Audio outs to a Hollywood Bridge via the firewire, I also have the AIW Readon 32 DDR Card in another system also running WIN2000 Pro and connect that with a Cable Splitter from the same Digital Box via another S-Video, both systems give me great options. I use Premiere 6.01 (with Hollywood Bridge) with the standard settting for DV of 720x480 then use VirtualDub on the resulting DV Avi file, frameserve out with a resize filter to 352x240 into TMPGEnc and out to standard VCD Templates. I use the VirtuaDub Capture on teh systems with AIW Card because it has a Timer Utility I can setup for later recording off the TV, Premiere does not have a Timer (At Least I have not found one). Hope this helps. WIN2000 Pro is the only way to go, no file limits, no more "Blue Screens" finds all the drivers all the time..........

[davespade]

Hay monkey man!! Who is the artist that you have an extensive collection of live and irreplaceable concert performances?? They better have been worth all the trouble. Steps? Abba?

[dvbr]

Hi,

Just a word about capturing. I have a Pinnacle PCTV (very cheap) and I
can capture from DTV at 720x480 using the VDub and Huffyuv compression with almost no frame drops with a Celeron 766 overclocked to 862. On DTV I'm using SVHS input of the card.
When trying to capture from the VCR by the composite, a got a lot of frame drops. So I think that a noise video source requires more processing power from the compressor or even from the card.

For my captures from VHS, SVCD has enough quality, but the problem is
the player compatibility, as not every standalone DVD player could play SVCDs.
I'm planning to go to DVD-R and record at D/2 resolution (352x480), at
this format I could put 5 or 6 hours on a DVD-R. I did some tests with
XSVCD at 352x480 and it's satifactory.

I think the main key to preserve the VHS quality is the vertical resolution,
'cause with 480 you will be preserving all the fields, at 240 no or mixing it. For horizontal 352 seems to be enough, but you need to capture at higher and resize, this reduces the video noise.

Regards

[AdamB]

Monkey Man, what settings do you use for TMPG? Can you run though you DVD making process.

Also any of you using DV should take a look at Scenalyzer, their free version is great for splitting scenes automatically. You can also print out a scene list with thumbnails.
Also if you working with home videos, Muvee is great fun.

AdamB

[OptimusPrime22]

I was wondering how long does it take for you guys DV conversions to MPEG using TMPEG? Most of you seem to be running 1Ghz or more systems and I hear that uncompressed AVI is the fastest format to convert to MPEG. Thanks.

[jane_caldwell]

Monkey Man, great post!
I've also purchased a digital camcorder (D8 TRV330E) and firewire card so that I can archive my VHS copies of concerts, but I am having a few issues when capturing (either through the analog pass through or direct from the digital tape)

The problem being that the quality of the capture is not what I expected. There are artefacts such as blockiness when viewing full screen. Dropped frames are not a problem but the quality of the video is.
Using Vegas Video 3.0 I capture at the PAL DV 720 x 576 resolution.

Can anybody suggest a reason or remedy for this problem?

System Spec
Athlon 650
20 Gig 7200rpm hard disk
128 mb RAM
OHCI compliant 1394 Firewire card
Windows 2000 professional (NTFS file system)

Thanks for your time

Jane

[monkey man]

Hi everyone,
The settings I use for TMPGE are from this site http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0165394101/TMPGEnc_Template.html I=1, P=3, B=1, this gives a GOP of IBBPBBPBBPBB. This also seems to be the same GOP Hollywood uses on their commercial DVD. As far as video bit rate goes I use the maximum that will fit on the DVD. When I can't use CBR bit rate I use the new type of VBR in TMPGE 2.52. I noticed that in TMPGE 2.53 you can't use the new VBR?

jane_caldwell
Hmm that problems you are having is strange, tell me more about it. Is it happening in the DV (.avi) format on your computer. Or is it happening after you have compressed with TMPGE and burned to VCD or DVD.

As far as the artist I'm using you won't understand it's one of those fanatical fan things. I'm using this as a stepping stone for other things like Hmm ,well, errr, I really don't know. I guess I'm just obsessive compulsive with my hobbies

MM

[Rich927]

Man, I'm glad to see that others are using DV Camcorders as capture devices. I have a Sony TRV8 which I've been using for a few years. Tried an experiment few years back. I have a Matrox Rainbow Runner analog/svideo capture card, firewire card, JVC SVideo deck and the camcorder. I copied a VHS tape from the deck to the Matrox card using Svideo hookup as .avi file to my Computer. Then I copied the same tape to the Camcorder using Svideo hookup. Next I captured the DV copy using firewire as .avi file to my Computer. I then compared the two files and the file made from the DV tape thru firewire was much better. I got less generation loss copying analog to DV Camcorder as opposed to copying VCR to VCR. using this procedure, I have been able to save some analog tapes that are about 20 years old. Most of my old VHS tapes are now on DV tape. my favorite scenes are now on VCD and .avi/MPG. Found this to be a good way to edit. I used to edit VCR to VCR using a Videonics editor. Using DV and firewire I feel is the way to go.

[jane_caldwell]

The poor quality of the AVI is directly after capture. I haven't encoded the file into an MPG.
There's nothing really much else to say about the problem. I know my hardware isn't the fastest, but as I'm not dropping frames so I don't think that it's a major issue.

Jane

[monkey man]

Have you tried recording to D8 tape first and then viewing the footage from the camcorder hooked straight to your TV? Try this that way we can rule out the camcorder making a bad transfer. Hopefully the DV footage will look great. If this is the case try to get your hands on a copy of Adobe Premiere. Premiere is the best tool for transferring the footage from your camcorder to your computer via firewire.

[SingSing]

The pro Dropped frames are not a problem but the quality of the video is.
Using Vegas Video 3.0 I capture at the PAL DV 720 x 576 resolution.

Can anybody suggest a reason or remedy for this problem?

I think your origial video source material is not that clean.
How good does the original look on a sony or toshiba TV ?

Your PAL DV should can better result than our NTSC interleaving DV.

[joy]

to monkey man,

what kind/brand of firewire card would you recommend? Do all of these cards have the "pass through" feature?

joy

[themamboman]

I could have bought a $1000 hardware encoder card

On a side note, the Dazzle DVC2 hardware mpeg2 capture card can capture at full 720x480 at up to 10Mbs with no frame drop easily. It is less than $300 in stores (and less than $250 online).

I capture from my DirecTiVo in full quality.

Of course, a miniDV would be more fun...

[yg1968]

Hi Jane Caldwell,

I thought that I had the same problem with my analog pass through until I realized that it was the microsoft DV drivers that were creating these artifacts. As soon as you encode to mpeg2 or export back to your DV camera, the artifacts will disappear.

In other words, these artifacts show up because of the lousy quality of playback with the microsoft DV drivers on a (DV) avi file. Unfortunately, we have to live with these DV drivers (using other DV drivers can create conflicts with certain capture software).

I came to realize this when I was using the DVIO freeware program (a great little program, incidentally) and exported an avi (DV) file back to my camcorder. The quality had not changed from the initial imported file. I then encoded the avi (DV) file to mpeg2 and the artifacts had suddenly disappeared. I had a crisp and perfect picture once more.

Hope this helps solve this little mystery,

YG

[Cooly-O]

Try using adobe premiere 6.01. Make sure your using MS-DV driver. Check your hardware manager to find out. MM

How do you check the hardware manager? My "Driver details" in my Display Adapters "Properties" (under Control Panel, System, Device Manager, Display Adapters) says my Decoder type is: Rage Theater (under Multimedia section). Is that what you mean?

What are the best setups/codecs for a analog capture (analog camcorder)? I'm using Premiere 6.01 and an ATI AIW Radeon 8500DV analog (composite) capture. Any detail is appreciated.

Win2000 Prof
1.4Ghz AMD XP+

Also, I have a question concerning Analog-to-Digital Conversion with Pass-Through for DV camcorders, please see my post at:

"DV camcorders: Sweetspot???: palatable price/features"
http://forum.vcdhelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=99416&highlight=

[gadget]

hi guys. been reading your posts about dv cams. i have an old computer 500 celeron and been capturing from all external sources like dss, dvd player, vhs and analog cam and have only one frame dropped for every minute of video. i have an ati tv wonder ve card and win 98se and been making vcds for quite sometime now. now, i want to get hold of these new hardwares so that i can also make movies in dvd quality. my question is where can i get this HOLLYWOOD BRIDGE you guys are talking about? thnx.

[gadget]

btw, what is the compression rate of microsoft dv? is it the same as huffyuv or how many gigs does a one hour movie have?