Capturing with analog and digital devices

[jayant]

Every device is now getting digitzed. Camcorders, VCR recorders, TV channels broadcasting and the Video Capture cards. Even the Windows XP provides only WDM drivers which cannot be used with the old VFW analog mode of capturing.

Capturing from video broadcasts requires WDM drivers and newer cards like Radeon which provide the necessary drivers. Does software like VideoDub have no place in this new regime under XP?

Can video data from digital channels or digital camcorders and VCRs be recorded with VideoDub under Windows 98 or Windows ME, using for example the old ATI Multi-media driver?
What is the path for those still having the old analog recording equipment? Do they have no option but to phase out the old equipment to be able to continue video capture under XP?

Could any knowledgeable person throw some light on how to handle this whole new world of digitization of video data?

P. Jayant

[oldfart13]

Go to www.videoguys.com and read some of the articles. There are cheap ways to go and expensive ways to go. It will depend on your budget and exactly what you are trying to do.

[jayant]

I browsed the web-site www.videoguys.com and found that the articles contain commercial info on various products which work in the digital arena but did not find answers to any of my concerns. To make my concerns very clear, let me re-formulate my questions?
Let us say, I have a video camera, a VCR and a PC with ATI AIW-128 Rage card; all caturing analogue video and capable of sending the video files or streams from one to the other. If I am required to change one of these to its digital counterpart, will the ability to transfer video files or send video streams from one to the other be hampered in any way? Or are there software solutions which permit me to convert from one source to the other? What are those solutions? Or is it that I shall have no peace until I convert all of them to digital counterparts?

How should one go about the migration from analogue to digital equipment? Have I formulated my problem clearly? I hope so.

P. Jayant

[Tbear]

NO you will not be hampered to transfer them. With the amount of Analog TV's in this world it will take time to replace them all. For VCR and Camcorders that say digital. The record in digital to the tape, then put out analog to the TV via RCA jacks (composit). some digital camcorders can send to the PC via either firewire or usb.

[tazzila]

You might want to look into a digital to analog / analog to digital converter. Canopus makes the advc-100 and it works great. Priced under 300.oo it will capture both analog and digital video and pass it to your computer via firewire. I have been using one for close too two months with out any dropped frames or audio sync problems. Capture can be done thru s-video, composite, and firewire cables. This will allow capture from any vcr, camcorder and other video sources dvd players ect.

[videoguys]

Here's the scoop on your analog to DV migration issue:

The ATI card you are using is capturing into either avi or mpeg files. for avi you can choose from several CODECs, but not the DV CODEC. So if you migrate to digital, you would need to either recature or transcode these files into DV.

So, if you get a DV cam and a FireWire card, you'll have no problems editing new footage, but the old footage will have to be turned into DV before you can output it via FireWire.

Boards that support both analog & digital like the RT2500 or Studio Deluxe or DV500PLUS all support Native DV. So even though you are going in and out of the card using the analog jacks, all the video in your computer is going to be DV (or in the case of the RT2500 DV or MPEG2).
So you would still have to transcode to output.

A device like the DV Bridge isn't really a good solution for you. While it will allow you to attach DV devices via firewrie, you'll won't be taking advantage of the DV CODEC and you won't get device controll of your DV cam when you capture.

I hope this helps. If you still have any questions feel free to give us a call or email our sales team.

Gary
Videoguys.com

[jayant]

Thanks videoguys, for your comments which clarify the hardware to hardware video stream comprehension problems.

Could those who have captured video streams with digital video capture drivers (WDM type), comment on the feasibility of capturing video data coming from analog devices with the WDM type drivers on a computer, especially under Windows XP? Does the analog video need any intermediate conversions by hardware or softwaree to digital format or does the capture process cause any distortion or frame dropping or jitter problems, if the video data is processed by the WDM drives AS IS?

Thanks.

P. Jayant