Software Encoding on High-End System

[tbradyjd]

I have a new core i7 desktop with lots of RAM and a good video card. The weak link is a software-based encoder on the tuner card.

I've done a fair amount of analog video capture on an older P-4 machine, but always connected a digital camcorder as a "bridge" between the VHS tape player and the PC firewire input. This essentially off-loaded the conversion work to the camcorder itself. I think they call this DV passthrough. It worked very well, but now I've loaned the camcorder to a relative.

So my question is, with a powerful new PC, should I expect decent results capturing and encoding video using a lower-end tuner card and its software-based approach to encoding, or should I call my relative and try to get the camcorder back? I'm anxious to finish up the stack of home movie VHS tapes before they "die" but I really want to get the settings right the first time. I suppose one option would be to buy a better tuner card, but I would think the camcorder pass-through is the preferred alternative if software encoding turns out badly.

Related question - does the video card come into play at all, or is the quality of the capture determined by the tuner card and CPU?

[edDV]

I have a new core i7 desktop with lots of RAM and a good video card. The weak link is a software-based encoder on the tuner card.

I've done a fair amount of analog video capture on an older P-4 machine, but always connected a digital camcorder as a "bridge" between the VHS tape player and the PC firewire input. This essentially off-loaded the conversion work to the camcorder itself. I think they call this DV passthrough. It worked very well, but now I've loaned the camcorder to a relative.

So my question is, with a powerful new PC, should I expect decent results capturing and encoding video using a lower-end tuner card and its software-based approach to encoding, or should I call my relative and try to get the camcorder back? I'm anxious to finish up the stack of home movie VHS tapes before they "die" but I really want to get the settings right the first time. I suppose one option would be to buy a better tuner card, but I would think the camcorder pass-through is the preferred alternative if software encoding turns out badly.

Related question - does the video card come into play at all, or is the quality of the capture determined by the tuner card and CPU?

You didn't memtion your final archive format for these VHS captures. Is it DV? Or MPeg?

With the new machine you have options.

1. DV analog passthrough capture (hardware based)

2. Capture to Hufyuv or other digital intermediate (~30GB/hr working file).

3. Uncompressed capture (2 disc RAID required)

4. MPeg2 DVD ready hardware capture (Hauppauge PVR-250 etc.)

5. On the fly software encoding to MPeg2 or other.

You would then edit and encode to your chosen archive format. The i7 will be faster for the final encode. If you use #4 or #5, you would just edit the MPeg2. There is no need to re-encode.


Usually the video card only affects playback. Some software encoders are beginning to use the GPU for acceleration of some encoding steps. Currently this is more practical for live streaming rather than high quality archive encoding.

[tbradyjd]

Thanks. I was thinking about keeping the .avi files on storage media even if I turn some of them into DVDs and Mpeg2 format (is that essentially item 3 on your list?). So in essence I'm looking for the cleanest way to capture the analog tapes into avi files without a hardware-based encoder. I guess I'll try the software only route and see what that looks like. I can always retrieve the DV camcorder and go back to method 1 on your list.

[edDV]

Thanks. I was thinking about keeping the .avi files on storage media even if I turn some of them into DVDs and Mpeg2 format (is that essentially item 3 on your list?). So in essence I'm looking for the cleanest way to capture the analog tapes into avi files without a hardware-based encoder. I guess I'll try the software only route and see what that looks like. I can always retrieve the DV camcorder and go back to method 1 on your list.

If you want to encode to a 720x480i DV-AVI archive file there is a software only option 1a. Capture in Virtualdub using the Cedocida DV codec. Be sure to set the codec to YUV (or YCbCr), not RGB. That gives you a DV format archive file.
https://www.videohelp.com/tools/Cedocida_DV_Codec

[sphinx99]

With a modern Nehalem-based Intel processor, you should capture in raw format (lagarith, huffyuv) then transcode to your target using software and parameters optimized for the best quality possible. Don't worry about compute time or compute power, you have plenty--leverage it to encode more successfully than you would with a USB dongle.