Best raw capture file type

[tomarwater]

I am preparing to transfer over 200 aviation films (documentaries & features) from my archive 3/4" cassettes to digital video file storage (before the tape deteriorates). I have a good capture card (Osprey) and several good capture programs. My plan is to capture the films first in an intermediate file format then clean up, enhance, reframe if necessary, etc. using Discreet Cleaner XL to generate a final mpg file for permanent file keeping. Discreet will not accept mpg files as input so I will have to capture in another format. My capture programs allow capturing in avi, asf, wmv, mov and flv formats. Can anyone save me the research time and tell me which of these formats is best for raw digital input to a program such as Discreet Cleaner? Or are they all about equal in capture quality? I will not be saving the raw capture file it will only be used until the final mpg file is done and then I will be done with it.

[edDV]

I am preparing to transfer over 200 aviation films (documentaries & features) from my archive 3/4" cassettes to digital video file storage (before the tape deteriorates). I have a good capture card (Osprey) and several good capture programs. My plan is to capture the films first in an intermediate file format then clean up, enhance, reframe if necessary, etc. using Discreet Cleaner XL to generate a final mpg file for permanent file keeping. Discreet will not accept mpg files as input so I will have to capture in another format. My capture programs allow capturing in avi, asf, wmv, mov and flv formats. Can anyone save me the research time and tell me which of these formats is best for raw digital input to a program such as Discreet Cleaner? Or are they all about equal in capture quality? I will not be saving the raw capture file it will only be used until the final mpg file is done and then I will be done with it.

Is your Win 2000 profile accurate?

Which Osprey card? Most over compress which may not be optimal.

Of the choices only avi and mov have potential. Both are containers. What codecs?

Of course uncompressed or low compressed codecs work best. What softwre are you using?

The 3/4" Umatic deck ideally needs a TBC. Does yours have one?

[redwudz]

One of the lossless formats may be a good choice. HuffyUV and Logarithm Lossless Video Codec are a couple. I haven't tried it, but Alparysoft Lossless Video Codec is another. If you can't use any of those, others here may have some suggestions.

Lagarith is a bit more compact than HuffyUV. I don't know about Alparysoft. They all take a lot of hard drive space, so be prepared for that. Other choices may be one of the more lossy AVI type formats, with a high bitrate.

[jagabo]

HuffyUV, Logarithm Lossless Video Codec, Alparysoft Lossless Video Codec... all take a lot of hard drive space

Typically 20 to 40 GB/hr depending on how noisy the source is.

[tomarwater]

Win2K is the opsys.
My card is an Osprey 210.
The codecs available in The Debut Video Capture program are almost 20 in number. I have other capture programs such as Videopad but Debut seemed the easiest to use. I defaulted to the Microsoft MPEG-4 codec since I was not sure of the other choices.
Debut Video Capture.
I have three 3/4" decks, 2 Sony 5800's and one Sony 5850. Not sure if they include TBC.

[edDV]

Your Celeron 2.66GHz is on the slow side to do much real time encode during capture. The Osprey 210 seems to lack any hardware assist. I agree Huffyuv is your best intermediate format since processing required is less than Lagarith. Test them both. I haven't used the others.
http://www.viewcast.com/products/osprey-cards/osprey-210

Discreet Cleaner XL should encode to DVD MPeg2 (704x480i or 720x480i upper field first >6 Mb/s (average). I'm not sure if Cleaner XL will accept huffyuv directly.