Analogue to Digital capture software

[ManUtdFans]

Can you suggest any reliable video capture software for analogue to digital conversion?
I have an external device(EasyCap) to connect my analogue Sony 8mm camcorder comes with a basic software, but would like get/purchase a software if it can do a better job. At the moment, I tried to capture and found the size of the .avi file occupies 1GB/minute of footage.

I also tried to save as .mpg, but the quality is much poorer than .avi.

[sanlyn]

Even with better software, I've never seen a recommendation favoring EasyCap's hardware -- but many people use the EasyCap device.

AVI is the usual choice for capture format, especially if you intend to do any editing or corrections. MPEG and other compressed formats are poor for editing due to compression and re-compression data loss, and due to inferior encoders used by many capture devices. You can reduce the size of AVI's by using huffyuv compression, a lossless compressor that reduces the file size to about 1/3 the size of uncompressed AVI and was developed for real-time capture and compression (that is, the compression is fast enough to keep pace with your input stream). But no compressor is entirely lossless, so avoid re-compression with huffyuv by more than 4 levels or so.

You might want to take a look at the "tools" and "tutorials" sections of this website. Many choices are listed there.

[jagabo]

But no compressor is entirely lossless, so avoid re-compression with huffyuv by more than 4 levels or so.

HuffYUV is entirely lossless. You can recompress the video a million times and the YUY2 that comes out of the last conversion is exactly the same as the YUY2 that went into the first. The problem that some people have is the editor converts incoming YUY2 to RGB then converts back to YUY2 for compression. Those colorspace conversions are the cause of losses.

Try using VirtualDub to capture.

[lordsmurf]

But no compressor is entirely lossless, so avoid re-compression with huffyuv by more than 4 levels or so.

HuffYUV is entirely lossless.

It's been many years since I jumped into this issue, but I've never been 100% convinced it was entirely lossless. But my argument was also more academic than anything else. I don't expect most users would be saving to/from Huffyuv long enough to have issues.

[ManUtdFans]

But no compressor is entirely lossless, so avoid re-compression with huffyuv by more than 4 levels or so.

HuffYUV is entirely lossless. You can recompress the video a million times and the YUY2 that comes out of the last conversion is exactly the same as the YUY2 that went into the first. The problem that some people have is the editor converts incoming YUY2 to RGB then converts back to YUY2 for compression. Those colorspace conversions are the cause of losses.

Try using VirtualDub to capture.

So is huffyuv an algorithm or a software?
If it is an algorithm, the VirtualDub use that for real time capture?

[jagabo]

HuffYUV is a VFW codec. You need to download it and install it. Then VirtualDub will be able to use it to compress your video as it's captured. HuffYUV uses the Huffman entropy coding technique to compress YUY2 or RGB video. That is similar to the compression techniques used in ZIP, RAR, etc.

If your computer is fast enough you can try using Lagarith. It compresses a little better but it's slower.

[sanlyn]

Thanks for clarification, jagabo. I've run AVI thru multiple processes of one kind or another, and gone down to 5 to 8 levels of recompression. I cant say I lost anything, but by version 6 or so I saw an extremely slight but visible increase in very fine grain, almost like color movie film. Coulda been my imagination, though; stare at a piece of video long enough and there's no telling what your eyeballs will notice next. This was all RGB, no colorspace conversion involved, no detail loss or color changes seen at all. The effect could have been the result of so many different filtering runs -- when the source video is that bad, you don't expect much anyway..

[Cauptain]

Can you suggest any reliable video capture software for analogue to digital conversion?
I have an external device(EasyCap) to connect my analogue Sony 8mm camcorder comes with a basic software, but would like get/purchase a software if it can do a better job. At the moment, I tried to capture and found the size of the .avi file occupies 1GB/minute of footage.

I also tried to save as .mpg, but the quality is much poorer than .avi.

For Easycap the recommended software is Power Director 8/9. Capture in MPEG/MPEG2, AVI, MP4...

Simple and nice software. Good for edition , many effects, transitions, texts. All in wonder software. Try it.

[jagabo]

Thanks for clarification, jagabo. I've run AVI thru multiple processes of one kind or another, and gone down to 5 to 8 levels of recompression. I cant say I lost anything, but by version 6 or so I saw an extremely slight but visible increase in very fine grain, almost like color movie film. Coulda been my imagination, though; stare at a piece of video long enough and there's no telling what your eyeballs will notice next. This was all RGB, no colorspace conversion involved, no detail loss or color changes seen at all. The effect could have been the result of so many different filtering runs -- when the source video is that bad, you don't expect much anyway..

Well, if you were doing some other filtering you would have to consider whether that was the cause of the changes. And if you were working in RGB, but had HuffYUV in YUY2 mode, you were going through multiple YUV/RGB conversions. That would definitely cause changes.

I have tested HuffYUV many times with YUY2 video, real world video and test files, with software I know isn't converting to RGB. The output is always bit for bit identical to the input. Not just by visually examining the videos, but via software that is comparing the uncompressed YUY2 data.

[sanlyn]

I'd guess, jagabo, that what I was seeing resulted from too many filter runs. In the end, I re-started those clips from scratch and got better results. Either that, or the coffee helped my eyeballs a bit. My theory is that if you're running a clip thru handfulls of multiple filters and multiple runs, you're either doing something wrong or the video is just a hopeless mess to start with.