Need advice on capturing from a VCR

[holistic]

Joe

NO NO NO no such thing as a miniDV to VHS adaptor - totally different systems.

I understand you are on a budget .
But ask yourself the following : How much is my time worth to me. How precious are the memories stored on these tapes.

I went through all this crap last year when I bought an AVerMedia TV98
http://www.aver.com/products/tv9801.html
I was blisfully unaware of the requirements for quality video and have since learned enough about this topic to write a book.
After hours of frustration . ie dropped frames - sync issues i finally got all resolved with AVI_IO (cap program) but even then it was tedious and took a lot of drive space.

I have since purchased a MiniDv camcorder with A/D converter (canon ZD40) and now 'file transfer' in the DV codec all my VHS tapes.

Form the top : getting video from an analog source requires fast harddrives - in the 30Mb/sec range for full screen .Now extroplate that to even 1 minute and that is 1.8 Gb - BIG EH ! . So LARGE/FAST drives for analog PERIOD ! ATA133 or a Raided / SCSI system = big $$$
For DV though the transfer rates are in the 3.5- 3.7 Mb/sec range .Most ATA66 drives 'IDLE' there no problem.
To summarize : If you think your machine can do analog, you have the time and patience then get a cheap analog capture card.
BE WARNED - ensure your hardrive can keep up or you WILL have frame drops. And if you plan on 640*480 caps, unless it can do at least 23+Mb/sec using a non lossy codec you will have image quality loss before you even start encoding. FYI - I did my analog caps at 352*480.

***** AVDC-100 OR Camcorder with analog In - or scream in frustration later - my 2bits


FOR Nedyj

As you said - 1500-4500-7500 is the min/agv/max
The 20 minutes is the length of the finished Mpeg2 - give or take a minute.
Time taken is 7+ hours or so on a celeron 600 overclocked to 892 with 384 Mb RAM. I do it while i sleep .zzzzzzzzzzz
The mpeg2 i make is 352*480 - a DVD spec - called 1/2 D1 which i burn to CD's making Mini/cDVD

Some reading
http://www.pcphotovideo.com/mini-dvd.htm
http://www.videoguys.com/firewireq&a.htm
http://www.vcdhelp.com/minidvd.htm
http://www.sonic.com/pdf/WP-cDVD.pdf
http://www.cdpage.com/Compact_Disc_Books/whitebook.html

[joeAgain------]

Holistic,
Thanks for that. How do I find out the speed of my HDD?

(I've found out I only have a VHS-C small camcorder...it's not digital as I had thought, so I don't have a DV)

IF my HDD is fast enough, do you not think this product:

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/2827554

will do an "adequate job"(with a few dropped frames now and then maybe?) It specifically says it captures video and has editing software.
The one you had seemed to only say it captured stills. ???

[holistic]

(I've found out I only have a VHS-C small camcorder...it's not digital as I had thought, so I don't have a DV)

IF my HDD is fast enough, do you not think this product:

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/2827554

will do an "adequate job"(with a few dropped frames now and then maybe?)

Adequate YES - depends on your expectations are i guess

Go here

http://www.virtualdub.org/

Download and unzip 'VirtualDub'
In the folder is an exe file named - AuxSetup.exe
Run it - Select BENCHMARK
Select : appropiate drive , capture size , frames pre second. Do a test

Note : You may want to either get another drive for capturing 20Gb+
OR partition your current one with at least 20+ Gb for capture only . That way when you have finished with the .avi and encoded it you can just format that partition and start fresh.


Don't expect better that 352*480 *29.97 from this card. If that's all you want go for it.

[joeAgain------]

Holistic,
I've had VirtualDub on both my work(where I am now)and home computers for a few months trying to learn how to use it. There HELP is not that helpful for unknowledgable folks like me.

I appreciate you telling me about how fast the HDD needs to be to capture well. Ok, I'm in the benchmark program now and see that it has an apparent default speed listed in that field that I can Up to see if frames will be dropped, etc.. But,How do you get it to tell how fast the HDD is?

What other settings there should I set?

AND....OK, you've peaked my curiosity aboy the AVDC-100. I've done a Google search and not found any on-line retailers offering it. I've been to the company website and don't find it either. Could you please tell me....How much does it cost? And, Where would I get it? (IF, I could afford it) Please

thanks!(you are being very helpful....although I am struggling to understand the concepts and terms of all this)

joe

[nedlyj]

Joe,

The best price I've found is at DV Direct. ($285). You can go there at this link:

http://www.dvdirect.com/shop/product.asp?sku=CNP5055

-Ned

[nedlyj]

holistic,

Your information is great and you have been most helpful.

Last night I encoded my 6 minute (1.2GB) avi again using tmpgenc but with the 2-pass settings you suggested. While I haven't had a chance to burn the resulting file to a DVD yet and check on my standalone player, I wanted to pass along the following comparision on the tmpg settings.

My original encode:
format: DVD (NTSC) MPEG2, 720x480
audio: 384 kb/s
encode setting: VBR-CQ
bitrate: 8MB/s
noise filter: on
motion filter(?): on
simple color correction filter: on (Gamma +10, contrast +11, Red +20)
input avi size: 1.2 GB (from straight DV capture)
output MPEG file size: 381MB
encode time: 2 hours 21 minutes

My second encode:
format: DVD (NTSC) MPEG2, 720x480
audio: 384 kb/s
encode setting: VBR 2-pass
bitrate: 2500/4500/7500
noise filter: on
motion filter(?): on
simple color correction filter: on (Gamma +10, contrast +11, Red +20)
input avi size: 1.2 GB (from straight DV capture)
output MPEG file size: 191MB
encode time: 5 hours 4 minutes

So, while the encode took twice as long, the file size is significantly smaller.

My original encoded file looked very good when played compared to the files produced (ie encoded) directly by MyDVD or DVD Workshop. No blocking was visible anymore, motion was less digitized, and the colors were more saturated (closer to original DV) thanks to the gamma filtering.

I'll be curious to see how the new file looks. Hopefully the differences will be unnoticeable - which will then allow me to fit more video on a DVD.

So, if I can end up batching jobs overnight, then this is definitely worth the wait.

And, by the way - I just ordered a new machine with dual 1.7GHz Xeons, 2GB Ram and 100GB of SCSI (10k) drives. So, my encoding time damn well better come down!

-N

[jtoops]

Here's my experience, which I thought would be cheap to begin. But then became expensive (wanted to record shows and send them to my Dad):

Had:

0) Have 750 Mhz Athlon, Win982nd
1) Bought ATI All in Wonder 128, just so I can capture
2) Bought AVIO for capturing, because ATI software sucks and because I needed segment capturing (Win98 has 4 gig filesize limits)
3) Bought PICVideo encoder/decoder, because I needed disk space and had been dropping frames. I think with quality 18 it comes out to be 10 gigs an hour.
4) Bought 2nd hard drive, because of still dropping frames and needed diskspace.
5) Bought SonicFactory's VideoFactory, for editing out commericals.
6) Used Virtual Dub for deinterlancing (Areabased one), NEEDED for VCD!
7) Bought Panasonic MPEG Encoder, couldn't get decent results with TMPGEnc (several people have had success though)
8) Used AVISynth so that I can feed several AVI segments into the Panasonic MPEG Encoder (no brainer for encoding VCD).

Now:

0) Have 750 Mhz Athlon, WinXP Pro (not that I would recommend it, but it uses NTFS partitions - No 4 gig filesize limit) - I planning to upgrade to a faster system.
1) Trashed ATI card, replaced with ADVC-100 (not perfect, but not bad)
2) Replaced sound card with Audigy so I can get the firewire port needed for ADVC-100 - 10 gigs an hour.
3) Bought HP200i Dvd writer, haven't had problems. Let others try to convice you of DVD- and DVD+ formats.
4) Replaced VideoFactory with VegasVideo (for what I do, I should have stayed with VideoFactory), used for capturing and editing out commercials.
5) Bought TMPGEnc Pro, 2 pass VBR Mpeg2, 6000 Avg, 45 mins takes 8 1/2 hours -> Very good quality.
6) Bought DVD Complete for Authoring and Burning. (MyDVD sucks).

In the long run. Get a media convertor like ADVC-100. This allow you to replace your video card without losing capturing ability. (Capturing with slow system is no brainer).

Do NOT buy a device that captures to MPEG2, because it is almost impossible to edit easily and quickly.

You will need an OS like WinNT, Win2000, WinXp (again I don't necessary recommend any) for NTFS partitions so that you don't hit the 4 gig filesize limit of Win982nd.

Quality of video degrades with each conversion. Bad VHS means very bad end product.

Trying to get good quality on VCD and SVCD takes effort. I could get my DVD player to play VCD ok. I couldn't get SVCD to play without skipping. For DVD(s) is almost no brainer. Recommend buying DVD burner (less hassle in long run). If so, buy TMPGEnc Pro (I couldn't be happier with the results).

Note: 4.7 gigs is really around 4.35 gigs. For 2 hours, need to kick average bitrate down to 4200 or so. Not so good quality. At good quality of average bitrate of 6000, a DVD can hold maybe 1 1/2 hours.

Buy Dazzle DVD complete for simple but effective DVD authoring. MyDVD will change your audio leaving less room for Video.

Maybe the above would give you some perspective of someone that's been there but didn't want to speed the time and effort to tweak every little setting to make a decent analog to VCD/SVCD/DVD format.

John

[joeAgain------]

Thanks Ned and John for all that.

Holistic.....If you are there....please tell me how to set the VirtualDub benchmark settings to get that HDD speed info that I need, Please