capturing widescreen vhs

[monkey1504]

OK, I captured Pulp Fiction widescreen from my vhs to .AVI using VirtualDub 1.4b, when i came to watch the file, the quality was very very poor, i beleive this is probably to do with the widescreen borders at the top and bottom, what i want to know is, is there any way to remove these borders, so as the program can spend more resources on the actual image instead of the harsh black lines.
any comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Carl

PS: just for reference, the capture format is 352 x 288 (PAL) and 25fps

[iant]

Carl,
The encoder actually wastes very little on those areas as they are just seen as solid areas with no change so very little is needed to encode them.
You'll probably find the problem is just that, being widescreen, there are not as many lines of actual functional image resulting in a lack of detail for the encoder to work with.
I've found I get far better results by capturing full res (704 X 576 PAL or 704 X 480 NTSC ) and then frameserving with VirtualDub with Smart De-interlace and 2-1 High Quality Reduction filter. Technically, it's still only getting the same number of lines but the quality definitely improves. Of course, this assumes your hardware is up to it.
Good Luck,
Ian

[wildcatfan]

The problem I think is when you are capturing you are getting very few lines of resolution of the actual picture so it looks like ass. You always lose something when vidcapping but you are starting with less quality to begin with.

Michael

[EP10]

With VirtualDub one can use:
Filter - Cropping - set it for your AVI - Save as Avi..

This is to crop the black borders.

[hans33]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-08-12 21:47:40, iant wrote:
Carl,
I've found I get far better results by capturing full res (704 X 576 PAL or 704 X 480 NTSC ) ...
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I am trying to find a cheap card and software which can handle full res (704 X 576 PAL). Which card and software are youusing to chieve this?

[monkey1504]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-08-12 21:47:40, iant wrote:
Carl,
I've found I get far better results by capturing full res (704 X 576 PAL or 704 X 480 NTSC ) ... Of course, this assumes your hardware is up to it.
Good Luck,
Ian
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>


Ian, just what hardware/configuration do you suggest, here is the hardware at my disposal (albeit not very much )

Intel Celeron 466mhz MMX
64MB of RAM
4GB of FREE space

this is probably not sufficient, but what are your comments?

thanks,

Carl

[monkey1504]

i forgot to mention: my card is a WinTV-primio(?) PCI card.

Carl

[iant]

Carl,
I'm using a Matrox Marvel on an AMD k6-2 500. The card has built in MJPEG compression which means you don't need as fast a CPU. The downside is that it isn't cheap. ( $650 Australian )
I don't know the capabilities of the card you list but your biggest problem with high res captures if you get one of the MJPEG cards will be disk space. 4gig would only get about half an hour and wouldn't leave room to edit it.
Hope this helps.
Ian