Newbie needs general advice

[sanssome]

I only about a month into this hobby and thus far frustrated with the quality of the captures I'm getting from my Hi8 library. I would settle for good quality VCD, but I'm really hoping to turn my Hi8 footage into SVCD or DVD. I realize there will be a loss of fidelity performing an analog copy of this sort, but from what I've seen in other postings the Hi8 system has enough lines to support reasonable digital conversion and what I'm getting is worse than poor quality VHS. (very noisy)

At this point I'm willing to swap out my components with whatever would work best, except of course the Hi8 system because I primarily started this to put the kid's and vacation video on DVD. Here is what I have:

- PIII 500 (Dimension T500), 256 Mb, 40 Gb
- Visiontek Xtasy Everything video/capture card
- Sony TRV750 Hi8 camcorder
- Ulead Video Studio 5, WinDVR, MGI VideoWave 4
- Also have tried AVI_IO, VirtualDub, and HuffyUV codec

I've tried both AVI capture and straight MPEG capture, but it seems the latter requires more horsepower than my CPU has. The quality of even the lowest resolution and bit rate captures are cruddy and look nothing like good VCD samples I've seen. If I try to capture at higher resolutions/bit rates for say SVCD or DVD (i.e. like 740x480) the results are even worse. The clips are pretty jerky and lack full motion effect.

What component makes the biggest difference in capturing clean analog from Hi8? The capture card, CPU, memory, fast disk, software used, etc? I suspect it's the right combination of all and my setup lacks the right bits.

Can anyone comment on quality of capture they've accomplished with the Xtasy and mid-performer PIII boxes? If the Xtasy is a dead end, what capture cards do work the best? Are PCI or USB devices better than an integrated video board setup? Do any of the boards with MPEG encoders actually work decent?

What about CPU? Is 500 Mhz too slow? I have another dual 500 PIII, but I couldn't use it with the Xtasy because it doesn't support AGP2. I suspect I need a CPU faster than 1 Ghz to achieve the higher quality (i.e. MPEG2) captures. On the other hand, if there are good PCI based devices with onboard MPEG encoders that are competent coupled with a 500 Mhz CPU and 512 Mb memory I could go that direction.

All advice is appreciated!

[mdm]

You're going to need a faster CPU - it took a 600mhz processor for me to finally be able to do VCD spec captures that looked good. I now have a 1.1ghz and can do 640x480 (and above) with no problem.

If you are going to capture to AVI first and then encode, you're also going to need more hard drive space.

[ian follow]

Hi sanssome,

I have similar system: Ceelron 433, 15 + 40 GB Maxtor, 128 MB RAM.

I can capture full PAL resolution at 25 fps. I capture to AVI since my Celeron isn't powerfull enough to do MPEG conversion on the fly. After that, TMPGenc needs 6 hours to convert 1,5 hour movie. And my sources are usually bad VHS.

So, it can be done.

>> If I try to capture at higher resolutions/bit rates for say SVCD or DVD (i.e. like 740x480) the results are even worse. The clips are pretty jerky and lack full motion effect.

I had same problem and it stopped happen when I enabled UDMA mode. So, maybe to check your hardware? Just an idea.

Ian

[sanssome]

Thanks. I've seen a couple of posts that talk about UDMA mode. I'm not sure that is configurable under Win2K. I think it automatically enables it if it's available. Anyone know?

[sanssome]

Nevermind, I see articles on that subject. Apparently you need W2K SP2 to get UDMA (ATA-100) support. It's not clear my drive supports it, but I'll check that out.

Still looking for more feedback. Especially on the Xtasy solution versus a PCI or USB card. I guess I could keep that an invest money in a new cheapie P4 or Athlon board. Thanks.

[The village idiot]

My 2 cents would be to get something like the Canopus ADVC-50 and a firewire card. Put that in your dual processor machine. That way the conversion to mpeg would take less time. Make sure the drives are formatted as NTFS (assuming that you are using at least NT4 on that machine, 2000 would be better). Nt4 supports firewire, but I'm not sure what apps. you could find to capture with. You will still need some big hard drive(s) as DV will take around 13GB per hour. You could always capture a little, then convert it, then capture a little more, etc.. DV capture might be your least "painful" method. But it will still take a while to convert to mpeg (many hours) depending on your programs. I think TMPGEnc is multi-processor aware, and will therefor convert faster than running it on your single processor machine.

[ian follow]

>> Apparently you need W2K SP2 to get UDMA (ATA-100) support

You can go to My computer -> Manage to enable UDMA but that option also can be in BIOS (as on my FIC mb), so check it there too.