Please help capturing analogue video huge pixels (Blocks)

[scorpioserve]

Please Please help me before I go mad. I decided per my wifes request to try to put all my old analogue 8mm tapes onto dvd's. Huh what a joke. I hope someone can help.

Details:
Capture Device: USB 2.0 High Quality Video Creator, comes with a copy of VideoStudio 6 SE DVD, and audeo RCA's, Uses Crescentec DC-1100 driver and the unit is made by USBgear

PC: Pentium 4, 1.7ghz, 1gig ram, 160gig HD, Geforce 4 MX 4000 64mb ram, Windows XP Pro.

What I Did:
I follow the installation to the letter, and have reinstalled about 10 times now, and have reinstalled the operating system about 3 times, I have tried windows 98 Second edition, Windows 2000 Server, and now windows XP Professional, all systems have been fully internet updated at microsofts website, and no other applications have even been installed. Have defraged the HD, and closed all unnessicary running processes. I have emailed USBgears tech support and they say read the manual, OH that was only the first step that I did, I wish I had thaught of that. I have been trying for 3 months now inbetween work on and off with no luck. Oh yes and I updated to Video Studio 6.02, and did a trial of Version 7 and 8

Problem:
The audio is playing fine, the capture gives no errors, but the video in the preview window is terrible, I mean all i see are blocks huge pixels with perfect sound, it looks like a square jigsaw puzzle, if I hit the capture button still no error and i goes for as long as want then try to preview the file after and still no error but the same terrible quality, I have tried every template available, and changed every driver and setting combination setting that i could think of, I played with monitor settings to high colour, true colour, screen resolutions, screen size etc. I have 3 pc's so I tried it on all of them, thinking maybe i would strike it lucky all different makes, models and speeds, and have spent hours searching the web.

I hope this is enough info

Please help if possible.

[THoff]

Don't judge the capture results by what you see in the Preview window, especially on lower-end PCs. Capture a couple of minutes of source material to uncompressed AVI (lots of diskspace needed) or AVI with the Huffyuv codec, then view the captured video using Windows Media Player or some other external program.

The UVS Preview window cannot be resized to match the exact dimensions of the video, so the video must always be stretched, and gets distorted as a result. Furthermore, during capture, the I/O takes precedent over the preview to avoid dropping frames, but this can result in a preview that lags behind, or stutters.

If the captured files viewed with a separate media player doesn't look right, less us know.

[scorpioserve]

Don't judge the capture results by what you see in the Preview window, especially on lower-end PCs. Capture a couple of minutes of source material to uncompressed AVI (lots of diskspace needed) or AVI with the Huffyuv codec, then view the captured video using Windows Media Player or some other external program.

The UVS Preview window cannot be resized to match the exact dimensions of the video, so the video must always be stretched, and gets distorted as a result. Furthermore, during capture, the I/O takes precedent over the preview to avoid dropping frames, but this can result in a preview that lags behind, or stutters.

If the captured files viewed with a separate media player doesn't look right, less us know.

Thanks I tried what you said and im getting the same result in windows media player and in real player and I also tried it in vlc, just as a point of interest I have also tried 2 different vcr's just incase it was a problem with my video camera, and I get the same result. So where do I stand now, should I maybe send someone a copy of a minute or so of captured video so you can see it.

Thanks for the help

Scorpio

[THoff]

Actually, given that you have a Pentium 4 running at 1.7GHz, unless that's a laptop with a Pentium M, I doubt that your system has USB 2.0 ports -- can you check that? If it's only a USB 1.1 port, it wouldn't be able to capture DVD-quality video because it wouldn't have the bandwidth for it.

[maddrummer3301]

> I decided per my wifes request to try to put all my old
>analogue 8mm tapes onto dvd's. Huh what a joke. I hope someone can help.

Panasonic Dvd Recorder Model# DMR-E55_ can be had for a reasonable price.
Nice quality and more features compared to cheaper recorders.
When transferring VHS/8mm etc to dvd the unit has a "Fit to disc" feature
making the transfer very simple for a whole tape onto 1 disc.

This should makeyour wife happy and after your finished with the transfers
you can replace your VCR with this unit recording onto Dvd-Ram.
You won't believe how much space those old tapes use to take up.

Hope this helps,

MD

[scorpioserve]

Actually, given that you have a Pentium 4 running at 1.7GHz, unless that's a laptop with a Pentium M, I doubt that your system has USB 2.0 ports -- can you check that? If it's only a USB 1.1 port, it wouldn't be able to capture DVD-quality video because it wouldn't have the bandwidth for it.

When I first read your reply I thaught nah, surely I havent been messing around for like 3 months with this and thats the reason, so I checked my motherboard book for about the 30th time, and sure enough it says that there are 2 USB standard ports on the back of the PC and 2 USB 2 ports on the front, The odd thing was that when I compared this to the documentation on the Jetway site, it was different to the book, I asked them why and they told me that during Japanese to English translation of some of their earlier books and when they first started adding USB2 to their motherboards, that the translation was messed up and they meant (2 USB Ports), or The second bank of USB 1.1 Ports, but in english it came up as USB2.

So you did it I got a USB2.0, 5 port card for it thismorning and it is working great now.

Thankyou thankyou thankyou, I really do appreciate it.

[THoff]

Cool, I'm glad it's sorted out. Sorry you had to spend extra money, though.

[cstoup]

I am getting something similar, but not nearly as bad, and only really if there is fast movement. I have a much slower computer 500MHz.

I am unable to capture AVI. I have VS 7.0 SE and I am guessing that capture to AVI is disabled. When I select it, it waits a few seconds and changes to DVD.

Any suggestions on capture settings which might minimize this until I can get a faster computer?

[Ken Berry]

This may sound silly, but are you sure that when the computer thinks about it for a bit, that it says "DVD" and not "DV"? That is what I get when I try to set it for AVI -- it defaults back to "DV" after a bit, since DV is a special version of somewhat compressed AVI developed by Microsoft to emulate exactly the quality of your original digital MiniDV videotape in your camera.

I can't say that I have ever heard of a version of Video Studio which cannot capture DV/AVI.

If in fact it _is_ changing to "DVD" (i.e. MPEG 2), then we definitely need to know a few more things: are you definitely trying to capture from a digital video camera? If so, how are you connecting the camera to your computer -- by Firewire or USB 2.0 (it must be 2.0 -- your older computer would most definitely only have USB 1.0 ports unless you have put in a USB 2.0 card).

If you are indeed capturing direct to DVD-compliant MPEG 2 format (which I again rather doubt, given the age of your computer and the fact that such direct capture is highly demanding of computer resources), then your problem might be related to Field Order: if you are capturing from an analogue source, it should be Field Order B in VS 7; if digital, it should be A. What are the properties of the clips you are capturing?

[cstoup]

My memory was wrong when I said it was resetting to DVD. It changes back to VCD.

Regardless, I am attempting to record from an Analog source using USB 1.
So far, I have been unable to find any Field Order settings when I browsed around the settings. At one point I remember reading that I should change some settings in one of the INI files. On my system, SE did not create that file or even directory.

[THoff]

You likely have a feature-limited version of UVS that was bundled with a hardware device. If that's the case, the DVD format may not be available at all.

The good news is that you can upgrade inexpensively to the full UVS 8 product.

[GeorgeW]

cstoup, what device are you using for your captures?

I think VCD is progressive video (non-interlaced), maybe that's why you don't see reference to fields?

George

[auntiejudyjudy]

A little off your topic but how are you getting 8mm into the computer? My 8mm are on reels and I am dreading the thought of trying to transfer to DVD.

[cstoup]

Regarding GeorgeW,

I am using DVD Xpress, from ADS Tech.