Capturing Hi-8 analog with VS8

[Rsumlin]

Hi, I'm new to the forum as well as Video Studio. I've read a ton of threads and have gained tons of knowledge, but I still have some questions about capturing Hi-8 analog video. First off, I'll list the hardware that I am using:

Dell Latitude D610 Laptop
1.86 Ghz Pentium
512 mb RAM
40G internal HD, 120G external HD for media storage
Avermedia AverTV Cardbus MCE notebook capture card
Lite-on 8x external DVD burner connected by firewire through a Notebook 3-Port Firewire 1394 PCMCIA Card L8

I am capturing Hi-8 analog video from a Samsung Hi-8 camcorder. I am connecting the camera to the Avermedia card using S-video for the video and RCA cables for the audio. I am using the capture program in Ulead Videostudio 8 to perform the capture functions.

I have read the sticky at the top of the page regarding capture settings etc. Although very helpful, I still have some unanswered questions. As I type this I am at work and do not have access to the VS8 program, so please forgive me if I stumble a bit as I am trying to recall the capture options screen from memory.

Since I am doing some moderate editing, I am capturing my analog Hi-8 video in the AVI format. In the catpture options settings screen there are many choices for compression, such as YUYK (not sure if that's the right letters?) etc. The sticky at the top of the forum does not say which one of these settings to choose. If I remember correctly, there is an option for no compression or you can click advanced and choose a compression setting.

So far I have left all of these settings as is. I have been experimenting with capturing a 20 minute video using the settings as they are without changing anything after selecting AVI. The capture goes great. The video quality when viewing on my computer preview screen is great except for some distortion at the bottom of the screen.

The video has distortion at the very bottom of the screen when played back on my computer as well as when played back on a DVD after burning the project. When watching the video on my camcorder screen during capture, the distortion is not there. By distortion I mean the bottom of the screen is blurry and jumbled. It is about a 1/16 of an inch high running horizontally across the entire bottom of the screen.

In addition, the 20 minute video I am capturing is eating up almost 25 gigs of my hard drive. I had read where a 1 hour video in AVI should eat up 13 gigs. If a 20 minute video is eating up almost 25 gigs (after editing), what am I doing wrong? Should I be selecting one of the afore mentioned compression settings prior to capture? Should I be capturing at a lower rate than 720x480 when capturing analog video? Is that why the file being captured is so enormus?

These are the two issues I am having. If someone wouldn't mind listing an idiot proof step by step list of steps to take when capturing ANALOG video, I would greatly appreciate it. I have searched, but most of the tutorials I find are for digital video.

Again, thanks for your help!

- Richard

[tyamada]

When you capture in AVI format you will use 1.2 Gig per minute of hard drive space. The space used for your 20 minute clip is right.

Is your video playback on a Television showing the distortion? Not on the computer.

Capturing at 720X480 is actually over scanning and on editing software that does show you the actual video size you might get some distortion one the extremes of the computer screen. Once you create a DVD and play it back on a actual television the distortion should go away.

If the distortion still shows try to capture at 640X480 frame size.

If you capture at 640X480 your file size will go down a little but not much.

Once you render your video to MPG (DVD) the file size will do down.

[Rsumlin]

Tyamada -

Yes, the distortion still shows when I play the DVD on my television as well as when I play the completed project and/or raw unedited capture file on my computer.

How about the compression settings that I asked about? Am I doing the correct thing by leaving everything alone or should I be choosing one of the compression options such as YUYK?

Thanks,

Richard

[tyamada]

My setting is YUYU2 my other option is UYVY which doesn't make any difference in file size.

[Ken Berry]

The Recommended Procedures really relate to capture of digital video from a digital video camera. Thus the figures mentioned there -- around 13 GB an hour -- relates to the DV/AVI format. You are capturing analogue video and your capture device probably doesn't offer the capacity of converting the analogue signal to a digital DV signal on the fly, so you are given the option of capturing raw AVI, which as tyamada has already said, produces huge files -- around 65 to 70 GB per hour! So your 40 GB hard disk will not go far with that option unless, for instance, you buy an external hard disk drive for your laptop if the laptop has (preferably) a Firewire port (my Dell laptop does) and/or a USB 2.0 port...

The alternative is to capture direct to DVD-compliant mpeg-2, which is, however, a demanding process for a computer, and particularly one which does not have much oomph! Try it out, though. And don't bother setting the bitrate at any higher than 6000 kbps as you won't get any better quality from an analogue source (indeed, 4000 -- 5000 kbps should suffice.) The resulting files are very much smaller than DV, let alone uncompressed AVI. The downside is that editing mpeg-2s can be an iffy, though do-able, enterprise.

There are, of course, devices out there which have on-board hardware encoding of DV signals from an analogue source. I can think of Plextor and Canopus products in this regard. But they are quite expensive (US$200+++) though they do an excellent job. An alternative which I have taken (but which if anything is probably even more expensive), was to buy a Sony DCR-TRV480E digital 8 video camera. It only appeared on the market a year ago, and has all the bells and whistles of mini DV video cameras, but it films using the old 8mm format tapes. However, its main attraction to me is that it can take old analogue 8mm AND, as far as you are concerned, Hi8 tapes, and send them as digital DV signals over Firewire to my computer. The quality is superb. But as I say, it's a relatively expensive option. But hey, I also now have a backup digital video camera to my existing Canon mini DV camera!

As for your distortion along the bottom of the screen, that is absolutely normal from analogue tapes. In fact, I get both that and a similarly sized (i.e. very small) strip of blue/green discoloraton down the right hand side of each clip. But, as tyamada suggested, these are very much at the outer edges of the overscan area. After I have edited my project, produced my final DVD-compliant mpeg-2 and burned that to disc, however, those areas of distortion are very much outside what is called the 'safe area' for TV playback, and they simply don't appear on screen. They certainly are visible, even on the final DVD when played back on the computer monitor, but not on an external TV. So I am very surprised you can see it on TV playback of your DVD -- unless, that is, you have a special type of TV. I don't know, for instance, anything about whether HDTV or TFT/LCD TVs, for instance, have a safe area or not...

[Rsumlin]

Ken/Taymada

Thanks for the tips! I already have an external HD, so the large files aren't that much of a problem. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing something wrong. I also have a miniDV camcorder and am only trying to get 8-10 of my old analog tapes onto DVD, so buying the SONY camcorder just for these 8-10 tapes of analog is a little too much for me.

The TV I am playing the finished DVD's on is a 60" high def TV, so perhaps the bottom edges that usually aren't visable on smaller TV's are visable on mine. I'll try playing the DVD on a smaller TV.

So then, to be clear.... with analog capture I am doing the right thing by not changing settings in the compression settings screen. Leaving it at YUYU2 is fine?

Thanks again!

- Richard

[Ken Berry]

One other thing you could try, depending on your digital video camera, is to use it as a pass-through device. But you will need to consult the camera manual as to whether it can act as such. Essentially it means that you would connect your analogue camera to the digital one via the AV in/out connection on the digital one and then the analogue signal gets converted to a digital one in the digital camera, which you connect to the computer via firewire, and thus can capture your analogue video in DV format. But not all digital cameras will do this, although some will go half way and at least allow you to transfer your analogue video to a DV cassette in the digital camera. Then later you can capture this DV casette on your computer via Firewire as DV. A bit more long-winded but at least it will do it. Howefer, as I say, some cameras won't do it at all.

As for the format, and unless anyone else has any ideas about better compression, capturing uncompressed 'raw' AVI via YUYU2 will give you high quality (well, as good as you are ever going to get), even if it does create large files.

[Rsumlin]

One last question.....hopefully.......

Let's say that I have decided not to edit my analog video. Would it be advisable to simply catpure it in MPEG-2 and then burn it to a DVD?

Thanks!

[Ken Berry]

That should not present any problems, apart from the one I mentioned in the second paragraph of my first reply above, namely, whether your computer has sufficient resources to capture direct to mpeg-2. However, since you are capturing analogue video, you will not be faced with the problem of capturing DV video to mpeg-2 on the fly (which is far more demanding). As I said, don't set your bitrate too high -- anything above 6000 kbps is a waste. And if you are not going to do any editing at all, then you should not have any trouble at all. Make sure you get the Field Order correct (though that should happen automatically), and otherwise make sure your capture settings are DVD-compliant, and you use the same settings to burn to disc.

[Black Lab]

The TV I am playing the finished DVD's on is a 60" high def TV, so perhaps the bottom edges that usually aren't visable on smaller TV's are visable on mine.

If that turns out to be the case you can use the Crop filter to crop the edges of your clip.