Maximum capture length in Ulead?

[kgs]

Does Ulead have a maximum capture length? In other words does it stop an .avi file and start a new one at a predetermined point--and if it does, can that be adjusted?

I ask because Sony's Picture Package cuts off at 10 minutes, and WinDV stops at 12:30. I know PP is not adjustable because I wrote Sony and asked... not sure about WinDV, unless it involves fiddling with .ini files. (I'm using the camcorder for both converting a minister's old VHS sermons and taping new ones, and ahem, 10 minutes is hardly enough for most sermons -- even 12:30 wasn't quite adequate ;> )

Thanks--this would be yet one more reason to buy Ulead.

[BrianCee]

Don't know if there is an absolute maximum - but I regularly capture 1 hour tapes without any breaks or stops.

[kgs]

Don't know if there is an absolute maximum - but I regularly capture 1 hour tapes without any breaks or stops.

For a sermon that long, I'd put in a few breaks or stops myself! Thanks--that's the practical length of anything I'd tape. (Come to think of it--that's the length of an DV tape anyway, or thereabouts)

[Ken Berry]

I don't think Video Studio itself imposes any limit. However, it you are using an operating system which does not use NTFS, then you will have a 4 Gb limit imposed by the operating system, which in practical terms is about 20 minutes of DV/AVI format video. If you are capturing to mpeg-2, then it is really a question of whether your computer is powerful enough to maintain a capture beyond a few minutes without the transcode buffer filling up and the capture stopping until the buffer is emptied.

[kgs]

I don't think Video Studio itself imposes any limit. However, it you are using an operating system which does not use NTFS, then you will have a 4 Gb limit imposed by the operating system, which in practical terms is about 20 minutes of DV/AVI format video. If you are capturing to mpeg-2, then it is really a question of whether your computer is powerful enough to maintain a capture beyond a few minutes without the transcode buffer filling up and the capture stopping until the buffer is emptied.

Thanks--this system is indeed NTFS, though because the processor on the computer I am using for this is not super-powerful, I've been capturing as DV just to be safe. I assume DV is a better (more interoperable) format than AVI?

[Ken Berry]

If you are talking about uncompressed AVI, then the answer is 'not really'. Uncompressed AVI is in theory at least probably the best format for capturing digital video. But the downside is that it produces huge files -- around 65 GB per hour of video and most people simply don't have the storage space for more than an hour or two of that. The DV format is a special, compressed version of full AVI invented precisely to reduce the size of the captured files without any noticeable loss in quality. The compression factor is roughy 5, so that one hour of DV capture will take 'only' 13 GB. And the way the compression is done makes it essentially a non-lossy format. (Another effectively non-lossy format in this regard is the older motion JPEG, or MJPEG, format, which has a compression factor of 3.)

The problem with the extension .AVI, though, is that it can, so to speak, cover a multitude of sins. Just as the DV format uses the .AVI extension, a number of other formats can also use the extension merely as a carrier format. Thus it is very common these days to find that the highly compressed (though high quality) formats such as DivX or XVid, will use the .AVI extension, but they are in reality mpeg-4. And that is a whole other barrel of fish when it comes to editability and conversion to other formats.

[Ken Veal]

when you capture in what Ulead calls DV you are capturing in the native
format for digital video and the file is saved as a DV AVI file.Not sure what the difference is technically as opposed to selecting AVI from the format list but doing that did not work for me.

[Ken Berry]

When you have a digital DV camera attached, the program automatically detects that and sets DV as the capture format. If you physically choose AVI as the format, it will nevertheless default back to DV since that, as Kenneth says, is the 'native' format for such cameras as it was specifically developed for them. However, if you don't have a digital source attached, but an analogue one, you can choose AVI (if the capture device will allow it) and it will stay as AVI since an analogue device on its own cannot transmit a DV (digital video) signal -- only an uncompressed 'true' AVI one!

[kgs]

Whew, ok! What great answers. Thanks, everyone.

[THoff]

WinDV lets you adjust the maximum number of frames in the AVI file, which I have set to 999999 on my systems. This translates into a single file over over 9 hours in duration (assuming you are using NTFS). I have in fact captured single files of more than three hours this way.

If you are using FAT32, any program including WinDV and Videostudio would be forced to break up the capture into 4GB chunks, since this is the maximum file size support by the FAT32 file system.