Which video capture card

[Ron P.]

Yes, Heinz is correct, that AVI is just the container or wrapper for a video format. That's why I always when describing or mentioning the recommended format to use DV with it. It specifies the Digital Video format.

What would be a better route for you, since your are just wanting to archive your Hi-8 analogue video, and not edit it, would be the device that allows you to capture straight to MPEG-2 format. However just being MPEG-2 does not mean that the video file is DVD-Compliant. To be compliant, there are other specs that it must meet. For instances, the common resolution for NTSC is 720 x 480, with a max bitrate of 8000. (note for others , I said common. I know other resolutions will fall into the DVD specs..) The audio for NTSC should be LPCM, or Dolby Digital (AC3 or 5.1).

So you could capture MPEG-2, then burn that to a DVD. Now keep in mind, that if you put a title, transition, images, audio into this, then Ulead no longer sees this as the MPEG-2 you imported and will re-encode it. Thus you may see a little loss in quality. There are those that manage to do this without much loss in quality.

Ron P.

[VinMan]

Hello

Ok I want to convert my hi8 tapes to dvd (Editing them Via VS10+)
My Camcorder is Sony CCD-TRV67E

I have finally got my Matrox Marvel G450 eTV to work

cheers

But im not sure what settings to have it capture in!!!!!
I live in the UK. What i want is to edit the burn to dvd (TV IS NONE NTSC)

So what setting should i have this on (I want the best picture and sound quality possible)

I will be burning to Dual Layer DVDs.


HELP

[skier-hughes]

I need a cost effective solution to get my MPEGs into AVI. The reason is simple : before burining I need to convert from PAL to NTSC. Everyone screams at me that I shoud not be doing this is MPEG - I must first get into AVI. But I do nto want to spend $600 on a card which will never get used again once this archiving is finished.

Many Thanks Vincej

Vince,
How do you intend to convert the PAL file to an NTSC one?
If you are using a proper standards converter such as canopus procoder then this will do just as good a job in Mpeg as it does in dv-avi.
If you are going to just put your PAL file into VS as an NTSC project then again, the quality that this makes as an ntsc file I wouldn't bother converting to dv-avi either.
PAL differs from NTSC on frame rate, frame size, chrominance and luminance settings.

So, don't know who's screaming at you on this score

Graham

[skier-hughes]

Hello

Ok I want to convert my hi8 tapes to dvd (Editing them Via VS10+)
My Camcorder is Sony CCD-TRV67E

I have finally got my Matrox Marvel G450 eTV to work

cheers

But im not sure what settings to have it capture in!!!!!
I live in the UK. What i want is to edit the burn to dvd (TV IS NONE NTSC)

So what setting should i have this on (I want the best picture and sound quality possible)

I will be burning to Dual Layer DVDs.


HELP

Vinman,
How are you connecting the cam to the computer?
What sort of cables?
This can sometimes make a difference to what file types you can capture as.
It is always best to use dv-avi as the capture settings, edit this file and convert as the last thing you do to mpeg for the dvd.

[Vincej]

firstly apologies to the forum if I appear to making heavy weather over this - there is so much good advice that I need to pick out the nuggets which directly impact me.

My challenge is to archive PAL Hi8 video tape. Easy to create and archive without lip synch and quality problems if I still lived in the UK with a PAl Tele - now I live in Canada and I woudl like those final DVD's to be in NTSC. (Sorry Brits - I ain't never going back )

New Advice Recieved ( Thanks Lance ! ) is that I perhaps do not need to move to AVI at all to accomplish the conversion. Nor perhaps do I need a new capture card. My current ADS TECH Express card will can capture in MPEG AND it can capture either PAL or NTSC. I deduce from this that I just hit the button on the ADS for capture in NTSC properties and bingo beautiful MPEGs converted to NTSC and ready for burining. This sounds too good ?? Am I missing something ?

[skier-hughes]

You won't input a PAL signal and come out with nice good NTSC mpeg to watch.

You can try it and see if it gives you a good enough picture to watch.

To be honest, I thought PAL playing machines where working there way through to you now in good quantities, so you may end up with a better picture just playing a PAL dvd.

Graham

[GuyL]

firstly apologies to the forum if I appear to making heavy weather over this - there is so much good advice that I need to pick out the nuggets which directly impact me.

My challenge is to archive PAL Hi8 video tape. Easy to create and archive without lip synch and quality problems if I still lived in the UK with a PAl Tele - now I live in Canada and I woudl like those final DVD's to be in NTSC. (Sorry Brits - I ain't never going back )

New Advice Recieved ( Thanks Lance ! ) is that I perhaps do not need to move to AVI at all to accomplish the conversion. Nor perhaps do I need a new capture card. My current ADS TECH Express card will can capture in MPEG AND it can capture either PAL or NTSC. I deduce from this that I just hit the button on the ADS for capture in NTSC properties and bingo beautiful MPEGs converted to NTSC and ready for burining. This sounds too good ?? Am I missing something ?

Do some trial runs and see what the result is. If you are not going to be doing any editing then capture directly to MPEG in an NTSC DVD compliant format and go. If the end result is not good, try capturing to the PAL equivalent and then re-rendering the file to NTSC compliance.

I would think one of these should work and provide good results.

[Vincej]

GuyL wrote

If the end result is not good, try capturing to the PAL equivalent and then re-rendering the file to NTSC compliance.

Thanks GuyL - I'll give capturing in MPEG NTSC a go.

I am in this pickle as my initial trials at capturing in PAL and rerenderining to NTSC in VS9 produced a 6 second lip synch problem by 20 minutes into the video. So far all advice I have received is that to avoiud the lip synch problems I had to first go to DV-AVI. I'll be delighted if I don't have to - that means I won;t have to buy a new card.

Vince[/b]

[VinMan]

[/quote]

Vinman,
How are you connecting the cam to the computer?
What sort of cables?
This can sometimes make a difference to what file types you can capture as.
It is always best to use dv-avi as the capture settings, edit this file and convert as the last thing you do to mpeg for the dvd.[/quote]

Ok From my Camcorder (Pic & Sound Phono Leads) Witch i think you call composite

I am taking a guess that the cam i have captures In (PAL) and capturing
to the Video card should also be in (PAL)

Not sure what settings i should be using I.E

Matrox VidCap

RGB 8 Bit
RGB 16 Bit
RGB 24 Bit
YUY2

????????

Resolution Settings:
I guess i want to use (Full = 704 * 576) for full screen PAL

What Format should i use, I have a choice off:
1) DV
2) AVI
3) Mpeg
4) Mpeg 4

I want to edit the captured video to put special effeects in so would i go for AVI?

What Video Bit Rate Should i be Using:

Constant or Variable?

Also to get the best sound what should i choose:

1) Mpeg Audio
2) Audio LPCM
3) Doby Digital Audio

????

Cheers

VinMan

[skier-hughes]

Choose dv, which I hope stands for the standard of "digital video" and should give you a dv-avi file.
Test with a very short capture of just a few seconds.

This should also capture the sound.

You should then forget about all the other settings as capturing as a dv-avi means that you won't get a choice of bitrates or audio file type.

dv-avi in PAL should be 720x576.

[skier-hughes]

GuyL wrote

If the end result is not good, try capturing to the PAL equivalent and then re-rendering the file to NTSC compliance.

Thanks GuyL - I'll give capturing in MPEG NTSC a go.

I am in this pickle as my initial trials at capturing in PAL and rerenderining to NTSC in VS9 produced a 6 second lip synch problem by 20 minutes into the video. So far all advice I have received is that to avoiud the lip synch problems I had to first go to DV-AVI. I'll be delighted if I don't have to - that means I won;t have to buy a new card.

Vince[/b]

The problem you are having is that you are not converting the PAL to NTSC properly, so I don't think it will make any difference if you have it in dv-avi or mpeg. Though you could try capturing as a type 1 dv-avi which interleaves the video and audio together, it may help.

But if you want a hassle free conversion you need a proper standards converter, as I mentioned earlier.

Graham

[Vincej]

thanks Skier - have had a look at Procoder2 and indeed it looks great - but then it is also around $400. Once I'm done my backlog of tapes I'll never us it again so it seems alot of money for a temporary solution.

I'm still hunting for a viable cost effective solution - anyone have any ideas ?

thanks Vince

[skier-hughes]

Send them off to have done professionally?

It's not really is a tricky job to do, you just need the right tools.

You may find something like tmpgenc might do an acceptable job, some peole say it is ok, but think about the time you waste on looking for the right app against just getting it done and dusted!!

Graham

[Vincej]

Skier Hughes wrote:

If you are using a proper standards converter such as canopus procoder then this will do just as good a job in Mpeg as it does in dv-avi.

I have looed at their web site and there is a whole bunch of stuff. I don't want to get it worng - coudl youplease be so good to tell me exactly what I need to buy to acgieve my goal of converting my PAL Hi8's into NTSC such that they can be burned to DVD ?

thanks Vincej[/b]

[skier-hughes]

Vince,
Can you get the movie onto the pc?
If so, you need to buy Canopus procoder Express. This is a cut down version of procoder 2, but will do the same conversion of PAL to NTSC, but is more manually worked than the parent version.
If you can I check the file type you can capture as is supported by procoder, just tell me what it is.

If you can't get it onto the pc then you'll need some sort of capture device, so look at the advc range also from canopus.

Let me know if you need more help.