Video Capture

[Bimbing]

I am still using VS 9. For the last 2 yrs I captured my video from a Digital mini DV camcorder into AVI Type 1 files with the Split by Scene activated. However, the rendering took a long time during the Creat Video File phase.

Would it be advantageous to capture the video directly into MPEG-2 so that rendering time in the Create Video File will be much shorter? I understand that the Split by Scene feature no longer is available.

Thank for any advise.
Bimbing

My system: AMD 3200+ (2.20 GHz) XP processor
1 GB SDRAM Memory
NVDIA GeForce4 MX 440 graphics card
100 GB HD free space

[Ron P.]

IMHO, it's six in one hand, half a dozen in the other.

When you capture to MPEG2 format you are forcing your computer to transcode from DV/avi to MPEG2 while capturing. My system has about the same getup and go as yours, and I would rather not. For those that use a capture device that is capable of doing the conversion, it is much better, because the strain is not put on the PC.

If in doubt, try capturing a short segment, and see. Make sure to have show drop frames checked, so you can see how many frames are being dropped, due to the machine not being able to keep up. The acceptable amount of dropped frames for a quality video is 0.

The time is going to be there, on the front side or back. It's just can your machine give you the front end to work with?

My system specs:
AMD Athlon 64, 3200+, 2.0Ghz
Nvidia GeForce 5500 FX
1 x 250 gig, 1x 200 gig HDD.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

First of all capturing to Dv-Avi from a digital camcorder via firewire is the best option.

You create a Dv-Avi file at 13 Gb per hour.

If you want best quality in my opinion stay with Dv-Avi.

Capturing in this format transfers/copies the files from the camera to the pc without re-coding.
What you have is what you get Dv-Avi

Capture to Mpeg2 and give it a go, Select Pal-Dvd or Ntsc-Dvd (depending where you are in the world.)
Do not use Mpeg format.
Capturing has to re-code/trans-code the video data.

Rendering is another subject.
Rendering a project to another format (Mpeg2) for burning a dvd takes some time.

To render Avi to Dvd. At a guess with your pc it should take about 2.5 times.

That is, a one hour capture should render in 2.5 hours.

This will be extended with heavy editing, Using Album transitions will take some rendering.

Rendering Mpeg2 to Mpeg2 should be relatively fast, provided the settings are the same.
Change the Bitrate, for example and the rendering will be slow.

The Split by Scene Option is still available.
What makes you think it is not?

Hope this Helps

Trevor

[Bimbing]

Thanks Videoman and Trevor for your replies.
Bimbing