Help! Capturing using DVD MovieFactory

[melk]

I am flummoxed. Last week I successfully captured three HD Video tapes
from my Canon HV10 using MovieFactory 5+. Each one was about 11GB.
I inadvertently stopped the first capture before the tape had finished playing and (foolishly) deleted this capture. Now I am unable to recapture ANYTHING without a lot of pixelization and dropped frames. I'm talking about the SAME tapes that I captured before!

I have

1. Defragmented my hard drive

2. Uninstalled and reinstalled MovieFactory 5+.

I also have Ulead VideoStudio 10 Plus installed but I cannot capture with
this program.

My computer has a 2.4GHz Athlon processor.

[DVDDoug]

I don't know what's going on, but there's no good reason for the quality to be deteriorated in any way. It's digital, and the HD MPEG data should be getting transferred to your hard drive without alteration. Is it connected with firewire or USB2?

Make sure your capture settings are not trying to convert it to something else on-the-fly, like standard MPEG or DV.

If the camera came with Canon "capture" software, you might be better-off using it for the capture step. (Analog capture devices often work better with their own software, and the same may be true with HD cameras.)

[melk]

Thanks. No, there was no Canon video-capturing software. And, as far as I know, I'm doing exactly the same capture procedure as before.

[snoops]

If your capture settings are indeed correct and the same as before (?), also make sure to check for snug cable connections and the tape playback itself too. It is possible that the tape mechanism "dented" the tape when stopping... but that would only cause problems at that spot.

If the above is OK, then you should look into things that are now running compared to before. Internet, scanner, printer, USB audio, new software with new background services.

You should also try CPU scheduling set to "background services" in the advanced tab of the advanced system properties. Without going into details, "Background services" includes programs that do not have the active mouse focus. Keep memory usage set to "programs".

[melk]

Thanks. The change in CPU settings did help. I got a better capture, but still not as good as the original. As far as I can tell, there are no changeable capture options in an HD capture within MovieMaker 5+, or if there are some, I haven't changed them. So my current program capture settings are what they were originally.

[snoops]

Hi to NJ
OK, so basically just data transfer. I wasn't sure about the Canon unit and was too lazy to check the specs myself.

Thanks. The change in CPU settings did help.

This indicates that giving running processes equal CPU shares has helped to solve a bottleneck somewhere.

So maybe melk just has a bottleneck or something running that is blocking what previously ran without problems. I would first try capturing to a another disk or empty file system.

I prefer the "Background services" setting.
"Programs" is very misleading because it only gives the active program (the one with the active title bar) more CPU. It also uses smaller slices in varying sizes and therefore requires some more management. This means the active window can get CPU while other required processes "starve".

"Background services", on the other hand, also includes all program windows that do not have mouse focus. The slices are bigger and fixed in size. This is what I want. If I'm encoding MPEG2, I want it to continue as best as possible when I open a browser window or do something else. Same thing to avoid interrupted sound with USB audio devices when a program window has the focus: the driver will still get its share of CPU for data transfer.

This is similar to the reason why many people suggest setting the virtual memory (swap) to a fixed min/max size. Less overhead because Windows does not resize it according to usage, which can fragment the file system as well.

[maddrummer3301]

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[melk]

Further update. A total capture of tape 1 consistently results in good quality for about 7-8 minutes, poor quality for the next 27 minutes and good quality for the last 27 minutes. If I attempt to recapture only the bad 27 minute zone, it works well except for the very end. So any given area of the tape can be captured and I CAN get the entire capture using 3 different zonal attempts and subsequently cutting and splicing in editing.

[maddrummer3301]

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[melk]

I did not do the dual MovieFactory/VideoStudio reinstall. As stated earlier,I did uninstall and reinstall MovieFactory alone. On the Canon HV10, I do not see any ability to specify 1920X1080. Everything seems to be 1440X1080. Tape 1 is a lower-end JVC tape. All my other tapes are Sony HD, but the re-capturing bad quality problem applies to all these tapes. Good initial captures, bad subsequent captures of the same tapes.
As stated earlier, any given area of any tape can be recaptured successfully, so it does not seem to relate to bad tape quality per se. The problem is to get a consistently good re-capture of the entire tape.

[maddrummer3301]

.

[tyamada]

The Canon HV10 is not listed as being compatable with MF5+, however I have read posts that both VS10+ and MF5+ will capture HDV without any plugins. There is a HV10 plugin for VS10+ and can be downloaded at Ulead's support web site.
http://www.ulead.com/tech/general/compatibility_cam.htm

I was running some test with my HC1 capturing the same video with VS10+, MF5 and MSP8. During the test I started getting pixelization and breaking up of the video. I ran the cleaning tape for about 10 seconds, the problems went away.

[maddrummer3301]

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