Cannot capture in MPEG

AJC-CPT · Post by **AJC-CPT** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:29 am

Hi -

My 1st post here, but I have been reading a lot....Thanks for all the good information.

I have been using VS10+ for a few months and I am starting to dive deeper than the basics. I have been using VS10 to edit DV taken from my Canon Elura100 and authoring a DVD. I use a Turtle Beach Video Advantage (USB 2.0) capturing device.

I am now wanting to transfer all my VHS home movies so I started that tonight but immediately ran into some issues I was hoping to bounce off the masters

My have about 120GB of free space which is not a whole lot when capturing to AVI. I tried to capture to MPEG & DVD and everything looks fine during the preview of the capture. When I stopped the capture and played ine movie back with WMP 11, it looks really blocky. The best way for me to describe it is when a rain storm moves in and my DirecTV starts to pixilate. Again, the preview during the capture is fine. AVI is fine, but trying to capture a 2 hour Blackbelt test eats my hard drive before the capture is done.....

The funny thing is I have an older version of Power Director from Cyberlink which when performing the same functions, it works just fine. Preview & playback when capturing in AVI, MPEG or DVD.

My machine is an Intel P4 2.8 HT
1GB ram
NVIDIA 5500 AGP 256MB card
bla bla bla.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

AJ

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:33 am

If you are capturing DV .avi, then 2 hourse should not eat up the free 120gb of drive space you have -- it should be about 26gb (or ~13gb per hour for DV .avi).

Is the problem with the capture/transfers from the Elura 100, or from the USB device? Are you using firewire from the Elura-100, or sending the analog outs to the USB device?

Regards,
George

Post by **Ken Berry** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 10:25 am

George -- the Turtle Beach Video Advantage device is a small one which allows capture from analogue source direct to DV or mpeg-2.

AJC -- I am wondering whether you have somehow set uncompressed AVI as your format, instead of DV/AVI... Since we don't know anything about your computer, it is difficult to say. Reviews I have read of your device suggest it requires a relatively powerful one to capture with that device.

You also need to tell us, if you are indeed capturing to DV format, whether it is capturing to Type 1 or Type 2 DV format. The latter tends to cause problems, again especially if your computer is not a particularly powerful one.

Did the Turtle Beach Video Advantage device come with any software of its own? If so, we generally recommend you use that to capture, and then open the captured files in Video Studio to edit...

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 1:13 pm

Ken Berry wrote:George -- the Turtle Beach Video Advantage device is a small one which allows capture from analogue source direct to DV or mpeg-2.

That looks like an interesting device -- can take analog input, and convert to dv .avi via USB2 (could come in handy, and it looks pretty portable).

@AJC -- if you got that device to be able to convert analog video, then just as an aside, your camcorder can also do analog-to-dv conversions. You have to connect it to a firewire port on your computer, feed the analog video into your camcorder, and use its "pass through" feature to send the analog video as DV .avi to your computer via Firewire. That camcorder works both ways too -- you can send video from computer to camcorder via firewire, then from camcorder to TV (via RCA connections).

Regards,
George

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:53 pm

GeorgeW wrote:If you are capturing DV .avi, then 2 hours should not eat up the free 120gb of drive space you have -- it should be about 26gb (or ~13gb per hour for DV .avi).

Is the problem with the capture/transfers from the Elura 100, or from the USB device? Are you using firewire from the Elura-100, or sending the analog outs to the USB device?

Regards,
George

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 9:06 pm

uncompressed avi uses about 65GB per hour so 2 hours will eat your hard drive. You need to select DV compression which only eats 13GB of hard drive space per hour.

You are also advised to use a firewire cable rather than USB.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 10:30 pm

The problem with the latter suggestion, Steve, is that the capture device IS a USB 2.0 device and cannot connect via Firewire, except as suggested by George, using the camera as a passthrough, connected to the computer via Firewire.

But that kinda defeats the purpose of the device itself: to allow direct capture to DV using a USB 2.0 device!

AJC-CPT · Post by **AJC-CPT** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 10:53 pm

Thanks, all for your responses....

Sorry if this wasn't clear from the beginning. I cam capturing from old VHS tapes. I have the output of the VCR going to my capture device.

Since we don't know anything about your computer, it is difficult to say. Reviews I have read of your device suggest it requires a relatively powerful one to capture with that device.

In my original post i did list my hardware specs. P4 2.8 HT, 1gb ram, etc. Is there more info that is needed to help me find an answer?

Did the Turtle Beach Video Advantage device come with any software of its own?

Yes, it is the PowerDirector software I mentioned and as noted it does capture fine but it is a very outdated package. Version 3.

Also I should note, that when I captured my DV from my camcorder, I had no issue capturing to MPEG or any other format I chose. The problem just seem to be when capturing from my VCR. Everytime I select DV it changes back to AVI. Any ideas about the MPEG blockyness on the playback?

Thanks again for your help

AJC

AJC-CPT · Post by **AJC-CPT** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 8:21 pm

Does anyone have a suggestion to help me out?

Thanks!

roy wood · Post by **roy wood** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 9:37 pm

Yes, it is the PowerDirector software I mentioned and as noted it does capture fine but it is a very outdated package.

Hi, as has been said before when using an analogue capture device it is highly recomended to use its own software because the compression codecs have been selected to suit the device.
When you try to use Ulead to capture through your analogue device its codecs may not be compatible and you finish up capturing Raw AVI (65Gb/ hr) instead of compressed AVI at 13Gb/ hr.
You could waste a lot of time searching for a suitable codec to import into Ulead when you already have the solution to hand, you only need to capture to your Hdd and then import the video into Ulead for editing.
I have exactly this scenario with my Pinnacle capture device.

Is the blocky MPG2 playback from your Analogue or your DV capture?