Capturing on easyCAP

[dvhs]

Ok, I have been trying to work this issue out for over a week now and it just have given me nothing but wasted dvd-r's and a headache. I bought this easycap device and got visual studio with it, its plugged into my laptop and have been working, capturing and recording with problems. The picture is visable and there is sound, now when I start capturing the vhs into VS it starts to lag, and when I preview the file it looks like some frames have 'dropped' and uses its pervious frame for a couple of frames forward and continues with whereever the vhs continued, which I would basically call 'lag'. The pircure quality itself is ok.

Now, I am working in PAL, capturing at 25f/s with 352x288 works better than capturing with 720x576, which is almost out of question, because it lags every 3rd second, it almost looks like the video is going 2-4 frames/second when I view the file later. I compress it directly to mpeg2 because working with AVI was ridiculous, the files were way to large and the video is out of sync with the audio and it lags even greater...

My conslusion has been so far that the VCR keeps playing its VHS cassette while it doesnt care if the computer can keep up with it or not because it seems like the cpu/ram and hardrive are doing all the hard work.

I tried to capture with virtualDub, still the same result or worse.

If this is the best that easycap can offer then its basically useless, it would be understandable/respectable if 3-5 frame drops every 10 minutes, but we are talking 3 frames dropped very randomly, sometimes it goes well for 5 minutes and then something happens and it jerks for a few seconds, playing normaly for 4 seconds and then later jerks itself for 30 seconds, and then goes on well to meet its new jerkiness 3 minutes later. Worhless... what kind of video is it going to be?

Is there anyway to fix this within softeware settings, I doubt it because i've been playing around with settings and diffirent capturing software for a week with not much result. And it seems to me like its more of a hardware issue... not to confuse you with malfunction, because cpu/ram and everything els is working fine...

All I want to do is convert all of my VHS PAL cassettes to best possible quality for DVD(both resolution wise and picture quality wise. And I do want to have better control over editing, thats why I want the files on my computer.

I hope I explained my problem good enaugh, I can imagine other people that are have the same problems with this.

[Ken Berry]

If you are wanting to convert your VHS/analogue collection to DVD, then with your device, you have to capture to mpeg-2, as you are already doing. I agree that uncompressed AVI is too large and unmanageable. The problem is with your capture device and, indirectly, with your computer. You haven't filled in the details on your System button, but briefly, capturing direct to mpeg-2 is very demanding of computer resources, and the computer has to be relatively powerful to do it smoothly.

With a cheap capture device like yours, the computer has to do all the work. In effect the EasyCap is just a connection device rather than a capture device per se. There are more expensive devices out there (like the AdsTech DVD Express DX2) which actually has a conversion hardware chip built into it which does all the hard work, converting the analogue signal from the VHS to mpeg-2 within the device itself. In other words, the computer, with such a device, has no real work to do. (The DX2 used to cost nearly US$100, but it may be less now.) There are even more expensive analogue-to-digital capture devices which have a DV chip built into them, allowing incoming analogue to be converted to the excellent for editing DV format and transmission via Firewire to the computer.

But your device sends the analogue signal via the EasyCap connections to your computer, which has to do all the hard work. The incoming signal is coming in at a fairly significant speed, and has to be processed into mpeg-2 on the fly by the computer. If your computer doesn't have enough grunt, then the incoming data is put into what is called a transcode buffer to wait until resources become available for it to be converted to mpeg-2. And if those resources don't become available or become available fast enough, then eventually the buffer will fill, and the whole process will come to a stop until the data already in the buffer can be processed. The result is lots of dropped frames (and for some people, the whole process stops permanently). With you, it seems to be stop-go, stop-go which is at least something...

Another result of trying to capture mpeg-2 direct from an analogue source is out of sync video and audio... again particularly with under-resourced computers.

Do you have a mini DV or Sony Digital 8 video camera? If so, check the camera manual to see if it can be used as a pass-through device (just about all recent mini DV cameras can be used this way). You connect your analogue device to the camera using an AV cable (RCA/S-Video plugs at the VCR end, stereo-looking plug at the camera end). The incoming analogue signal is converted to DV format in the camera, and sent to the computer in this format via the camera's Firewire connection. Excellent quality...

Other than that, I would be thinking of something like the DX2 -- the only downside to that being that Video Studio can't capture from it! However, it comes with excellent capture software designed for it (CapWiz) and you then simply open the captured mpeg-2 in VS for editing/authoring.

The other alternative, of course, would be to buy a new, more powerful computer!

[dvhs]

hi again, I thought about starting a new thread but I did want to follow up on this suggestion you had:

Do you have a mini DV or Sony Digital 8 video camera? If so, check the camera manual to see if it can be used as a pass-through device (just about all recent mini DV cameras can be used this way). You connect your analogue device to the camera using an AV cable (RCA/S-Video plugs at the VCR end, stereo-looking plug at the camera end). The incoming analogue signal is converted to DV format in the camera, and sent to the computer in this format via the camera's Firewire connection. Excellent quality...

I have a DV camera which I baught early 2001 and it has firewire connection and analog out, but does not seem to have anolog in, really strange because I do like your idea of connecting VCR to the DV cam and then through firewire to the computer, although only if it all goes realtime VCR>DV>computer, because recording to mini DV tape and LATER exporting it to the comp with firewire is to long of a process, and Im not sure that is even possible with my cam at the moment.

Anyway I have checked out other DV cams that are out there and only one had 'analog in' function, it was a CANON I think and it was over $1000. So not sure that "just about all recent mini DV cameras can be used as a pass-through device".

The DV cam I have myself is a Sharp VL-PD6S. I checked the manual and it does not explain how it can be used as a pass-through device.

Anyway I really like the Idea of this but it does not seem to function, but it seems like this function should be logical and avalible even on my camera. Strange...

If this wont work then I guess I'll have to go with DX2 device thing. I've checked, but it does not seem avalible at a retailer here in Sweden.

[Ken Berry]

Well, your Sharp is probably too old to have that feature. Not many around 2001 had it. I bought a Canon in mid 2002 that did not either. However, I stand by my statement that most mini DV cameras over the past 3 or 4 years do indeed have it. I bought a normal, run of the mill Canon MV930i 18 months ago that does, and you will see from very many threads on this Board, that many other users have a wide variety of cameras with the function.

As for the price you suggest, I can only think Sweden must have huge taxes if they are wanting to charge US$1000 for a mini DV camera. My Canon only cost around $400, and that seems to be a normal price in Australia and elsewhere -- with some models very much cheaper, but not too many more expensive. I am currently in Belgium, and just bought a Canon HV-20 high definition mini DV camera for Euros 889 with taxes (though I get them back when I leave Europe). So even a top end high def camera only costs a little more than $1000 here...

I know that some video cameras in Europe in the past are taxed according to what they can do, and that cameras with the capacity to accept DV in (as opposed to sending it out to computer) are taxed as a VCR. But I did not think that applied to AV-in... which is what we are talking about here.

As for the Adtech device, have you checked on the Adstech website to see if there are any sales outlets in Sweden or nearby countries?