DVC150 Capture & Field Order

[gordonwd]

I just noticed that VS8 supports direct capture from my DVC150. With VS7 I used to capture using a Dazzle utility that came with the device and then import into VS.

Does anyone know the details of how to use the DVC150 with VS8. Mainly I have the following questions:

a) The DVC150, for some reason, captures in high-field-first order, whereas the DVD production settings that I've seen recommended in these forums say to use low-field order. I know when I clicked the Capture tab on VS8 with the DVC150 connected, I got the "Change Field Order" dialog, but it seemed to just automatically select the "High field first" option and continue instead of giving me an option to choose. If I capture from the DVC150 and then output the project to an MPEG file with the optimal settings, will it render it and change the frame order without anything bad happening to the result?

b) Can the DVC150 be made to capture in AVI format, or does it strictly capture in MPEG format?

c) Are there any other useful capture settings available for the DVC150 from within VS8, or should I just take VS's defaults?

d) Can I produce a regular NTSC DVD, playable on commercial DVD players, with the high-field ordering?

By the way, I am using the newest DVC150 drivers that were released by Dazzle before they were acquired by Pinnacle. I'm not sure what VS8 is expecting in this regard. While playing around looking at option settings, I did cause VS8 to crash.

Doug

[phd]

Other people who have the old Dazzle devices with the original Dazzle driver and MovieStar software would be interested to hear how you make out with direct capture in VS8 please let us know.

To answer some of your questions:

a) The DVC150 is an analog capture device so you should capture and render your DVD as "upper field first" or "Field order B" If you change the field order for the DVD, it will not look good.

b) The Dazzle device native capture mode is mpeg with LPCM audio. You might be able to capture and convert on the fly to AVI but you suffer in quality due to on-the-fly reencoding.

c) Don't know but please report here so others can learn from your experiences.

d) Yes.

I would be surprised if the you can capture in VS8 as the Dazzle is a proprietary USB capture device, but others would be interested as well.

Dazzle came with a little capture test utility which offered great flexibility in adjusting capture settings. You might want to try it. It was installed when you installed the regular drivers and software. Called "DVXCELtest.exe"

When Pinnacle acquired Dazzle, they shut down their official forum. There are a few where people have congregated. You might want to check them out. They are:

http://forum.digital-digest.com/index.p ... 2a81372f81
search threads for Dazzle DVC DVC150

http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/index.p ... rum&f=1279

http://www.dazzlegeek.com/

If you know of other ones, please let us know.

[gordonwd]

I would be surprised if the you can capture in VS8 as the Dazzle is a proprietary USB capture device, but others would be interested as well.

Dazzle came with a little capture test utility which offered great flexibility in adjusting capture settings. You might want to try it. It was installed when you installed the regular drivers and software. Called "DVXCELtest.exe"

I didn't try a capture, but VS8 did see the DVC150 and recognize it as a capture device, so it looks like it does support it. I have used the DVXCEL utility. With VS7 I used to capture using that utility, then import into VS7. But I think that DVXCEL has a limitation on file size, and I need to capture a 2-hour VHS tape. I have the NTFS file system, so there is no inherent limitation on the file size, and I think VS8 will handle it OK.

Thanks for the other links! I just got back into this and found out about the missing forums. I've been looking for a place to find out about the optimal settings for a DVXCEL capture, as I seem to have lost my old notes on the subject.

[phd]

I personally have the DCS200 which has even less support now. It is similar to the DVC150 and others that also use the DVXCEL utility and MovieStar 5 software. If you find additional Dazzle forums and links, please post them.

Read this thread regarding some user written tools.
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... ght=dvxcel

If you PM me with your email address I can send them to you as well. I tried 2 of them and they worked for me, but no quarantees.

If you do a capture with DVXCELtest that has an MPEG larger than 2GB, the DVC150 will just split them. I ran into audio OOS problem with separate files until using VideoReDo to join and edit them.
http://www.drdsystems.com/VideoReDo/
A 30 day free trial is available. Also request a trial key for full functionality.

Also I have heard of a freeware joiner called HJJoin. I haven't tried it personally though.
http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/

[gordonwd]

Well, I could not get it to work with VS8. The program saw it and I could select it as the capture device, but when trying to capture I got the "No signal" message. I wonder if they developed their support with a later set of drivers from Pinnacle.

Anyway, what are good settings for capturing a (long) VHS tape with DVXCEL? I captured a piece at 720x480 @8000kbps, and 5 minutes took 350Mb! I then tried 352x480 @7000Kbps. That looked good (at least in VS8 when I previewed it), but took 115Mb for 3 minutes.

Is there any hope of capturing a 2-hour VHS tape all at once?

[phd]

You could capture at that rate. Render the DVD to a folder on your hard drive and use DVD Shrink which will shrink it to fit the DVD.

At your rate of 7000Kbps, 120 minutes would take approximately 4600 KB so it wouldn't have to shrink that much.

You could also try test captures at 1/2D1 (352X480) at lower bitrates of 3000, 4000, 5000 and 6000 and see what looks good to you. That should give you a lot more space.

You could also reencode the audio only to MPG and reduce the size that way also. It will take some time and might cause audio OOS issues.

[gordonwd]

You could capture at that rate. Render the DVD to a folder on your hard drive and use DVD Shrink which will shrink it to fit the DVD.

Actually, I have not had much luck using DVDShrink to shrink a DVD and then get it to play on a regular DVD player. The resulting DVD will play OK on my PC with WinDVD, but in my Toshiba DVD player connected to the TV it does not recognize the disc. Other DVDs that I burn from VS8 output work OK in that player, so it's nothing to do with the DVD+R discs themselves -- maybe the player can't handle the compression algorithm that DVDShrink is using?

[phd]

You could also try ReJig.

I believe it does the same type of thing that DVD Shrink does but works on the MPG files so you could author to DVD after and perhaps that would give you a compliant DVD for your player.

Worth a try at least.

[gordonwd]

I captured, rendered, and burnt my DVD successfully. I used 352x480 at only 3200Kbps, but considering the VHS source, it did not really look much worse than a trial segment that I did at a full 720x480@8000Kbps! I was able to use the MZLMerger utility to merge the DVXCEL output files, which were a total of 2.7Gb for an 80-minute movie.

VS8 pulled in the MPG file with no problems. I just left the settings alone and, after just some minor trimming at the ends, I went straight to creating a disc (I always generate an .iso file so I can do a test burn on a DVD-RW first). I did not mess with the sound at all either, and it came out well with perfect sync throughout.

So at least I now know it's not a very big deal to convert some of my old VHS tapes to DVD.

Doug

[phd]

I'm glad it worked for you. I wish you continued success.

Pat