ulead 10 hungry on space

[zacc300]

hi all i am new to all this and trying to work this all out. my question is i am using ulead 10 to capture videos from my cam corder and then turn them into a dvd . now when i capture from my camcorder about 30 minutes worth it chews up huge amounts of disk space , about 30gb. what am i doing rong at this rate i will need 10 dvds to make a 30min movie. help

[Ron P.]

Welcome to the forums,

now when i capture from my camcorder about 30 minutes worth it chews up huge amounts of disk space , about 30gb

That sounds like you're capturing RAW, uncompressed AVI, which will use about 65 gig per hour of video.

What are you using to capture, Firewire? If so you should be capturing, or actually transferring (if it is a mini-DV or Digtial-8 ) to the slightly compressed format of DV, type-1, which uses about 13 gig per hour. This will give you the same quality of video as what your camcorder records.

[Black Lab]

In addition to what Ron said, you will still have to convert (render) that DV-AVI to a DVD-compliant MPEG-2 file before burning to DVD.

Please read the Suggested Workflow.

[Ken Berry]

You also need to tell us what sort of video you are capturing, from what source and, as Ron has already asked, what devices are involved.

[zacc300]

thanks guys for your help. i am using a trying to put my holiday movies from my panasonic mini dv digital video camera to a disk . the capture device is a easycap capture which uses a usb 2.0 interface . the package came with ulead 10 . i thought that i could just put it straight to the hard drive then to burn it to disk . ( remember i am new to all this ) . is there a better way ? thank you

[Ken Berry]

Yes, definitely. If you have a mini DV camera, all that is needed is a Firewire cable and a Firewire card in your computer. This is in fact the *only* way of capturing your video in exactly the same format and quality as it is filmed in. With Firewire, it cannot even be called capture. Rather it is transfer in real time to your computer. If your computer does not have a Firewire card, the are cheap and easy to instal in a spare slot on the motherboard. Make sure you get the correct cable -- a small 4 pin plug for the camera end and a larger 6 pin plug for the computer end. No special drivers are required as this is part of Windows.

[zacc300]

thanks ken.
i was hoping to do it on my laptop . with the firewire card will it chew up as much hard drive ? also can i get a usb firewire , or is the easycap device i got the same thing ? please excuse my lack of knowlegde.

[Ken Berry]

First, DV is still large, but one fifth the size of uncompressed AVI i.e. it will still take 13 GB for 1 hour of DV, but I stress this is extremely high quality and easy to edit stuff. Once you finish editing, if you intend to burn it to DVD, then you convert your project to mpeg-2 which is far more compressed. And if you want, at that stage you can delete the DV files and free up space.

If your laptop does not have Firewire, that presents a problem. But you can buy a PCMCIA card which has Firewire inputs (I have one). But of course, your laptop must have a PCMCIA slot.

Firewire and USB and two mutually opposing systems, so there is no such thing as 'usb firewire'. And no -- most definitely, the Dazzle device is not Firewire. It is USB at your computer end, but essentially is analogue at the other end, using as far as I am aware RCA (yellow, red and white) plugs or an S-Video plug for the end that connects with your camera or VCR.

[zacc300]

thank you once again ken . i will pursue the firewire way and yes my usb easycap does have the input cords as you described . i am obviously going to have to do some homework on this topic . thank you

[zacc300]

hi again , do you know if this item will suit my needs FireWire-1394-Express-Card-VISTA-Adapter-ExpressCard-34

[Ken Berry]

Difficult to say without knowing your computer specifications. But if it has a PCI Express slot, then yes, that sounds as though it should work too...