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Advice please on the following...

(1) When I capture with VH6 what capture format should I use to have the best results for editing with VS11+....DV,MPEG or AVI ? (capturing from analogue VHS tape)

(2) I have captured a video via VS6 on MPEG format and all's OK. But after tranfering to VS11 timeline or storybook view the video is in one single clip. I'm unable to split by the split by Scene button as It's greyed out. What am I doing wrong?

It all depends on what capture device you are using. The best format to capture in is DV/AVI, but that needs a device which uses a firewire connection. In practice you can only do that if you have a capture device which has a hardware chip in it which converts the analogue incoming signal to digital and uses the DV format; or using a Sony Digital 8 camera or a mini DV digital video camera which allow what is called passthrough to convert the incoming analogue signal to DV. In all these cases, the devices are connected via Firewire to the computer, and your VCR is usually connected via either RCA (yellow/red/white) or S-Video plus RCA audio (red/white) at one end and a standard stereo plug at the other.

But if your capture device is a USB device, then usually the best you can capture is either uncompressed AVI (which in practice is too huge to work with -- 65 GB per hour of video) or else DVD compatible mpeg-2 which is normally, for such devices, the best you can get. The main downside to mpeg-2 is that mpeg-2 can be difficult to edit. I assume you are capturing mpeg-2 and not mpeg-1 which is (much) lower quality.

As for split-by-scene, it only works during capture of DV format. Otherwise, with mpeg-2 once the video is captured, you can use split-by-scene on the single captured file. I don't know if that was available in VS6 (I started my video career with VS 7). But you should be able to use it when transferred to VS11.

Can you tell us which capture device you are using please. Could you also right click on the captured video within Video Studio and copy *all* the Properties of the video here please.

Hi Ken

Thank you for you interest in my problem. I am new to this game so learning by my mistake's.

I am using Belkin Hi-Speed USB DVD Creator for my capture device which came bundled with old VS6. I do not want to purchase anything else until I know a little more on what I am doing.

Here is the property's of my captured video from VS6 which I have transfered to VS11+.

PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 320 x 240, 25 fps
Frame-based
(MPEG-1)
Video data rate: 1500 kbps
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 44.1 KHz, Stereo

I can Multi-Trim Video on VS11+ but not Spilt by Scene. Also on the capture settings on VS6 the Scene Detection is ticked but greyed out.

Regards
David

Regarding your settings:

PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 320 x 240, 25 fps
Frame-based
(MPEG-1)
Video data rate: 1500 kbps
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 44.1 KHz, Stereo

Those are MPEG1 and were designed for VCD (Video CD) discs - the fore runner of the present day DVD discs. The boffins devised means of getting roughly a hours worth of low quality video onto a standard CD disc that would also play in a standalone DVD Player. Then along came the much larger (capacity) DVD discs and MPEG2. Now you have a very high quality.

Change your settings to MPEG2 and use a full frame size - for PAL this will be 768 x 576. (I know it sounds odd but that size remains the same if your using 4.3 or 16.9 - it is the shape of the pixels that count square/oblong - there will still only be 768 of them)

Next issue is "Frame based" - that is mostly used for stills (slide shows)
Most "Videos" will be either Upper field first or Lower field first.
If you had a digital camcorder or some other digital source it is normally lower field first.

In your case you have an analogue source - those are normally upper field first.

Judging by the mpeg-1 frame size, can we guess that you live in an NTSC country? If so, then set your capture for mpeg-2 and 720x480 frame size. The 576 that Steve mentioned is for PAL countries.

Well spotted Ken - looks like he has NTSC frame SIZE but a PAL frame RATE

Hi

Thanks for info.

Ken I live in UK so I assume I'm PAL ? will that make a difference to settings I should use.

Regards
David

No -- in that case, follow Steve's advice to the letter and choose mpeg-2 as the capture format, set to 720 x 576.

Thanks for all the help. I will give it a go.

Just an update......Your advice regarding changing setup to MPEG2 etc has worked. I can now split by scene OK. THANKS