Analogue Video Capture

[PeterK2]

I know there have been a lot of posts on this subject so please bear with me.

I have a P4, 2.8 with 512MB RAM and 80GB HD. My capture card is Swann (Australian I think) but as far as I can tell uses a BT878 (?) chip. It comes up as "Conextant" in the VS9 capture window.

For compression I am using the Panasonic DV codec because I have a Panasonic DV camcorder and I record the finished videos back to tape on the camcorder. I also capture Type 2 because that is what the Panasonic software that came with the camera captures.

The capture card offers options of RGB16, RGB24, YUY2 (?). Which one should I use?

I have been using RGB24 because 24 has to be better than 16 (?) and I have no idea what YUY2 is.

The problem is that I am getting dropped frames - 100 dropped in a 90 minute capture. This was with 50GB spare on the HD, after a defrag and nothing else running on the PC. I shut down Zonealarm, Norton, etc for capture.

Any suggestions?

Peter

[GeorgeK]

DV from Camera to PC should be via a Firewire or USB2 as a data stream, this is a data transfer, not a "capture" where Analogue video is converted to a digital format, like MPEG2, so you should never have dropped frames.

If I follow what your saying, you have DV Camera, but you are feeding an analogue output from your camera into a capture card to capture in DV format. This is a strange way to do capture?

Please tell us more about your camera type, how you connect your camera to your computer, the type of interface card your using (though you have quoted a analogue capture card, and suggested that your camera is a Digital Video camera).

I think you should be using a firewire card and cable (from camera to PC). I had to buy one, as my Video camera did not come with Firewire cable even though it supports firewire not USB for DV transfer (to PC or other DV camera).

[heinz-oz]

Please let us know your system spec's as well as the way you connect your cam corder. I have been capturing DV AVI from VHS through my DV camcorders AV IN for a few years now, initially on a PII 800 MHZ machine running WIN 98SE, without dropping frames.

80 Gb HDD for capturing DV AVI is also rather small. You should have a separate HDD for capture to prevent the disk from having to read and write to the same disk while capturing. I run 4 disks with a total of 340 Gb on a P4 3.2 GHz machine with 1 Gb DDR dual channel RAM. 1 disk holds the programs and system files, 1 just for the swap file plus some archive stuff in a separate partition, 1 x 120 Gb, 7200 rpm disk for capture and another 120 Gb disk for rendering.

[THoff]

I sounds like you are using an analog source and saving in AVI format using the DV codec -- that's not the same as capturing DV.

If it's a DV capture (really just a transfer), then the source is compressing the video and your PC is just writing it to disk. That causes very little work for the PC.

If the source is analog and you are capturing to DV, then the PC takes the analog source, compresses it, and writes that to disk. That's very CPU intensive, and may cause dropped frames.

I would suggest capturing to AVI using Huffyuv, and then transcoding to DV separately.

[PeterK2]

Sorry for the confusion. I have 2 cameras, a Panasonic DV and a Canon Hi8. I have no problem transferring DV via firewire from the digital.

I have about 15 hours of Hi8 that I want to burn on DVD. I was transferring from the analog via the digital to the PC using firewire. However I had some sound problems and read some negative comments about doing this on this board so I went back to using the analogue capture card.

I realise my setup may be marginal but in the interests of marital harmony I will have to do the best I can with what I have got.

I will try the two stage capture to AVI and convert as suggested.

Thanks

Peter