Very Poor Picture through Firewire

[Simon James L.R.]

Hi, Can anybody help? I'm running a SONY HC18 DV cam into a Dell 5000 P4 with 1GB Ram and 250GB hard drive and the picture quality on VS8 is really poor. Worse than analogue. It's grainy when there is minimal movement and black strobing lines appear over any object that moves with any speed. For instance, a person talking will just be grainy, but if they move their arm then strange black lines emenate form that arm like a sort of ghosting. I'm running the siganl from the camera down a Belkin Firewire cable (4 pin to 6). The images from the camera don't seem to suffer from this problem in Windows Movie Maker. I am really stuck here and a complete novice with VS8 so would really appreciate any help!
Thanks,
Si

[AnimeChick]

What format are you capturing in? Make sure its DV AVI. That's the best one.

[DVDDoug]

Are you trying to capture real-time video, or are you transferring from a tape? I think VS assumes that you are transferring a file. In that case, it should be a perfect digital copy.

[Simon James L.R.]

Hi, I'm using DV AVI and I'm trying to capture film from a Mini DV cassette. The picture is bad when just playing it through VS8, not just after it's been captured.
Cheers.

[THoff]

Don't judge the quality from the Preview window in UVS, always use an external program such as Windows Media Player. The reason for that is that UVS' Preview window usually doesn't match the size of the input files or the output settings, so the video gets resized.

[Simon James L.R.]

Hi, Why would resizing the video make it strobe? The UVS library footage is all OK in preview. The footage from my cam looks bad when it's live and when it's captured! If it is the UVS window not matching the input and output settings how do i adjust the window so it does! How do I adjust field settings, might that make a difference? HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[THoff]

Before you go on a wild goose chase, try playing the captured file using Windows Media Player and see how the quality looks there.

The UVS Preview window cannot be adjusted (except that you can choose between a small and a large Preview window).

[heinz-oz]

The ghosting you describe indicates to me a wrong field order setting. Go into your project settings and reverse the field order, it should be lower field first but your camera, being a SONY, may insist on doing things differently. To get good quality you have to match your project settings to the properties of the original footage.

[Simon James L.R.]

I've adjusted the field order settings and the picture still sucks. It is just the programme because if i play footage in Windows movie maker it's fine. It's also fine when it's captured in Movie maker. If you try and play this captured footage in UVS 8 it's back to the same old strobing problem. Should i just give up and buy pinnacle!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

Can you explain again what capture process you are using.
You say you changed the field order??????????????

If you have a digital camera connected via Firewire.
Select Avi as the format, Does the format default to DV.
It should.

When capturing to Dv-Avi you are actually copying the video to your pc.

What you have is what you get.

You cannot alter the field order, the field order is set by your camera software, and is usually lower field first.

When you select ‘The Options Cogwheel’ you should only have two options:

1 / Capture options ( This will give the option to capture to library)
2 / Dv-Type ( Select Type 1 )

Capturing to Dv-Avi uses about 13 Gb of memory per hour of footage.

So what are you capturing.
Right click a clip in the timeline and select properties.
What are they?

Trevor