Poor viewing/image quality after video rendering

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 10:31 pm

You are capturing analog video through an S-Video connection to a capture box, right? If so, you probably have to manually control your camcorder playback and manually press the capture button. There will be a noticible delay between the picture on the camcorder display and the playback on the capture display in Video Studio. That is normal. Ignore the quality of the Capture display. It is set up for lowest quality in order to permit the maximum number of CPU cycles for the capture process. You can check the capture quality after capture in the Edit playback window.

In your case, the capture device is doing all the work of converting to Mpeg so it is not loading the computer much at all. You have chosen the Mpeg DVD template, which will set the frame size a 720 x 480. Make sure the video bitrate is set to 8000Kbps, variable and set the aspect ratio to 4:3 unless you shot the tape in wide screen (16:9).

John

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 11:56 pm

Impatient, aren't we, with all this 'bumping'!!

The delay in actually starting to capture is fairly normal, though I would think 5 seconds is a bit excessive -- with mine it is no more than a second or two. I compensate by winding back the tape a little so that by the time the capture actually starts, it is pretty close to the right place. And of course you can then edit out the unwanted frames later.

I note you are capturing direct to dvd-compatible mpeg-2. With your computer specs, that should not be a major problem. But the fact remains that many people do have problems when capturing direct to mpeg. Does your new capture device allow you to capture to DV/AVI? IMHO, that is still the best format to capture in, even if the files are huge. And it places no stress on the computer at all so you shouldn't have stuttering and dropped frames. If you choose this option, I would also select Type 1 as the DV encoder, not Type 2 (that is under the Options cogwheel icon on the capture page of VS.)

JoOWiTHaU · Post by **JoOWiTHaU** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 2:00 am

thanks for the help guys, but the problem is still occuring. i wasn't exaggerating when i said the delay was 5 seconds... i literally can count to 5 and it will just begin capturing. i don't know what the problem is. before i bought my new capture device, i have a crappy dazzle capture device (only captured at low resolutions) and like ken said, it only had a delay of about 1 second and there was no stuttering while capturing or during playback. i even burned the movie onto DVD and tested it in my DVD player and it still stuttered. it does this both during capture and during playback, AND ON DVD!

however, i DO have about 60-75 short few-second clips on my right under the video library, could that maybe contribute to the lag im experiencing? i also didnt see the DV encoder selection in the options.

i have a new found respect for you people who are video editing and actually know what you are doing. this has proven to be much more cumbersome than i thought.

THANKS!

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 2:04 am

A quick Google search for the TurtleBeach Video Advantage USB device reveals that it most definitely does capture in DV/AVI as well as mpeg. So I would suggest you read the manual and see how to switch to that.

JoOWiTHaU · Post by **JoOWiTHaU** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 2:32 am

Wow. So it finally works and captures/playsback smoothly. All I did was switch the capture format to DV (is DV the same as AVI?), and it captured as smooth as a baby's butt. There's still about a 5 second delay, but I'm just happy it captures smoothly!

Thanks for all your help guys.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 3:34 am

DV is a special version of AVI developed by Microsoft to carry exactly the same quality digital video signal to your computer as the original on the tape, though it is in a rather more compressed form than uncompressed AVI (13 Gb/hour for DV as compared to about 60 Gb/hour for AVI).

As for the five second delay, just do as I suggested earlier and wind back your tape around 5 or 6 seconds, so that by the time the capture actually starts, you should be at about the right point in the tape.