I'm new to video editing and have a question about capturing format selection. My intent is to take video off my camcorder and ultimately create a DVD. That being said, which format should I capture (ie. AVI, MPEG, or something else)? I understand that DVD is MPEG-2 but I don't see that option. I've been playing around with it a little and made a practice DVD by capturing about 5 minutes of video via MPEG. I chose to capture with MPEG format selected and the 740x460(I think the numbers are right)relsolution. When I burned my DVD and popped it in, it worked but the image quality really wasn't that good; nowhere near what it is when I plug my camcorder directly into my TV.
Secondly, my captured video was kind of gittery. I thought it might just be that way on my computer but that's how it turned out on DVD too. Any fix to this? My camcorder is connected to my computer via USB. Would firewire be better?
So overall I have 3 questions:
1. Which format should I capture in?
2. How come my resultant video quailty isn't that good?
3. How come my video is gittery?
Thanks,
KL
Capturing.....So many choices. Which is best???
Moderator: Ken Berry
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rwindeyer
First off, let me say something that everyone will agree with.
Capture via firewire. That is really the only way to get great video.
Next, how to capture. I think the majority here would suggest capturing to DV format. This is simply a transfer from your digital camera, with no quality loss. Takes huge amounts of space on your hard drive, but worth it.
When editing, stay in DV format.
(General agreement) Make a video file of your finished product. Do NOT try to burn a DVD directly from a project. The guidelines in the top post suggest making a DVD-compatible mpeg file, then burning.
(My preference) Make a DV file from the project. Then load this in the burning module for transcoding to mpeg and burning.
Explanation: DV is (almost) uncompressed digital video. mpeg is compressed; you can certainly capture to that format if your computer is equal to the task - asking it to convert DV to mpeg "on the fly" is a big job, and you will need a fast processor. Better (IMHO) to work in DV and let the conversion happen later, when the computer can take all the time it needs. Also - do the compression last, after you've done all your editing.
Capture via firewire. That is really the only way to get great video.
Next, how to capture. I think the majority here would suggest capturing to DV format. This is simply a transfer from your digital camera, with no quality loss. Takes huge amounts of space on your hard drive, but worth it.
When editing, stay in DV format.
(General agreement) Make a video file of your finished product. Do NOT try to burn a DVD directly from a project. The guidelines in the top post suggest making a DVD-compatible mpeg file, then burning.
(My preference) Make a DV file from the project. Then load this in the burning module for transcoding to mpeg and burning.
Explanation: DV is (almost) uncompressed digital video. mpeg is compressed; you can certainly capture to that format if your computer is equal to the task - asking it to convert DV to mpeg "on the fly" is a big job, and you will need a fast processor. Better (IMHO) to work in DV and let the conversion happen later, when the computer can take all the time it needs. Also - do the compression last, after you've done all your editing.
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heinz-oz
Since you don't give us much detail to work with I will reiterate here what I found out when helping a friend last week. He is new to this as well and has bought himself a DV camcorder. The laptop came with VS7 (don't think that would make a difference in regards to capturing) and the camcorder with a USB cable.
The captured quality of his video clips were along the lines of what you describe. I tried to explain to him what has been said in the previous post here. He did not want to believe it. I checked the properties of the captured clips. They were 160 x 120 pixel frame size and 14 fps frame rate. It was impossible to change the capture settings to anything else than what he was getting, the program would crash.
To cut a long story short, I let him borrow my fire wire cable and, guess what? As soon as he connected the camera to the PC via the fire wire port, the camcorder was recognised by VS, the DV capture came on as default setting, the device control was enabled automatically and the captured clips were superb. We are in PAL land here, frame size 720 x 576, 25 fps was set up automatically also.
So much to USB capture.
The captured quality of his video clips were along the lines of what you describe. I tried to explain to him what has been said in the previous post here. He did not want to believe it. I checked the properties of the captured clips. They were 160 x 120 pixel frame size and 14 fps frame rate. It was impossible to change the capture settings to anything else than what he was getting, the program would crash.
To cut a long story short, I let him borrow my fire wire cable and, guess what? As soon as he connected the camera to the PC via the fire wire port, the camcorder was recognised by VS, the DV capture came on as default setting, the device control was enabled automatically and the captured clips were superb. We are in PAL land here, frame size 720 x 576, 25 fps was set up automatically also.
So much to USB capture.