Clear video problems/analog/settings

[brucefl]

I have 4 whitewater rafting tapes I want to burn to dvd. I have been workign with UL Video Studio 9. When I am looking at the preview screen it seems pretty digitized. I have tried several settings with little noticible change. Sometimes on certain ones I get capture vid, bit rate is 1578 framie size is 160 x120 when useing this frame rate size the video bit rate should be between 192 x552, even though I have it set a the higher video setting of 640x480, I have tried avi, wmv, dvd, vcd.
If I go to movie maker itself, I seems to get a pretty clean video. I could record it in wmv and inport it, but am trying to work with VS9 specifically.
Any suggestions and/or help would be appreciated. I have the vcr plugged into an intel camera for the video.

[THoff]

We need more information about your hardware setup, but most likely you are looking at a limitation with the capture device. The resolution you are capturing at is simply inadequate for creating DVDs -- unless you can get it up to the standard DVD resolution of 720x480/720x576 for NTSC and RAL, respectively, you won't get very good quality.

[Ken Berry]

Have to agree with Torsten that we need a lot more information. By the sounds of it, you are doing something (what?) using a USB connection (and probaby USB 1.0 at that). If trying to capture digital video from a digital video camera using USB, you will at best only be able to capture low quality, low resolution, small frame-size streaming video as from a webcam. What is the camera: digital? analogue? What model? If analogue, what capture device are you using? How is it connected to the computer? If digital, you should be using Firewire -- problem is that a Firewire cable never comes with the camera, making people think USB is the way to go. You will also need a Firewire port on your computer -- speaking of which, what is the computer and what are its specifications? What OS? etc etc etc...

[brucefl]

I have a gateway with a 3.2 gig processor, 1 gig on the ram, with a nvidia geforce 6800 series, with I think 256 ram, 400 gig processor.
I have an intel camera cs 430 attached to the usb port, not sure on 2.0 or 1.0 computer is about 7 or 8 months old, windows xp home edition.
I have a jack on the camera I connect the vcr through, highest setting I get is 640 x 480.
Though if I use wmm it seems to be much clearer

[Ken Berry]

As far as I can see, the Intel camera is no more than a personal webcam to which you can attach a VCR -- which I assume is what the poster is doing.

However, while the camera can apparently be used to 'store' images in .avi format (I imagine uncompressed), it does so with the following characteristics:

30fps@160 x 120, 30fps@QCIF (176 x 144), 30fps@CIF (352 x 288), 5 - 15fps@VGA (640 x 480) (Got these from the Intel site blurb on the camera.)

In other words, though, you can only get the "full" format using a very low frame rate.

So Bruce, what you are in essence trying to do is transfer relatively low quality (compared to digital) VHS tape, through a fairly low quality-transmitting device which delivers streaming video, and is captured at full NTSC speed (29.97 fps) only at low to very low quality format sizes. Not a recipe at all for a successful transfer.

Anyway, if you think you are getting clean video through Movie Maker, why not do your captures in that, then open the capture video in VS9. Be aware, though, that VS9 has some issues dealing with .WMV format. It could certainly deal OK with .AVI, though if it is true uncompressed AVI, then your captured files would be presumably huge.

I would think serious about buying -- or borrowing, if this is the only such job you are doing -- a proper analogue capture device which can provide much high quality captures.

[brucefl]

That is understandable, wanted to work through VS9 mostly, rather than back and forth. I guess whatever works best..

Any suggestions on a card for the computer. I was perusing Gateways site and they had a Pinnacle Studio Plus 700-PCI Version 10 Internal HD Video Editing http://accessories.gateway.com/Accessor ... ProdDetail

I don't necessarily do a lot of it, other than mostly transferring scanned pictures. But, I have 5 whitewater rafting videos, and a few home movies I would like to transfer. I have had a few people ask me about doing a few tapes for them. Problem is, I get back to quaility which I tend to be a little fussy about. Said all that to say this I want a card that will do the optimum without incurring and huge cost. Already have the software VS9
I don't really need a video card, so an add on card would be best.
thanks for the answers and the input
Bruce

[DVDDoug]

As Ken suggested, the most cost effective solution would be to borrow a digitial video camera that has an analog input, Firewire output, and pass-thru capability.

Pinnacle makes external boxes that connect to your USB-2 port as well as internal PCI cards.

ATI makes the very popular All-In-Wonder line of video capture cards.

I have a Hauppauge capture card which has some nice features, including a good built-in hardware MPEG-2 encoder. However it is MPEG only, and MPEGs are not really meant to be edited... This has caused me some trouble. (It's best to capture to AVI/DV and convert to the DVD/MPEG-2 format at the after all editing is done.)

Most of the internal PCI capture cards have a built-in TV tuner, so you can use your computer as a TiVo.

[Ken Berry]

... and FWIW, I have a Winfast DV2000 internal TV card which uses a variety of formats, including mpeg-2, though alas its .AVI capture is the large, uncompressed form...! Apart from that, though, the results are excellent. And in fact I use the software that came with it to capture, as I find it gives me more flexibility than VS 9. But after that, I open it in VS 9 for editing and production.