Video Capture problem

sdallen24 · Post by **sdallen24** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:51 am

I am capturing video on a Sony TRV350 via USB. The video was recorded on digital tape. I have included the settings below as recommended by this board. The video when played back is slightly pixelated. When I captured in the smaller resolution, it was much smoother. Is that just how it is, or am I doing something wrong?

NTSC drop frame (29.97 fps)
MPEG files
24 Bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
Lower Field First
(DVD-NTSC), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 8000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 48 KHz, Stereo

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 2:09 am

Though it is a Digital8 model, your camera is equipped with a Firewire port (called an i-Link port on Sony cameras) and this should be used for capture of high quality digital video. The USB port, except in very recent, very high end video cameras, is only used to transfer low quality streaming video that you would get from a cheap webcam. It may also, on some cameras be used to transfer still images taken with the video camera, though in your case, you have a Sony Memory Stick for that function.

The problem is that no camera manufacturer of which I am aware ever includes a Firewire cable, but always includes a USB cable if the camera also has a USB port. That gives the owner the idea that it is the USB cable which has to be used, when this is not the case. You will need to buy a Firewire cable, and make sure you get one that has the correct size plugs at each end. Normally they would be a small 4-pin plug for the camera end and a larger 6-pin plug for the computer end. Of course, you will also need to have a Firewire port on your computer, but if you don't have one, a Firewire card is not very expensive these days.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 4:05 am

In fact if you do need to buy a firewire card, they often come with a cable for not much more than the price of the cable alone, and also often come bundled with video editing software, although this is usually a cut down program such as the SE version of Video Studio.

sdallen24 · Post by **sdallen24** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 6:50 pm

Thanks. If I record the tape to a dvd with my dvd recorder, then bring it into VS from the dvd, will the quality be the same as transferring via firewire?

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 8:44 pm

...will the quality be the same...

NO! But, it might be good enough.

In general, the best practice is to encode to MPEG-2 once, after all editing is done.

DVDs use MPEG-2 compression, which is lossy. So, the quality is not quite the same as AVI/DV. Assuming that your final output will be a DVD, this might not be a problem if you're not doing too much editing.

You can cut & splice MPEGs without problems, but any "real" editing (crossfade transitions, filters, etc.) will require the an extra (lossy) decode / re-code cycle. When I crossfaded between two MPEGs, the video was very blocky during the crossfade. (Sometimes it looks like a cool effect... sometimes it just looks bad.) And if you choose the "wrong" bitrate, an extra lossy decode / re-code cycle will be required to fit the program onto a DVD.

If you're using an analog connection between your camcorder and your DVD recorder, you will degrade the quality with the extra digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion.

Also, many users have had a variety of problems with importing DVDs and editing MPEGs. When I edited MPEGs, I got the dreaded "lip-sync" problem!

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 8:48 pm

It depends!

I've not used a set top DVD recorder myself, but they presumably encode the video to mpeg-2 format. If you do that at the highest quality, i.e. short play or SP, perhaps, it's probable that it amounts to something like an 8000 kbps video bitrate, which is a pretty good video quality.

What happens next depends on what you intend to do with the mpeg-2 file. If you just cut it and maybe even add a few titles in a video studio project, you should be able to burn that project to DVD without much loss of quality.

If, on the other hand, you apply lots of video filters and effects, and otherwise mess with the footage like chopping it up and making looping sequences for example, there will be a loss of video quality, which, depending on what you are doing, might be noticeable.

There are also some out of sync (OOS) audio issues that can arise, see this series of excellent and comprehensive posts. http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=3525

That's why people usually recommend working with avi clips in your project, mor or less as per the recommended procedure described in the big sticky at the top of the forum.