Another video capture question???

susi

Well with the help of the good folk on this board I have managed to get all the leads etc to capture my video on to my pc. Just one small problem it seems to be capturing in B&W. I know its capable of colour as when I first tried it out the transfer was in colour. What am I doing wrong, am I missing something??????

Donnie

You have to set it to record to PAL.

susi

Thanks Donnie will give it a go

susi

That worked fine, all in colour now, the only thing is the video is in front of the sound, its like watching one of those films where you cant take your eyes off their mouths cos they dont go with the words!!! Now what do I need to alter???? (by the way it was all in synch in black and white)

Donnie

Not sure.... some one with a similar problem wrote this:

Video and audio will go out of sync no matter what software you will use. What happens is that quartz clock on sound card fluctuates in frequency. More expensive sound cards are more expensive for a reason. Those sound cards have better components and sync problem is minimized (not eliminated) resulting in smaller audio video sync problem. One can notice audio sampling rate fluctuations when capturing video in great program called virtualdub (virtualdub.org). It happens to be free.

Using sampling rates when capturing video is also important. My sound card works better using 48kHz than 44.1kHz sampling rate.

Operating System is important too. Windows 98SE (I assume the same applies to ME) is not suited well for video capture because audio video sync problems were the worst by far. Same hardware, same applications running on Windows 2000 rendered much better results. XP behaves as well as W2K. If this is just driver issue or not - this is another issue, which I cannot confirm. I am leaning though on opinion that OS made such a difference. Win98SE(ME) is not true operating system such as Linux, Unix, Windows 2000/XP/NT (computer science graduates will agree with me knowing those OS internals - I am talking about kernel here).

Solution:
Don't capture video in huge chunks. I usually record maximum 20 minutes. I stop capturing when new scene starts. I rewind a little bit before this scene and start capturing (this will result in seperate capture file).

I also prefer using NTFS file system (2000,XP), which allows me to have huge capture files (larger than 4GBs).
I compress using Huffyuv codec (almost lossless compression). It shrinks file size by 2.2 factor. Capturing 720x480 without compression will bring any HD to its knees resulting in dropped frames. Defragmenting HD is also important before capturing. I have devoted partition for video capturing. Some people have separate HD just for capturing (I cannot justify this luxury).

tripleh_2

I have the same problem as susi with sound sync. I am using XP and an ADS Videoexpress to connect the VHS to pc. I have tried smaller chunks etc but no good! So here are my questions, if I bought a VHS/DVD player, one that will dub from VHS to DVD, will I get better results? and secondly will I then be able to download from DVD to pc and edit before burning back to DVD? I know this may be a little longer winded but I have the time and want good results!

Donnie

Yes, I did this. VHS VCR to DVD Recorder. Ripped the DVD to my HDD with Magic DVD Ripper.

Maybe you can try again, but don't use the computer for anything else whilst converting. Also, kill any processes that may be using the processor unnecessarily.

tripleh_2

Donnie wrote: »

Yes, I did this. VHS VCR to DVD Recorder. Ripped the DVD to my HDD with Magic DVD Ripper.

Maybe you can try again, but don't use the computer for anything else whilst converting. Also, kill any processes that may be using the processor unnecessarily.

Donnie, I have tried all the process killing, disconnecting internet and antivirus etc etc. Do you recommend a good VHS to DVD player? Did you lose all lip sync problems?

Donnie

There were no lip synch issues.
I just used existing household machines. A Sony VCR and a Panasonic DVD recorder.

I don't have any experience with the Combo machines.