video black bars

[faviankoh]

hi guys i am having a bit of a problem here, hope u pple who are more experienced can help me.

i am currently using a snazzi 3 pci capture card to record tv programs to my computer. the captured videos seem to have a thin black bars surrounding the image, i wonder if all capture cards produce the same type of video as this? the source display on my television seems to be full screen without any black bars,but why is it that my recorded video surrounded by black bars?

would it be ok for me to just simply crop this black bars and only retain the moving pictures? is there any program that will auto detect and crop away these black bars while encoding?

[GeneralLeoFF]

Yes just crop them off. Those black bars are there alot of the time time even on the original TV brodcast. Just the TV has something called "overscanning" to hide them from view (on a TV you dont see 100% of the image). Sometimes there will be noise on the top of the screen that is caused by the VBI data (brodcasted subtitles) to. Thi is also hiding in the overscan.

Your capture cardor software just seemsto be able to capture the full avalible image. VirtualDub should be able to crop the videos you already captured and I think it is able to adjust overscaning so you wont capture it that way anymore.

[rsquirell]

The black bars are normal. Additionally you might see a moving bead of black/white noise lines running accross the top (caused by closed captioning) and bottom (caused by the angle VCR heads are to each other...push excess noise into this region.) The good news is that the TV "overscreens" the edges and won't be seen if DVD played in a stand-alone player. They will be seen on your PC, however, and a TV connected to your PC. You can trim them off, if you want, in TMPGenc (go to "settings">>"advanced">>"clip frame").

[GeneralLeoFF]

haha. you musta been typing when I posted

[rsquirell]

LOL...happens all the time...good answer.

[faviankoh]

so in other words even the most high end capture cards and capture programs will still capture video with those black bars as part of the image?

virtualdub can capture as well also? and able to adjust overscanning? i am stuck to my snazzi 3 capture program called movie mill and i think it sucks.

since i couldn't use other programs for capturing, i am trying to find a program to crop away those unwanted portions of my video. my videos are captured in mpeg2 and tmpgenc only has limited 30 day trial for mpeg2. and for some reason i am unable to open those video files for editing. probably is the absence of the mpeg2 codec.

is ulead video studio 7 able to crop away those black bars too? virtualdub can edit mpeg2 video files also?

[setarip]

"virtualdub can edit mpeg2 video files also?"

No - The output from standard VirtualDub and ALL of its variants is ONLY .AVI...

(VirtualDubMOD will accept MPEG2 for input, but output will still be .AVI)

[rsquirell]

TMPGenc is the cheapest program I know (under $500) that will crop a video for you...but it doesn't like LPCM audio. If your Snazzi is anything like Dazzle (and I suspect it is, since it was originally developed by the same company) it captures in LPCM audio. Never fear. In TMPGenc go to File>>MPEG Tools>>Demultiplex...and load your capture in. Double click video stream and save it as m2v...and double click audio stream and save it as .wav. Then in the main screen of TMPGenc click Ctrl N to clear the screen, load the .wav into the audio source window and click "Start" and it will be converted to an .mp2 . Then click Ctrl N again...load m2v into video source and the converted mp2 into audio...go to "settings">>"advanced">>"clip frame" and trim it up. PS...if you do all this and the results are pixcelated post again...I have to shave the first few kilobytes off to eliminate the video headersto keep dazzle capture from pixcelating. You could run the capture through ULead VS7...it accepts LPCM and TMPGenc will take MPEGs made by it.

[rsquirell]

Oh yeah...don't forget to "Load" the DVD Template for NTSC or PAL...and just process enough to run past an area of lip movement , stop and check it to make sure it's in synch. Inform us of your progress and we'll try to walk you through.