problem with capturing

[troyy01]

Originally posted by kno
"Do there appear to be "ghost images" trailing?

Are there lots of small horizontal lines

Or does the motion appear to be "choppy" and "staggering"?"

Maybe choppy and staggering is the closest descruption. Plus, I would add it is very, very interlaced, or to say, it looks like it is very interlaced...

I had lots of small horizontal lines around bright objects like the windows with the sun glare coming through. Other parts just had a strange jitter.

I am attributing the problem I seen to trying to capture hi-res stuff with MovieMaker. When I did the same video using Premiere, it worked fine.

[kno]

But, can I capture directly to MPEG with Premiere??

[rsquirell]

Premiere captures in AVI. If , as you say, the DVD plays fine on the PC, I would think the problem is coming from the stand-alone players. Perhaps it needs cleaning (even though commercial DVDs playing fine) in order for it to play a homemade DVD. When was the last time it was cleaned. VCR's are the same way. Commercial VHS's play fine well beyond the point where it needs to be cleaned for some of those older VHS tapes you made to play without the jitters. Try a DVD cleaning disc.

[troyy01]

Originally posted by rsquirell
Premiere captures in AVI. If , as you say, the DVD plays fine on the PC, I would think the problem is coming from the stand-alone players. Perhaps it needs cleaning (even though commercial DVDs playing fine) in order for it to play a homemade DVD. When was the last time it was cleaned. VCR's are the same way. Commercial VHS's play fine well beyond the point where it needs to be cleaned for some of those older VHS tapes you made to play without the jitters. Try a DVD cleaning disc.

My problem is related to capturing DV AVI with MovieMaker. When I did it with Premiere it worked fine. Same video, same tape, same PC, same authoring software. The only difference was that the problem occurred when the capture was done through MovieMaker. I didn't even edit/splice in MovieMaker, I did it both times through Premiere. The DVD appears to play fine on a PC because of the way the software renders the output to the monitor via the software player. The PC only appears to play the video fine--the problem is just masked. A DVD player is all hardware that outputs an analog signal from a digital source, so there is no enhancement or altering of the output.

DVD/CD players rarely need cleaning, unless they are in a dirty environment. Dirt on the lense will not degrade playback, it will cause the DVD/CD to skip, freeze frames, or not play at all. Dirt on a VCR head causes a different effect because the tape is (1) analog and (2) the tape actually touches the head, causing it to physically play like the VCR head is a rough surface rather than perfectly smooth. Dirt can also be transferred from bad or dirty tapes to the VCR head. It's almost impossible for a DVD/CD to get dirt on the laser lense because it does not touch.

[rsquirell]

I never was impressed with MovieMaker...or MyDVD. Don't know much about ULead DVD Factory, except that it's been around for a while (read: old). ULead Video Studio 7 does everything from capture in MPEG2, edit, prep and burn. I've had no problems (and have heard of no complaints from other users)...you can check out the trial version for free for 30 days. Cleaning only costs $10...and might be worth the effort...especially if the DVD Players are old and had a lot of use.

[troyy01]

I was just giving MovieMaker a shot as far as capturing to see how it worked--apparently, not too good! I installed MyDVD twice (second time by accident) and it really hoses up a system that has Roxio on it. I downloaded the eval for ULead VS7 and it will not run. For several technical reasons, I do not have a C: drive. My core system drive is F:. There is apparently some component of VS7 that requires you to have a C: drive as a hard drive, which is incredibly weak that any company would write software hard-coded to look for a particular drive letter. The error says "Drive C: must be a hard drive for Softwrap to correctly register." I might drop tech support an email and see what they say. I have a feeling they said it in that dialog box :~)

[rsquirell]

I believe it needs to be on C because windows is installed on C...but you can redirect capture files to any drive you want. I know that MovieStar 5 was fickle about being on C, too. I managed to install it on F once...but strange things would happen when I tried to use it...and MS5 was pretty squirrely , even when on C.

[troyy01]

Originally posted by rsquirell
I believe it needs to be on C because windows is installed on C...but you can redirect capture files to any drive you want. I know that MovieStar 5 was fickle about being on C, too. I managed to install it on F once...but strange things would happen when I tried to use it...and MS5 was pretty squirrely , even when on C.

Windows is only installed on C: if that is where you put it. I'm using a SCSI drive simply because of the performance benefits and it labeled it as F: when I installed Windows. WHERE Windows, or any other software, is installed should never matter if the software is developed correctly. Windows uses variables to recognize things like %systemdrive% and %windir% to know where things are at. For example, it would view some of the Windows components that are installed to "F:\Program Files" as "%systemdrive%\Program Files".

At any rate, I stuck an old IDE drive in the system and set it up as C: just so that VS7 would run. Apparently this "Softwrap" thing is the Trial Version/Key Code thing they use. It just needed to see a C: drive to start up the first time, I'm guessing. Anyway, VS7 is not very impressive if you ask me. The interface looks horrible--very, VERY basic...almost like something you'd expect to see in a software game for a child or something. It just doesn't appeal to me after using Premiere. I'd relate it to using Photoshop--once someone really learns Photoshop to do graphics work, they rarely ever try to go back to something simpler. I can see where VS7 might be nice for doing some basic things, It's just not for me. I think that maybe the ULead MediaStudio Pro might be more in line for what I want and need. I might give it a look sometime.

[rsquirell]

Yes...I heard good things about MediaStudio...including its capability to trim the artifacts out of the margins of the frame so you won't have those bars on the sides, or lines across the top or bottom of the screen. I tried a 30 day trial of Photoshop and found it to be very complex...even when doing simple tasks. I got lost in the vectors when trying to cut out an irregular section of the photo. I tried ULead PhotoImpact, and with its scapel tool..snip, snip, it was done. And when I saw the Photoshop pricetag of $500...well, I let it go. I have a scad of A/V software, each of which has its own idiosyncracies, each of which has a specific purpose in the overall process...and for a non-technical person, like myself, to have to spend weeks trying to master even simple tasks in a delux editor is time wasted when there's a simple, cheap solution at your fingertips.

[troyy01]

Yes, if you only ever need very simply results, then you can use things that provide very simple solutions. The more I did in recent years, the less those solutions met my needs. Photoshop and Premiere are some of the harder applications I have had to learn, and I've been in technology for 10+ years. However, once I bit the bullet and started using the, man, has it been ever hard to use anything else. I do some minor web development and the video stuff is for home movies. I just can't say enough about the Adobe stuff's capabilities. Premiere does all the fancy stuff. I just did one that had a couple of static lines across the bottom. When I rendered the final cut, I simply told it to remove the bottom 5 pixels and rescale to 720x480. It takes a long time to render stuff like that, but it makes for a very nice final product. I recently upgraded my PC to a P4-3.0GHz, 1GB RAM, and a 10,000rpm SCSI hard drive for this stuff and it still taxes the system a little. I think I might move up to a dual Xeon in about a year.

[sfheath]

Originally posted by troyy01
DVD/CD players rarely need cleaning, unless they are in a dirty environment.

I shouldn't let my fiancee hear you say that!

Having had to dismantle her hifi twice now to clean the lens I've put it down to her liberal use of an aerosol cleaner!

Interesting to hear of this drive dependency malarky.
Microsoft's Cinemania (version 1) would only install if the CD drive was D:

[troyy01]

Originally posted by sfheath

Having had to dismantle her hifi twice now to clean the lens I've put it down to her liberal use of an aerosol cleaner!

You missed part of it - "unless they are in a dirty environment"

[rsquirell]

Or a "clean" environment that has been dusted with pledge a little too much, hehe. Troy...I take my hat off to anyone who's mastered Photoshop. There seem to be tutorial sites all over the web and usenet. Those Adobe products are complicated as heck.

[troyy01]

Originally posted by rsquirell
Or a "clean" environment that has been dusted with pledge a little too much, hehe. Troy...I take my hat off to anyone who's mastered Photoshop. There seem to be tutorial sites all over the web and usenet. Those Adobe products are complicated as heck.

The key thing that I did was take a Photoshop file that someone had dressed up and I messed with all the settings to see how they did what they did. After that, it was pretty simple. I used Paint Shop Pro for a long time because it does a lot of things really well and really easy. But then, like I said, I learned PS and never went back...

[setarip]

To kno

"Maybe choppy and staggering is the closest descruption. Plus, I would add it is very, very interlaced, or to say, it looks like it is very interlaced..."

Load the file into "TMPGEnc" (Different than "TMPGEnc DVD Author")

Click on the "Advanced" tab

Put a checkmark next to "Deinterlace"

Doubleclick on the word "Deinterlace and select "Even field adaptation"

Click on "Okay" to return to main window

Save with a new filename