Capturing analog video with compression on-the-fly

[Hotmagus]

I have to capture 30 min of video from a Hi8 PAL camera to my HDD to make some editing and finally burn it on CD. It is for a friend who needs this done today...

I have P4@1500, 256 of ram, GeForce3.

I have several problems capturing this. I'm capturing via the S-Video IN of my GeForce3. The main problem is that, if I try to capture with WMovieMaker, it will only allow me to capture in 320x240, then it looks fine and not-choppy. But if I try to capture at 640x480 it looks real bad, like each motion in movie leaved a trail. I don't know why this happens, if I capture 1min or so it looks fine even at that resolution, but trying to capture the whole thing always end up in looking terrible (maybe its a matter of memory?).

Anyway, I don't like the way WMM does things, so I've tried some other programs to capture this, with no luck at all. Premiere doesn't even recognise capture drivers, if I try to capture with VirtualDub size of the final video file is HUGE!! and I don't have that much disk space. Let's say 1 min of video from VirtualDub at 720x576-15fps, audio at 22khz-16bits-mono costs about 400MB, and if I play it back, all I see are some big colored squares moving around.

I am looking for a capture program that allows me to compress video/audio on-the-fly at a resolution better than 320x240 (is this possible?). I'm downloading a trial of UleadVS7, hope it will get me somewhere...

I will be thankful to anyone helping on this... I need this video captured today, help please

[setarip]

"if I try to capture with VirtualDub size of the final video file is HUGE!!"


Your machine should be fast enough to capture (without too many, if any, dropped frames) using the DivX 3.11alpha (or similar) video codec - which will yield a significantly smaller filesize...

[Hotmagus]

I finally had to do it in 320x240, it looks fine though.

I tried to look for any compression in VirtualDub but didn't see the usual long list I get if I try with other programs, how do you select them in VirtualDub? Do I have to install any external plugin?

Thanks anyway, the video is already done and ready to burn, but I'll have your advises in mind for future capturing.

[rsquirell]

You never tried VS7? It'll convert DV to MPEG on the fly, and if it recognizes your AVI capture card it should be able to do the same with it. MPEG is not just smaller than AVI...it's 1/3 to 1/4 the size.

[Hotmagus]

VS7 crashes while capturing saying something about low space...

[rsquirell]

If it crashes due to low disc space (and you got the AVI using the other method onto the same disc) then obviously it wasn't being converted to MPEG...and the AVI you were capturing was at a higher resolution/bitrate setting. Now that you have time you might explore the settings area and find what you need to do to make the conversion for future captures.

[Hotmagus]

yeah, I think I better make some room for working with it, I can't try it right now, as I don't have any video-camera myself, but I'll try with MPEG next time. Thanks for the advise.