capturing 8mm on PC

[rsquirell]

The DVC-150 has been good for me...but it took a lot of time to master the intricacies and work-around software solutions (the bundled MovieStar was a joke.) Now that Pinnacle has it...and bundles it with their software it might be easier. One thing on ports...I know that people who have bought the USB2 PC cards with the two slots report that if you hooked up a USB1.1 device ( ie. a printer) to one of the slots, the whole card will be recognized as a 1.1...and a USB2.0 device might not work properly. But, if all your four slots are built-ins they shouldn't be effected. If you can open your box a good capture card is probably best...Atifsh recommends a high-end Snazzi with DV as well as VHS S-Video and RCA ports. Troy has an interesting solution...but he says it only works for his high-end Sony Hi8...if you have one of those, maybe you don't need anything else. The technology changes constantly out there.

[troyy01]

Originally posted by rsquirell
Troy has an interesting solution...but he says it only works for his high-end Sony Hi8...if you have one of those, maybe you don't need anything else.

Actually, it will work with anything. The configuration that I'm using is a Sony DCR-TRV350 camcorder connected to the PC via FireWire. The camcorder can play any variation of 8mm tapes, analog or DV and capture is being done with Adobe Premiere. The camcorder will accept standard (RCA) video input or S-video input. Bottom line is that it will convert any 8mm video (analog or digital) or it can be used as a pass-through and accept input from a VCR, cable, or other video source. The capture quality is far better than any capture card or device I have ever seen and I do not have to screw with the codecs or anything to get what I want. After seeing this in action, I feel that any of the capture devices on the market are a joke because of the loss of quality and how difficult they are to use. Granted, I did pay about twice what the average capture device costs, but we're only talking from $200 to $400 or so. I guess by the time I bought the firewire card & cable, and everything else, I have about $500 in it. The way I look at it, if you have a clean source, such as hi-res 8mm or something and if you are capturing the video then having to run it through TMPGEnc or something else to clean it up, your capture device is junk. You shouldn't have to do this.

[rsquirell]

Interesting...considering my old analog Sharp cost $500 in 1995...and the Sony MiniDV's run $800, it seems like a reasonable investment. So...you say you can feed any Hi8 in through the firewire as DV...and there are 8mm tapes that will capture at 720X480?

[troyy01]

The analog 8mm tapes don't really capture anything...they are analog so you don't have a pixel resolution to go by. I think Hi8XR is something like 450 lines of resolution (horizontal scan lines). The key is that you have to get a Digital8 camcorder that is capable of playing analog 8mm tapes. For example, the Sony DCR-TRV250 will only play and record Digital8. The one I purchased, the DCR-TRV350 will play both Digital8 and analog 8mm (8mm, Hi8, Hi8XR). When you play back any (digital or analog) tapes on this camcorder, you can capture the output via firewire at 720x480. Keep in mind that the Digital8 is a higher resolution and better quality video than any of the analog 8mm tapes, but being that even the regular 8mm tapes are high resolution as it is, the video looks great, still. The USB2.0 port was what confused me to start out with. They don't really come out and state that if you want to capture DVD-quality video, you HAVE to use firewire. The USB port is really just for capturing simple stuff for the PC or to put on the web. As another example, I can feed a VHS VCR into the camcorder to capture video. VHS is something like 240 lines of resolution--very low. Broadcast cable is like 330 or close to it. Feeding the VHS video into the camcorder would allow me to capture it at 720x480 as pass-through, however, being the VHS quality sucks, my final output to DVD would suck just as bad, but no worse than the source. Clear as mud?

Capturing 8mm video (analog or DV) by firewire gets the best result, by far. I am a pretty much a quality freak when it comes to my video, especially with sound. If there is any quality loss, I can't tell. Capturing it with a PC capture device is absolutely NOT the way to do it if you want to maintain quality. The capture devices on the market are a joke compared to this.

[rsquirell]

I agree...you don't capture DV thru a capture device...even though the DVC-150 claims to be 720X480 the input ports are expecting VHS (356X240) and will automatically convert input to that. Firewire is the only way to go with true DV...and any editing software package will recognize the camera and capture it. So...if the original poster has your camera, she should first try your method and see if she (or anyone else with a Hi8 out there) can do a firewire capture and duplicate your results.

[jscompton]

I don't have a digital video camera, but have a neighbor that does. I will ask to borrow it before investing any money in a new camera. A friend of mine has been successful at converting his camcorder tapes via firewire, so I assume his camera is of the digital type.

I have a 1394 connection already installed on the front of my PC, do I need to do anything further to my computer, or is everthing now for me, pretty much external?

Do you both suggest this Adobe Premiere as a capturing/authoring program? I don't really need any editing capabilities, so will this program be overkill?

[troyy01]

Originally posted by jscompton
I don't have a digital video camera, but have a neighbor that does. I will ask to borrow it before investing any money in a new camera. A friend of mine has been successful at converting his camcorder tapes via firewire, so I assume his camera is of the digital type.

I have a 1394 connection already installed on the front of my PC, do I need to do anything further to my computer, or is everthing now for me, pretty much external?

Do you both suggest this Adobe Premiere as a capturing/authoring program? I don't really need any editing capabilities, so will this program be overkill?

Make sure the camera is capable of playing analog tapes. As I said, some digital camcorders can and some can't. There are also two types of plugs for the 1394 connection--what I would call "standard" is about the size of a USB connection, except a little thicker. The smaller type is usually on laptops, but I think I've seen it on PCs before, as well. Make sure you have the right cable. I have also heard that the cable quality matters, but I think as long as you arent' using a really long firewire cable or something extremely cheap, you'll be ok. I'd be interested in finding out of all digital camcorders that will play analog tapes can capture like this.

I use Adobe Premiere to capture and edit the video, then I use the full version of Roxio CD/DVD Creator 6 to burn the DVD's. I am not doing any heavy-duty editing, yet--mainly just cutting and splicing. Many have said to use Nero to burn with, but I have not had any experience with it, nor have I had any bad experiences with Roxio. As crazy as this crap is, you don't fix what isn't broken. The main thing to watch for with the authoring/burning software is that most of them don't play well together--only install one. I accidentally installed MyDVD once that came with a Dazzle and it hosed my PC because I had Roxio installed already.

Finally, if you do end up doing some editing, the producing of the final cut is very intensive. My workstation is a P4-3.0GHz 800MHz FSB, 1GB DDR400 RAM, 73GB 10,000rpm SCSI drive and I pretty much let it do its thing and walk away. In the future I'll probably move to a dual Xeon for this and see what it does.

[rsquirell]

You won't need anything but a good editing package and a firewire. Premiere captures AVI (huge file size...12+ gigs for an hour of video)...ULead Video Studio 7 captures DV in MPEG2 at 720X480 rez ( 2-4 gigs for an hour of video.) If you don't have an editor you can download VirtualDub freeware from this site.

[troyy01]

My understanding is that if you are doing any editing, you are better off using the AVI's then convert to MPG. But, if you are not going to do heaving editing, then you can go straight to MPG. Since I am getting more into the editing aspect, I'm sticking with the AVIs, especially since hard drive space is almost free anymore.

When I author the DVD, I drop the AVIs in and Roxio does all the MPG conversion for me at burn time.

[atifsh]

Originally posted by troyy01
My understanding is that if you are doing any editing, you are better off using the AVI's then convert.

not anymore, atleast i dont, more an more software are coming with somkinda smart video rendring, saving the orignal quality.

example;
power director, video studio

[rsquirell]

Video Studio 7 is amazing...and it costs 1/5 less than Premiere. And it works with Dazzle capture...had you used it you might have gotten that DCS-200 to work.

[troyy01]

Originally posted by atifsh
not anymore, atleast i dont, more an more software are coming with somkinda smart video rendring, saving the orignal quality.

I'm not sure...the folks that write the articles at dvdrhelp.com and lordsmurf.com seem to know their stuff pretty well. Here is one article on the topic.

http://www.lordsmurf.com/capture/avivsmpeg.htm

[troyy01]

Here is another article I found the describes the exact same processes that I am using:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvanalog#why

[rsquirell]

Read the article carefully. I agree that this is an excellent solution to the capture problem...but even if you can "pass-thru" from the VCR or capture an 8mm tape as DV thru the firewire...since the original tape is VHS at 352 or 356X240, that's the limitation and highest resolution you'll be able to achieve. In fact, the only DV that you'll be able to pass thru as DV resolution (720X480) will be your home videos. Now, if you're making commercial or quality home videos, perhaps the expense of a DV camera is worth it...but for VHS capture...it is twice as expensive (albeit twice as easy). My question is this: since the camera can be used as a pass-thru device can it record directly from the TV ports ( since I've got an HDTV) and use the notebook like a VCR to capture commercial programs as DV at 720X480. I'm going to check and see if there's a firewire port on the TV...does the camera have input and output firewire ports? I'm afraid that since RCA composite and S-Video ports were designed for VHS, anything going thru those ports has to be converted to VHS Rez.

[troyy01]

You need to realize that there are two aspects going on here. Resolution is not the same as quality. I can put any crappy signal in and tell it to capture at 720x480. The resolution is merely the size of the video and has little to do with quality, although if you make a low resolution video larger than it should be, you'll lose some quality, but that is resizing, which affects quality. As an example, a digital picture on a PC can be 800x600, but the quality will be determined by the DPI. The RCA and s-video ports were not "designed for VHS". They are designed for NTSC. S-VHS, Hi-8, and other technologies use the s-video input to gain more clarity in the video. S-video does not mean S-VHS. If you play back any of these sources, you will get a much clearer picture by using the S-video plug rather than a composite video, but that is not because S-video is higher resolution than the composite. It is because S-video separates the chrominance and luminance signals (brightness and contrast). The gain is similar to the difference between coax and composite video/audio cables. Anytime you separate different signals, you will gain clarity, but it doesn't mean that the source is playing at a higher resolution. By using a digital camcorder in pass-through mode, you are ensuring that the quality of the source is maintained. Look at it this way, composite and S-video signals are the highest level of output you can get out of an analog device. Why would you lose any quality by using them to record on a camcorder via pass-through versus using them on a capture device? Your concern doesn't make sense. The only difference is that the camcorder solution will do a better job.

The point is that capturing video this way is cleaner than with a capture device--there is no argument to it. If a capture device degrades quality on a hi-res source like it does with 8mm/Hi8, then it also degrades quality on low-res sources, as well. I would rather capture video this way and not degrade my already poor quality VHS source. I GUARANTEE that capturing video this way will always yield a better result than with a capture device. Keeping in mind that the output QUALITY can only be as good as the source. The fact that you have to use things like TMPGEnc to bring the video quality back (rather, hide the problems) tells me that there is a significant loss. Capturing video this way ensures that there is minimal or no loss during the capture process. And yes, as long as your TV has outputs, you can capture it with the camera's pass-through function via firewire.

Twice as expensive? Yes. Twice as good? Probably double that, even. Not to mention that by the time I fought with the Dazzle for three months, wasted hours of time, etc. My time is much more valuable than that. Had I known at the outset that this was the best solution, I'd have dished out the $400-500 three months ago. Quality is very important to me and video capture to me is not a gimmick, which is what these manufacturers have made it out to be by selling this POS devices and making consumers think they are the way to go. Another point to make--all of the professional video companies out there that do this stuff for a living all use this technique, from what I have gathered.