capturing 8mm on PC

[dkopp1961]

I tried the digital passthrough on my Sony TRV38 and had a problem, I could see the video on all devices, including the capture program, (Sony's Screenblast Movie Studio), but when I tried to capture the 8mm analog source, the capture program tried to take control of the TRV38. Is there a way to turn this off in the software? Maybe the software sucks. I have heard good things about Pinnacle 8, I have just ordered Adobe Premier for $50.00 at buys.com probably a scam, I will post again if it turns out to be for real, suppose to be bundled software.

Yes I am a newbie!

[troyy01]

Originally posted by dkopp1961
I tried the digital passthrough on my Sony TRV38 and had a problem, I could see the video on all devices, including the capture program, (Sony's Screenblast Movie Studio), but when I tried to capture the 8mm analog source, the capture program tried to take control of the TRV38. Is there a way to turn this off in the software? Maybe the software sucks. I have heard good things about Pinnacle 8, I have just ordered Adobe Premier for $50.00 at buys.com probably a scam, I will post again if it turns out to be for real, suppose to be bundled software.

Yes I am a newbie!

Typically, you would want to control the camcorder with the software, just for ease of use. Adobe Premiere and Windows MovieMaker can do the same thing. You can turn this off in Adobe Premiere, not sure about the others. I had some quality issues with Windows MovieMaker when capturing hi-res video.

[dkopp1961]

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I will wait for the Adobe Premier to arrive, hopefully this will be for real.
I have heard that Nero 6 is the best software to then burn with, is this true? Is it because it burns to the MPEG4 format? My biggest concern is being able to get 2 hours of analog 8mm on one DVD disc. I am sure this is possible, but I also am a quality freak and do not want to lose any resolution. The best result I have had so far is to burn straight from the TRV38 into Sonics MYDVD at the best quality setting. The problem is that it only produces one hour of video on one DVD disc.

Once again, thank you for your time.
You really seem to know what you are talking about.

Dave

[troyy01]

It's really a quality vs. space issue. Sometimes you can capture the video at hi-res, then reprocess it and lower the bitrate to about 4000-5000kbps and get decent quality and the extra space to find the happy median, but I feel that keeping the bitrate up is worth the extra space. It also depends on who I'm doing the video for, as well. If I'm doing it for a family member, they are all idiots when it comes to this stuff anyway, so I can drop it down and get the extra space. Most of them can't tell the difference between VHS and DVD quality

[rsquirell]

In addition to lower bitrate capture (which will give you the most significant size reduction)...you should be able to get MyDVD to build the DVD files and stop short of burning. You can then import those DVD files into DVDShrink and get smaller files without quality loss. You may ,also, want to look at the size of the audio file and consider converting it ( if the audio file is LPCM a conversion to .mp2 can reduce the overall file size by 1/3 with no reduction of video quality.)