Hey everyone, everytime I've tried moving videos from a digital camera to my computer the quality is very poor. Hopefully if I use a good ole fashioned VHS camcorder the quality might improve. Though I have no idea where to begin. My question is what ALL do I need to move videos from a vhs camcorder or vcr to my computer? Is there some type of adapter I need to buy or will I have to get a special video card and some other stuff. Please tell me everything I'll need. Thanks! P.S. I will also need to know how to get the audio off of the VHS if that is possible as well.
Well what you need is a Video Capture Card , There are many different types and they can run from $30 to $5,000 depending on the Features you want and the Quality they Produce.... If you want something Basic and Inexpensive then you can Just get a Plain TV Card which are Under $75, you can check out this site for info on TV Cards: http://www.tv-cards.com/ Try to go for a Card that has a 10bit Decoder Chip and stay away from USB capture devices cuz most are pretty bad.... If you want something that Produces Broadcast quality captures then a Analogue/Digital Converter would be the best Bet, Something like the "Canopus ADVC-100" or the "Canopus ACEDVio" these devices Convert the Incomeing Analogue Signal to Digital DV AVI useing a hardware DV Encoder Chip, these devices Produce Very Good Quality captures and use verry little CPU power.. These devices are usually either an External Device that hooks up to your PC via a Firewire Port Like the "Canopus ADVC-100" or one like the "Canopus ACEDVio" is an internal Device that goes into a PCI Slot in your PC the same as the TV Cards do... These devices run between $175 to $250 Aprox.... Well good Luck....Cheers PS: all of these devices also capture the audio allong with the Video into the same File..You will also need a Lot of Drive space as Video files can Take up HUGE amounts of Drive Space....
i have an add on to this question...i have a notebook how do i get the card in? and the video and when you say huge how big is that space i have 80 gig p4 3.06ht 512 memory fx 5200 video and whatever else is relevent i dont know please help me too
Laptops aren"t really Ideal for Video Capture cuz For one thing you can not add a PCI card to your Laptop so you can"t use a PCI capture Card so you would have to get a USB Device which in Most Cases Suck unless you are willing to spend $400 on a High end USB 2.0 Hardware encoder Like the "Canopus MpegPro" or you would have to get something like the "Canopus ADVC-100" which uses a Firewire Port..... If you get a hardware Mpeg encoder Like the MpegPro you really don"t need a very large Drive because Mpeg is a very compressed Format and doesn"t take up a Lot of Space, but if you were useing something like the Canopus ADVC-100 you would need a Lot of Space, about 4gb per 15 minutes of Video and you might have to use a seperate drive than the Drive your OS is installed on because your Drive might not be able to write the Video information to the Drive while reading from the Drive at the same time which would result in Dropped Frames....... Cheers
Whoa! I had no idea. Well, say I wanted to put the video onto a DVD or CD-RW when I was done editing it and all. Is there anyway I could compress without losing too much quality? Thanks.
If you had a Hardware Mpeg encoder Like the MpegPro then you do not have to convert the Files at all because Mpeg is the Format used to create DVD"s so there is No quality Loss accept for the Quality loss through the Initial Compression..... A device Like the ADVC-100 captures to DV AVI format which is the same format used by Digital Camcorders ,This format is the best and easiest to edit and you would just use your Editing program to export the Edited Files to Mpeg2 for DVD or you can use a Standalone Encoder to encode the Files to Mpeg2 and then you would just use a DVD Authoring Program to Put the Mpeg2 file on a DVD.... There is not a lot of Quality loss if you Just compress the Files to Mpeg once but every time you compress it you loose more and More Quality....
