From what I have been reading on this subject it recommends 352x480 for good quality and 720x480 for excellent quality. I am using a Canopus ADVC-300 connected via Firewire and capturing in PInnacle Studio 8 (for the moment). Under analogue source it only offers DV Camcorder as an option, not Analogue video, and the resolutions it offers to capture for DVD are 352x476, 480x576 and 720x576. Thats it. It also only offer MPEG capture, not AVI. Is this because I am connected via Firewire and my PC thinks it a digital signal coming in, not analogue? Will they still play on a TV right at these resolutions without any black border? And also, what about quality? capturnig at the recommended quality that PS8 suggests for DVD production I am only going to get about 1hr of footage onto a DVD disc. Any suggestions?
352+480 and 720+480 are NTSC resolutions and 352+576 and 720+576 are Pal resolutions so if you are In North America then you have to use the NTSC resolutions and if you are in Europe you must use the Pal resolutions...If you PM me with your E-mail address I will send you a Simple tool for Captureing DV AVI from Your capture Device and then you can try useing a Standalone encoder to encode the File so you can check out the Quality..Your Device Natively Produces DV AVI files and DV stands for "Digital Video" so a Digital Capture device produces DV AVI files which is the Only Video format that can be Transfered through a Firewire cable so what PS8 is doing is treating your DV Capture Device as an Analogue device and Further Compressing the Video signal to Mpeg2 format on the fly...If you were useing an analogue device it would Produce the Same Mpeg files which totally defeats the whole Purpose of haveing a Digital Capture device... In your devices Native Format it will only Create files that are 720+480 for NTSC or 720+576 for Pal which is the Proper and Most common resolutions used for DVD Creation..... So PM me and I"ll send you that DV Capture Tool, You should also have a DV Codec installed so you can Playback the Captured files, If you don"t have one I can also send you one of those...Cheers
HI EVERGLADES. i am a professional videographer, and as part of my work i do a lot of vhs conversions to dv tape and to pc. i will give u a simple run down of how i do this work and u can try it yourself. firstly, u have to bare in mind, i do this for a living ok, and i keep copies of everything i do and store them in an archive in my safe. 1. i transfer all vhs analog tapes onto mini dv tapes first by connecting my analog vhs player to my mx500 dv camcorder using s-video cable (these mini dv tapes are then given to my clients as a replacement "hard copy" of the videos to replace the older vhs tapes, which reduces storage space) 2. i then capture the new video from the dv tape onto my pc (via firewire) using a program called sonic MyDVD, which automatically captures the dv image in high quality 720x576 mpeg2 (pal) format. 3. i then import the mpeg2 video to arcsoft SHOWBIZ (basic editing) or adobe PREMIER 6.5 (top class editing) do any editing to the video, then save it back to my project folder on my h/drive. 4. i then use sonic MyDVD again to create the final dvd project ready to burn to ritek G04 dvd-r disc. MyDVD is also the dvd burning program i use as well, this is a great program for auto capture to mpeg2 and saves having to capture your vids in avi, then have to re-encode to mpeg2 b4 burning to a dvd. you have to convert any video file to mpeg2 b4 u burn to dvd, so why people on here tell u to capture in dv (avi) format i never understand, cos then u need to recode it anyway. this way u only need 1 program to capture in mpeg2, and create/burn your finished project. top quality mpeg2 720x576 pal, or 720x480 ntsc will give u 65 minutes maximum of excellent quality video on a dvd-r disc. good quality mpeg2 352x576 pal or 352x480 ntsc will give u up to about 130 minutes of reasonable quality video. u also need to understand that vhs quality (compared to dvd) is only referred to as "good quality" image, and the image u get from your original vhs tapes will only be at best, as good as the original vhs image, your not going to get dvd quality from analog video, although i have some outside footage from vhs tape on dvd now and the image looks better, could be because i transfer to dv tape first. if you really want to transfer your analog tapes to dvd and want to keep the original vhs quality, u really need to capture in the highest resolution i mentioned b4, but u will only get 65 min max of video on the dvd. i never capture any vhs video less than top quality, its not worth losing all that quality for the sake of having to put a 2 hr video on 2 dvd discs, the image quality has to be the main criteria in preserving the quality of your videos. thats it for me, if u want a sinple, quick and easy solution, this is how i do it, but remember also that u should never throw the original video source (like my dv tapes) away, if something happens to your dvd you still got thehard copy, plus the original captured mpeg2 video file on your pc or backed up on a dvd somewhere, like i do. good luck.....GLEN
BTW, if u dont have a dv camcorder to transfer your vhs tapes onto, and you just want to capture direct to pc, im not sure what program or software to reccomend to u, ive never done it that way b4, and i have never used a capture card. my pc mobo runs dual onboard firewire (one for my dv camcorder and the other for running my 250gb ext storage drive (known as my file archive) as i dont ever keep any finished work on my computer drives. someone else might have some ideas for u.....GLEN
