I am new to all of this so please be patient. I have searched the site but did not find a clear answer to this. I have been trying to get the video from the camera to the pc via firewire. I have captured the video using Windows Movie maker and got very poor quality with a normal file size. I then captured it using Ulead videostudio 4.0 SE basic. With Ulead I got excelent quality but the file size was enormous. An 8 minute video was 1.6GB. Is there a way to get better video with out the huge file size . Even if I compress after it is captured (I don't even know if that is possible), I would still run out of hard drive before I could capture a 1 hour tape. The captured file name says it is a AVI but its properties says " file type " is "video clip". Is there a better program I could use or is it a simple problem and I am just stupid? Thanks in advance. I am using a panasonic PV-DC252d.
You are right, it takes a lot of hard drive space. If you want decent video, my experience is to capture DV-AVI and then convert to MPEG2. It takes about 4GB of disk space for each 18 minutes of video. Also, you should be running NTFS so you don't run into the 4GB file size limitation of WIN98. If you are interested in capturing and editing video, you may have to invest in a high performance 60GB or higher disk drive.
Thanks for your help. What program do you use to convert it to mpg2 and what size file do you end up with if you start with a 4 gig avi. I am assuming that you will lose some quality, but how much? Thanks again.
A typical 2 hour DV-AVI is somewhere around 26 GB. I use VBR of 5600MPBS for 2 HR DVD. I am currently using ULead VS6. ULead has released ver. 7. They provide a free 30-day trial download of their product. I never had VS4 so I don't know its capabilities. Most of my video captures to date have been VHS conversion of my video movies (commercial) If you will be keeping the file on your hard drive, you can capture at a higher bit rate, but it will take up more disk space. The ULead programs will capture to MPEG2 on-the-fly, but the quality doesn't seem (to me at least) as good as making an AVI capture and then convert to MPEG2. If you will be converting to MPEG1 for VCD, the bit rate will be set automatically to a much slower rate and you can put about 65 minutes of video & audio on a CD-R.
You could use the Wizard function in TPMGEnc to adjust the size of your avi->mpeg2 conversion. The loss in quality will largely depend on the nature of the original video due to the statistical nature of mpeg2 encoding. You shouldn't be too dissapointed if you use an average bitrate of somewhere around 8000kbps. Rgds, jnihil.
Thanks alot. 60 minutes or so on a vcd sounds perfect. I will go and try out the wizard in tmpgenc and see how it works. Is there a tutorial for this anywhere in case I get stuck.
However, you may be unhappy with the quality of a VCD. I think the resolution is around 240 X 180. Videos are usually blocky. I prefer DVD.
thanks , that worked great. The file went from 1.6 gig to about 80megs. The quality is fine for what I am doing. I do plan on getting a dvd burner soon but untill then vcd 's will be ok. The only problem left is that I only have about 20gigs of free space left on the hard drive. Which is not enough for a long video. I guess i should get another hdd. Thanks again for all of your help. I'm sure I will have more questions and at least now I know where to go.
dont forget that most video capturing will take large amounts of space. avi usually returns the most bang for the buck- great quality for a little less space in comparison to other types. until new codecs become widely used, we all must deal with large file sizes
