Hi everyone, Recently bought a DVDR and WinFast 2000XP Expert to copy the old home movies onto DVD. I am having two major problems doing this. Firstly I cant capture good video. The WinFast PVR untility provides jerky video capture on any setting. The only capture app that works is Sonic MyDVD in 'good' quality mode (as opposed to better, best) - but the video quality is very grainy and pretty hopeless. I have tried it capturing on a P4 1.6Ghz and a Celeron 2GHz both with 256Mb RAM - is this just a case of not having enough computing grunt? Second problem involves encoding. We can get a decent looking capture through my brother's macintosh by indirectly feeding the VCR through our sony handicam and then into his mac's firewire plug (doing it realtime through the camcorder). The result is a nice huge DV capture file. It seems that I can only capture an hours worth of footage on DVD that is the same quality as simply playing the VHS tape on the television - I can manage to fit 3 hours on a DVD but the quality is shocking! Is this right??? Only a hour of same quality footage on DVD? Thanks, Dave.
The DV Cam Via Firewire will produce as good or Probably better quality than your TV Card so why don"t you do that But on your PC??? Captureing to Mpeg useing Software Compression Like you are Doing uses a Lot Of CPU Power, On my 2.53ghz P-4 (Overclocked to 2.8ghz) Just is able to capture Full resolution Mpeg2 at the Highest quality setting without Dropping Frames(that is what causes the Jumpy Playback)...Try Captureing to Low Compression AVI useing the HuffyUV Codec and then encode that File to Mpeg for VCD/SVCD/DVD, this will Produce much better Quality because Standalone Software encoder (Well the Good Ones) Are much More efficient at mpeg encodeing than Capture programs are......
Thanks for the reply Minion. We bought the TV capture card before my brother had the brainstorm that he could actually capture it through the camcorder and his Mac's firewire port. My PC doesnt have any firewire. I think this is probably what we'll use because so far it appears to capture nice smooth video and with DV compression I think we can easily fit a 3 hour recording on his harddisk for about 18gig. Any suggestions as to a good (easy to use) mpeg2 encoder for the PC once we've captured the video in DV format? Also, are their any decent freeware straight mpeg2 -> burn dvd converters out there? Thanks again, Dave.
Well You are going to need more than Just a Mpeg2 encoder, You are also Going to need a DVD authoring program because you don"t Just Burn Mpeg2 files to DVD they have to be authored with the Chapters and menu"s to DVD, and Make sure that you are Captureing to DV Type 2 because Most Mpeg encoder do not support encodeing of Type 1 DV Files...There are No freeware Good Quality mpeg2 encoders, the Closest you will get is Tmpgenc which is free for 30 days for Mpeg2 and Mpeg1 is free forever, there Is also a dvd authoring program made by the same company called "Tmpgenc DVD Author" which is easy to use, These will be your Cheapest Ones that will do the Job..There are only about 4 Mpeg encoders that are worth useing for the PC and none for the Mac and Tmpgenc is the cheapest one..The Mpeg2 encoder I use retails for $2000 and is the fastest and Highest Quality encoder available but id not Practical for most poeple as it is Quite complicated to use....Cheers
