hi there, i've searched the forums and have learned a lot, but want to get some tips on converting from vhs to dvd. i have the following: - Mitsubishi HS-U82 S-VHS VCR - Sony DCR-TRV103 Digital 8 camcorder (w/ S-Video and Composite inputs/outputs, DV in/out) - Belkin Firewire card - AMD Athlon 1700+ (overclocked to 2.2Ghz) - 512 MB ram - Windows XP Pro - dedicated 120 gig Seagate 7200rpm ata100 HD (NTFS) - installed the HuffyUV codec - Ultra DMA mode 2 enabled - have the folowing software capture programs: Sonic MyDVD, Arcsoft Showbiz, Adobe Premiere 5.0 so, my questions are: what is my best software choice for capturing? is there something better that i can download? i have been able to capture with Showbiz and Sonic but the picture is not showing up in premiere when i try to capture, am i missing something here? is there anything i need to do to make sure the huffy codec is the one that is being used during capture? like some kind of setting within the software program? i understand i need to capture in DV AVI 720x480, but have gotten different results with showbiz vs. sonic in regards to file size per minute of captured video. basically i'm looking for instructions based on my setup to get the best quality results. i want to make sure i have everything set properly. i don't really want to have to redo everything if i don't have it right the first time. thanks in advance for any help, rasta
OK..If you are useing your Digital 8 Camera to Capture from your VCR through firewire you will not be useing a Capture Codec or an analogue Capture program Because the Digital 8 Camera Converts the analogue Signal to DV so the Video will allready be compressed to DV AVI... You will need to have a Type 2 DV codec installed and you will need a Program that is for captureing DV From firewire, Something Like "Scenalyzer Live" or "WinDV" You can also use Adobe Premier... If you want a good free Type DV Codec do a Google search for the Panasonic DV Codec or the Sony DV Codec.... So basicly what you should do is use Adobe Premier to capture your Video to Type 2 DV AVI and then you can use Premier to edit your File and then you can either render your Edited project as a DV AVI file or useing the HuffYUV Codec which might even be better, and then you should use a Standalone Mpeg encoder to encode the Rendered file and not Sonic ,or if you had one of the Good Mpeg encoder Premier plugins then you could use that which would save a lot of time but I don"t think any of the Good ones are compatible with premier 5.... After your Project has been encoded to Mpeg2 you can then use Sonic to add your chapters and menu"s and Burn the DVD.... Your going to have do a lot of figureing out how to do most of this yourself but if you get stuck you can allways PM Me.... Cheers
hi minion, thanks for your reply and suggestions. i'm gonna play around with my software and see how it goes. i may be able to get a copy of premiere 6.5, so that might be a nice upgrade. i guess what's confusing me is how codecs are used. i understand that you install them, but then how do you tell the software you're using to access them? or, am i thinking about this wrong? for instance, you say to use the panasonic or sony dv codec, but i see in my control panel that there are a whole list of codecs. how does premiere, or another software program, chose which codec to use?
In premier in your Project settings is were you would choose what Codec you would use to render your project.. OR you can wait till you are ready to render your Project and select the Codec you want to use in the Export or rendering settings... I think when rendering to DV Format premier uses the first available DV Codec or your default DV Codec... I can"t tell you exactly because i don"t use premier 5 I use Premier Pro 1.5 which is quite a Bit different that premier 5... Cheers
ok, cool... makes perfect sense now. i'll give it a try and see how it comes out. thanks again, rasta
