firewire/capture

[woody]

My turn to ask for help. I have installed a firewire card that I removed from another PC.I would like to use it to capture from my mini DV camcorder.What is necessary to accomplish this?The card is installed,and recognized.

I have done a search,but still unclear on the procedure/software.The firewire card shows up as network device.

[elsamay]

Having connected the camcorder to the firewire card with firewire cable, you just need video capturing software such as scenalyzer, dvapp or the bigger capture/editing applications such as Premiere, Vegas Video, Ulead Media studio etc.

I set my camcorder to play/vcr mode and the software to capture dv . Then you need huge area of fast hard disk (preferably a separate hard disk devoted only to video) to store trhe captured video. Or you may be able to render the captured video in realtime which will save space. I can't do that as I only have a notebook that lacks the power of the fastest desktop computers.

[woody]

Thanks Elsamay..

[biffy40]

I use Pinnacle's Studio 7 to capture the video from my Sony Camera. It works very well.

[woody]

Thanks bud,will give it a try!

[weboneando]

In my opinion Vegas is the best, and the capture program can be used without even starting Vegas, anyway if you need to check everything is working fine use Amcap.exe, this utility is free from Microsoft and lets you capture and check your connections.

[woody]

Thanks Weboneando will do a check!

[Markbot]

I use Vegas Video to capture. With my camcorder attached via Firewire, as soon as I turn it on in VTR (i.e. VCR) mode, XP detects the device. I'm using the M$ DV Capture driver. The capture software takes full control of the camcorder and will roll tape and allow you to set cue points.

I thought this would be great to transfer my home movies from Digital 8 and put them on my Pioneer A05 DVD-R. At 720x480 30 fps with audio at 48khz, a 6 minute avi video "clip" is about 1 GB. I guess the next step after that is converting to DVD compliant MPEG2 with CCE.

I'm seriously considering getting a Matrox RT 2500 to do real-time MPEG2 capture to save time.

http://www.matrox.com/video/products/rt2500/home.cfm

[woody]

Thanks Markbot! I have actually given up on the firewire.The software is not detecting it.I have a Radeon AIW installed.Judging by the size of the files you are capturing from the firewire,the Radeon looks like a better idea.It will do mpeg2 in real time. Not sure why the software won't allow me to capture with the firewire.Tried 4 different softwares.I wanted to capture directly to my A05 too.

[ipdave]

Originally posted by Markbot
I use Vegas Video to capture. With my camcorder attached via Firewire, as soon as I turn it on in VTR (i.e. VCR) mode, XP detects the device. I'm using the M$ DV Capture driver. The capture software takes full control of the camcorder and will roll tape and allow you to set cue points.

I thought this would be great to transfer my home movies from Digital 8 and put them on my Pioneer A05 DVD-R. At 720x480 30 fps with audio at 48khz, a 6 minute avi video "clip" is about 1 GB. I guess the next step after that is converting to DVD compliant MPEG2 with CCE.

I'm seriously considering getting a Matrox RT 2500 to do real-time MPEG2 capture to save time.

http://www.matrox.com/video/products/rt2500/home.cfm

Actually, I found that you can capture with Premier straight to DVD-compliant MPG2; Premier will then prompt you to open your favorite DVD authoring program. Just add the m2v & mp2 files, make any menus or start it directly, then author to a folder & burn.

My next project is to take all my old family VHS and record to my DV, then do the above to move to DVD with my A04. A step up in quality from my old Dazzle DVC2 to MPG2 SVCD's...

[N.B.]

Wow !
Thanks for the info ... especially the amcap tools looks promising !
I use Premiere, usually, it works out pretty good, but is quite expensive at all ... and not that easy to use !
I heard that Pinnacle Studio as a very easy to use tool ..
Might be worth a look

[Markbot]

I'd like to have more detail on how to use Premiere to capture DVD complaint MPEG2. A guide with some screen shots would be killer.

One other thing is that my camcorder will act as a digital pass through so I don't have to copy my VHS to Digital 8 to capture. Rather I can simply chain the VCR and camcorder together. Saves a step.

[woody]

Solved my capture problem by using Sonic My DVD.I used S-Video to capture,with highest quality settings in the software.It saved the movies as mpeg2 video file (40 mins on DV tape=3.25 gigs approx).

Then used the burn option in Sonic after importing the mpeg2 files.It converted the movie streams to UDF compliant Iso and burned with the A05.The results were very close to the original tape quality.

[stimpleton]

NB
pinnacle studio is excellent for capture and editing etc but burn direct to SVCD is not such good quality, i normaly save as an avi file using a lossless codec (hufey) and then encode the avi file using Tmpgenc or Procoder. once you have the encoded file you can load this into Ulead dvd movie factory and add chapter etc