As Gary said, you are making things difficult for yourself by capturing in MPEG. You want to capture DV for editing in Vegas. Sounds like the ATI will not do this so you’ll need an external A/D like the Canopus ADVC-100 or a DV camcorder with pass-through, and then capture via firewire in Vegas. HTH

JL

Thanks guys. I'll look into the Canopus ADVC-100. Is "pass-through" common to most DV camcorders, or is it a higher end option? I have access to a DV but I'm not sure what the make/model it is. Sounds like that is a more affordable route.

Thanks again for the prompt response. I can see already this forum is going to be a gold mine of information!

CHEERS!

Pass thru is common to most DV Camcorders, but not all. Be sure to ask if you end up buying one.
You can also often rent A to D video converters too.
The canopus is the best sub 1K choice, but a camera does a great job too, if you have access to one.

ATI video card will capture in DV standard 720X480. Just use AVI template instad og MPEG. I am using ATI for last 2 years to capture analog and have a very good opinion of that card. Do not compress video durring cature. It will take a lot more space on HD, but then you have more frames to work with and clean unwanted frames. If you use Vegas to capture- the video my be split into few smaller clips, but vegas will join them very good.
The less compression the better chance to have decent video. It does take a lot more HD space and computing power
Make shure the the HD you capture to does not have a swap file and defrag.

rebel44,

I have the ATI 8500DV and have never had good results capturing analog using the AVI DV options. What capture driver do you have, and what settings do you use? I find that the fields are reversed (not a big deal to reverse them, but aggrevating), and that the audio ends up shorter in time than the video when placed on the Vegas timeline, and must be re-synced -- a time-consuming process.

I was quite disappointed with the results of the All-In-Wonder card .... I recently aquired a IEEE 1394 card from Canopus and am more than satisfied...old tapes actually seem to be enhanced .........

Best thing for capturing 8mm tapes would be either a D8 camera or VCR, you come out of them in 1394 straight into Vegas. Both the camera and VCR give you DNR and TBC enhancement / stabilisation of the image. Resulting video may well look better than when you played it back in the old camera.

If you want to go down the separate converter box path I'd highly recommend the ADVC-300, a bit more exy than the 100 but worth the money.

As SPOT said depending where you live you can also hire this sort of kit.

Thanks for the great information everyone! I'm gonna use the pass through method for now until my wife isn't looking. Then, PRESTO...a Canopus magically appears in my "studio!"

Mrs. goshep: "Honey, what's that thing on the desk?"

goshep: "Uhh....new calculator...."


Thanks again all!

I have to concur with John here. Two of my clients were trying to shoehorn ATI AIW cards, and they have never had reliable capture. The main problems seem to be A/V sync, as John mentioned, as well as dropped frames during capture. The A/V sync seems to be aggravated the longer you go. I was struggling for over two years between various ATI support people with absolutely no success.

In general, I do not recommend my clients to ever capture using an ATI AIW card. The ADVC-100 and ADVC-300, as other folks have mentioned, is a foolproof, futureproof and easy way to capture analog sources for anyone not involved in heavy duty compositing.

I do not know guys why most of you have a bad experience with ATI.
I had older ATI with 8M and upgraded to 7500 series. I heard that the
8500DV had some problems and they will not produce no more.
In past 2 years using ATI I had never encounter A/V sync problem.
I did a lot capture from VHS and some from older camcorders. The quality of video come not from ATI but from source(VHS tape). I capture all time in AVI so I can clean unwanted frames and still have enough to edit.
If someone hand me a tape and ask to capture-I clean my heads and having good cable I come up with good quality. I use standard AVI codec what comes with ATI card with 720x480 template. As a drivers- Using XP I would not recommend to upgrade driver from Microsoft. It does screw-up.
As for frames dropped im MPEG capture I had that long time ago when I had
333Mhz cpu, but after upgrade system to 1G never encounter this problem again. I have 2.2G with 1G memory and the system is flying.
Advise-do not capture in mpeg and then try to edit. I know that AVI takes a lot of space, but you will have more frames to work with.