>>> SCLive IS a capture program. The original (free) Scenalyzer WASN'T<<<

Ahh, gotcha. Thanks Edward.

I use it, but here's one negative aspect to it that no one has mentioned -- I'm wondering if the product has been orphaned? No updates in almost a year, the web site hasn't changed (as far as I can tell) in that time, and I've sent a couple of emails over the past year for a few minor issues/questions that went unanswered.

It's a nice product and works well, as many have said here. I just wonder about its future. Not that $40 is such a big investment ...

Marc

The author told me he would add manual batch capturing years ago. I'm surprised it isn't in there yet. It seems to have everything else...

But since then Vegas Capture has become good enough for my needs.

1. I have a problem a problem capturing stereo audio from my PD-X10 into Vegas, comes in as mono. (There’s an exception to this, if the audio is recorded 12 bit, 32k then Vegas captures it as stereo.) My camera repair person describes it like this:

“I contacted Sony on this and are aware of this and this is there
response: ‘The PDX10 and other cameras in the DSR line "from
DSR300 and
higher’ code the audio as ‘2 Channel Audio’ in DV vs
‘Stereo Audio’ that
Sony consumer cameras, Digital8 and the DSR-PD150 code. They say the
problem is the Microsoft Codec that Vegas Video and many other
editing
software use to capture. It doesn't read the ‘2channel
audio’ properly
and only picks up the left channel. Sony's work around is to use a
third
party Codec for capture. They gave "Scenalyzer" as a Codec
that will
capture "2Channel Audio" properly.

Audio from a VX-2000, PD-150, and TRV-510( Digital 8), all capture correctly.

I downloaded Scenalyzer and it is able to capture the audio as stereo. As to the “codec”, the FAQ’s on the Scenalyzer site says:

Q: Which codec does ScenalyzerLive use and how can I set the codec?
A: ScenalyzerLive doesn't need to use a codec for capturing or playback. It uses the MS-DV codec for displaying pictures in the program. Your editing-application will normally use the MS-DV codec for type1 files and the currently installed vfw DV codec for type2 files. If for example the mainconcept codec is installed on your system, then type2 DV files are "mainconcept codec files".

I don’t understand why SonyVegas can’t capture audio from a Sony camera correctly but the bottom line is that Scenalyzer can.

2. I don’t understand how to use the time lapse feature. I have their latest demo but it doesn’t give much info. Could anybody explain how to use it? Sounds like a good feature.

Thanks,
Bill

I still have the free versio.. with a HUGE problem. I tried it because I have 4-channel audio on my Canon XL1/GL1. Audio capture in SCLive is great, BUT..
video sucks.
It skips skips skips all the time.. every 20 seconds i miss a few frames in video (and audio).. Often 4-5 times very quickly after each other..
With vidcap this never happens, but that doesn't give me the audio I want..

gr
Mark

Mark30:

Hmmm...

Can't think of any similar thing that I've experienced. You might try doing a reinstall--sometimes I play with a program's configuration and get it all screwed up, so maybe going back to the defaults will help.

Other than that, you might try some experimentation on different disks or folders. Is there anything different in the capture process between using ScLive and Vidcap?

Good luck.

Mark,

I've never seen Scenalyzer skip a frame running on at least 4 different machines. And I mainly use it when capturing 4-channel simultaneously into a separate WAV file. You sure there's not something else going on somewhere?

I don’t understand how to use the time lapse feature. I have their latest demo but it doesn’t give much info. Could anybody explain how to use it?

Yes.

1. File -> Options -> Capture tab.

2. Put a check in the box labeled: "time-lapse capturing - capture only one of N frames"

3. Type a number in the text box next to this option. If you type "10", it will only capture every one of ten frames, resulting in a video that is 10x normal speed. Type in "50" and it will be 50x normal speed. Type "1000" .... well, you get the idea.

There have been so many discussions about Scenalzer lately -- many of them asking about time lapse -- that I went ahead and did a quick time lapse looking out my window. I mounted the camera on a tripod, took the tape out, and then connected to my laptop which has a Firewire card in the PCMCIA slot, with Scenalyzer running.

I rendered, at fairly low bitrate, to an MPEG2 file. It is about 3 Mbytes and is about 10 seconds long. You can download it at the link below (at least for the next few weeks). No big deal, but it shows you that you can get completely professional results.

Timelapse MPEG clip

This was captured with the time lapse setting at 100 (i.e., 100x normal speed).

P.S. The audio you hear is actually what results from a series of 1/30 second audio slices 100/30 = 3.33 seconds apart. The "squeaks" you hear are probably bits of birds chirping. You will also see an occassional flash in the lower left corner. I had the camera aimed a little too low, and it picked up cars going by on the road below us.

>>5. You can do optical scene detection, during capture, of analog
>>footage that is being "passed through" your camcorder. Not perfect,
>>but a good starting point.

Can someone tell me where/how this works?

I have used SCLive for a few years now and it's great! I just don't see the place for *optical* scene detection.

I sure could have used this for the 10 years of analog video archiving/editing I did... :)

Thanks!

John - Excellent results! Very pro-looking - G

Kentwolf, go to File - Options to the "Capture" tab. Look in the "Scene Detection" section and there's a drop-down box. In that drop down box is three options

1) Detect scenes based on Date/Time changes (like Vegas)
2) Detect scenes optically
3) Don't detect scenes

Can you still purchase this program or has it been discountinued?

You can still get it. Go to http://scenalyzer.com

I have noted several comments, including those in the most recent posts, that speculate as to the future development of Scenalyzer. I sent a note to the developer asking him to look at this thread. He responded by saying that an online forum would not be the appropriate place for him to say anything about future development. Since it was a private email, I do not think I should copy it or quote it directly here. However, that was the essence of it.

I am not going to try to interpret that response other than to note that the product works great, is still for sale, AND the author does still respond to emails. I would wholeheartedly recommend its purchase to anyone who wants or needs any of its capture features that I described in my earlier posts in this thread.

>>...and there's a drop-down box....

JetDV:

I never noticed that drop down...or maybe I did and forgot.

Thanks!

ahh.. if only it captured more than 1 deck at once...

i do so wish someone would follow canopus' lead and release a multi tape capture program...

ahh.. if only it captured more than 1 deck at once...

It WILL! Just start it multiple times and point each instance to a different device.

In response to a previous posters question of why can't Vidcap recognize a tape that was previously captured and some of the responses stating that timecode is timecode. Well, consider this: if dv capture is just a transfer of data (0s and 1s) why can't a capture utility take a snapshot of a small sample of the data (not just timecode but 1s and 0s) and write a data file to folder holding the that unique data and the tape name that was given,the batch capture info ect and using a math formula based on the data to output a unique number that identifies that tape? When you put in a tape the capture utility would capture say 5 seconds of that data and compare it to an id stored in a data folder. This type of technology is already used by many programs such as zip utilities I believe.

There is no reason why it coudn't, but the issue would be the mechanics of the DV camera.

If you start capture at the beginning of a tape, you are not guaranteed to start capturing at the exact frame each time. So how does your software decide which 5 seconds to store and compare?

If this was a capture to a disk, then it would be easier to determine the beginning of a file, but a tape might not rewind or sync to the exact frame on each capture.
Or create a tape format that puts a unique identifier as part of the code.


Dave T2

Scenalyser is incredibly snappy, responsive and stable, so you can actually use it just like a live recorder (that's what i actually do. I also use DV Rack sometimes, but i always find it sluggish and troublesome in comparaison). You can rename or delete any previously captured clip when actually capturing a new one, it never skip frames. You can also split the scene your are recording instantly to a new take, etc.

Scenalyser also offer a unique way to visually scan toward multiple video files, split or join them with true efficiency.

I just got asked today, via email, to describe some of the ways I use Scenalyzer. I thought I'd share my response, since there seems to still be some interest in this thread.

=======================================
--> Tell me what your favourite ways of working with it are?

How do I love thee ... Let me count the ways ...

That was one of your poets, Browning, I believe

I've done sooo many different things with this product over the years. One was so unique that it actually required a custom modification, which Andi (the author) was nice enough to do for me (he had a custom version for me to download just three hours after I emailed him!!). Helps to be an ex-software company pres, I guess.

Anyway, here are things I have done:

1. Live capture. Use it to capture from camera, live. Have to have laptop nearby, but a 15 ft. cable helps.

2. Time lapse. We had a mountain lion (BIG lion) in our garage two months ago. I set up the laptop and camera, with the "night shot" on the Sony cam enabled, and let the thing crank all night for several nights to see if we could get it on tape. The time lapse works EXACTLY like regular film timelapse. For the lion capture, I set it to capture one frame a second. Didn't get the lion, but saw the moon and stars rise (camera pointed east); saw lots of airplanes; and saw the fog move in and out (we're on the coast).

3. Timers. I often capture over-the-air broadcasts. While I have a capture card, and it works well for real-time MPEG capture, its AVI capture codecs never work quite right. Therefore, when I want high-quality capture, I go through my camcorder (pass-through mode), and set the start-stop timers in SA, just like a VCR.

4. Capture secondary audio. I sometimes put a tape in the camcorder and have some senior member of the family watch the tape, and then capture what they are saying while they watch it. To do this, I turn on the audio dub feature on the camcorder which captures their audio on the DV secondary track. Vegas, of course, has no way to capture that audio simultaneously with the main stereo audio track. SA does this just fine, giving me a perfectly synchronized secondary audio track.

5. SA doesn't capture HDV. However, I turned on the HDV->DV down res option in my FX1, and then did a high-speed capture of the results. This gave me two things: 1. Low res proxies for cuts-only editing. 2. Scene detection (you don't get any scene detection from the stupid HDV capture option in Vegas). It was really clever (sound of hand patting back), but about the same time I figured this out, everyone started talking about HDV Split (or whatever the name is) which is a utility for capturing HDV and doing scene detection. So, I never bothered to publish my "discovery."

6. Print to tape. This is one of the best. You can take your clips, mark them, order them, and then simply print them to tape!! How good is that? You don't have to wait for any proxies to be built. You just click and your camera automatically starts recording the results. This is hot, hot, hot.

7. Scrubbing and playback. If you click on a clip (or clips) you can play them back through the camcorder to your monitor, just like in Vegas. If you hover over a point in the clip and down-click on the mouse wheel (if your mouse has one), the clip will start to play from that point. You can press the mouse button and drag over the clip to scrub it in either direction. I like the scrub much better than the scrub in Vegas.

8. Full size (almost) preview. You can "detach" the preview window by clicking on the little icon in the lower right corner beneath the preview window. Once detached, you can make it REALLY large.

9. I use the Stop Motion feature to capture movie film from my "Workprinter" movie projector (although I've been working for months on a new invention for transferring film). Obviously if you ever wanted to do real stop motion animation (e.g., Wallace & Gromit), this would be a way to do it. Of course, "real" stop motion software includes onionskinning. I've also had discussions with people that do stop motion animation for a living about using motion estimation to reduce the number of captures required. I've been trying for fifteen months to get Sony to invest in motion estimation for Vegas. Could you imagine super-fine slow motion, where the intermediate frames were generated using the same software that is used to created the intermediate frames in an MPEG encoding sequence? The results are super sharp, especially compared with the adjacent frame blending technique used by Vegas' current slow motion approach. Motionperfect from Dynapel is a crude example of this technology. Another feature such technology would permit would be "bad frame" replacement. Ever had a one frame glitch due to a bad capture? Or a strobe that went off in the middle of something where you didn't want flash photography? What if Vegas could construct the bad frame from the information from adjacent frames?

But I digress.

10. Optical scene detection. If you don't have timecode on your tape (forgot to set the clock), or if you are capturing from analog tape, it sure is nice to have the video cut into scenes. The optical scene detection is actually the technology that was the reason behind the original Scenalyzer, and is where the product acquired its name. It is far from perfect, usually resulting in too many scenes. If you use it, set the detection sensitivity very low. Better to miss a few scenes than to get new scenes every time someone walks in front of the camera (something that fools it every time).

11. Still frame capture. I'd sure like to know why ANYONE would want to capture a still frame at less than 720x480 (or whatever you have for PAL -- I always have to look it up). Yet, Vegas gives you the capture at the preview resolution, which is 320x240 (or less) unless you are using Best. Scenalyzer always gives you full-sized capture.

I've got to get back to work. There's lots more. Download and read the PDF manual. It's full of stuff.

There would have to be some structure to the mechanics of capturing a tape: Vidcap would automatically rewind to the beginning and start a capture for say 10 seconds- then the capture utility would perhaps scan for some sort of identifying structure (I'm not a programer and know nothing about the data structure of a dv file) a fingerprint if you will-this fingerprint would be taken from a range-say...5000 miliseconds into the capture and lasting 1000 ms-file-(it would not be a specific frame). So a range would be defined and the program would search this range for this fingerprint when checking other tapes. The capture utility would give you a choice of whether you want to log a tape this way or not-if you did it would always rewind to beginning-capture a sample-analyze it-generate some unique, easily identified characteristic that could be found in other captured tapes by doing the same procedure. The more I think about it the more certain I am that it could be done.