Capture from VHS insanely big

mazzo wrote on 7/26/2002, 5:14 AM

I want to make electronic copies of some old tape material. When I try to capture through my tv card, the capture files will be M U C H bigger than capturing via firewire from DV camcorder. Can anyone tell me what i'm doin wrong?

Comments

Former user wrote on 7/26/2002, 8:01 AM

We would probably need to know which capture card you are using for analog. Each card has it's own options for compression.

Also, capture a little and check the properties of the captured video to see which compression scheme it is defaulting to. This will be under DETAILS when you open the properties window.

Dave T2

BillyBoy wrote on 7/26/2002, 9:47 AM

Sounds like you getting uncompressed AVI which for sure is huge.

Chienworks wrote on 7/26/2002, 11:43 AM

DV is a compression scheme which reduces AVI files to about 20% of what they would be when uncompressed. DV takes up about 225MB per minute and uncompressed AVI can easily be 1.2GB per minute. What a lot of us have done rather that use a "tv" card is to obtain an external A/V -> DV converter such as the Canopus ADVC-100. This little box converts analog video & audio into a DV signal which can then be captured via firewire just like capturing from your DV camcorder. It's also possible that your DV camcorder has the ability to do this conversion for you. If it has analog audio & video inputs you can record from VHS onto MiniDV, then capture. If your camcorder has a "pass through" mode then you can skip the recording step and go directly from VHS to DV capture through the camcorder

mazzo wrote on 7/26/2002, 2:56 PM

Thanks, everybody, yes, I think I must have captured uncompressed. Thanks for the conversion tip.

BillyBoy wrote on 7/26/2002, 3:10 PM

Another way to get analog video is through a pass through if your DIGITAL camera supports it. For example I have a Canon ZR45 that accepts analog input and converts it to digital on the fly with the option of either recording to the camera tape or just 'passing it through' to the firewire connector and out as a DV signal. Several camera models do this, you need to read the fine print in the specs sometimes they don't always make a big deal about it as a feature.

Sr_C wrote on 7/26/2002, 7:01 PM

What capture card are you using, and what program are you capturing with? I used to use a TV Wonder TV card with ATI's own capture program. It did not capture to DV format but it did let me customise the capture settings with different codecs and I was able to cut avi file size by more than half from the uncompressed option. I no longer use that card, went with the Canopus instead (better on so many levels) but if you don't have the$300 to spend for the A/D convertor than you might try playing around with different resolutions and codecs.