Capture in MPEG format?

VideJoe wrote on 7/25/2005, 8:59 AM
Why can't I capture in MPEG format (Vegas Video Capture 6)?
If I want to capture marginal quality (S)VHS source material, using the Canopus ADVC-100 analog to digital video converter, in MPEG format I have to use a third party capture or video edit program, like Pinacle Studio 9.
Iam using Studio 9 also to grab stills form video clips in much better quality than possible within Vegas.

Comments

ScottW wrote on 7/25/2005, 9:06 AM
Why would you want to capture MPEG? MPEG is a delivery format, not an editing format and if the VHS material is really of marginal quality, capturing into MPEG is simply going to make matters much, much worse (most MPEG encoders do not handle noise very well, so by capturing in DV you at least have a chance to clean up some of the issue before going out to MPEG for delivery.

I don't remember the ADVC-100, but the 110 is designed to capture analog to DV via firewire, not MPEG.

You should be able to get the same still capture quality from Vegas. It sounds like you haven't set your preview mode to best/full before capturing the still.

--Scott

VideJoe wrote on 7/25/2005, 9:42 AM
Thanks again Scott.

If you think that poor video quality capturing should also be done in DV format I cannot doubt that. But the videoclip doesn't need to be edited and will be directly used in DVDA. That's why I want to capture MPEG.

The Canopus ADCV-100 is just an intermediate which handles signals between analog devices, digital devices and a PC. So, it doesn'matter which format you capture. Format is chosen in the application, not the device.

Best/Full indeed gives the same results as with Studio. My settings were on Auto.

johnmeyer wrote on 7/25/2005, 9:55 AM
Similar question a few days ago:

Going straight from DV to DVD
JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/25/2005, 10:07 AM
> But the videoclip doesn't need to be edited and will be directly used in DVDA. That's why I want to capture MPEG.

You missed Scott’s point. The MPEG codec is VERY sensitive to noise. I run all of my analog tapes through VirtualDub with the Dynamic Noise Reduction filter to clean up the video noise. Then I encode to MPEG2 with Vegas. You will get MUCH better results. But that’s up to you.

> The Canopus ADCV-100 is just an intermediate which handles signals between analog devices, digital devices and a PC. So, it doesn'matter which format you capture. Format is chosen in the application, not the device.

That is incorrect. The Canopus ADVC-100 is converting the analog signal to DV25 using the Canopus DV codec in its firmware. Pinnacle Studio is then re-encoding the DV signal to MPEG2 in real-time during the capture. So you are doing two encodes anyway. I guarantee you that the MPEG encoding that Pinnacle Studio is doing during capture is extremely inferior to what you could get by having Vegas convert to MPEG2 after capture. This is because encoding during capture limits what the encoder can do. It cannot use more time because it must keep up with the real-time capture so it trades off quality. If you encode after the capture, the encoder can take its time and do a better job on the quality of the encode.

~jr
B_JM wrote on 7/25/2005, 10:10 AM
you can use the main concept mpeg encoder and encode to mpeg2 right from your firewire input ..

VideJoe wrote on 7/25/2005, 10:18 AM
Okay Guys, I'm convinced, believe me. It's only DV capturing from now on!

Just downloaded VirtualDub. See what that will do for me and my 1979 VHS video source.

Thanks, Dries.
VideJoe wrote on 7/25/2005, 10:46 AM
Johnny, Dynamic Noise Reduction filter is not in the Video Filters list of VirtualDub.
Is it under a different name?
JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/25/2005, 11:08 AM
Sorry, I forgot to mention that’s a free plug-in filter for VirtualDub. Dynamic Noise Reduction can be found at Steven Don’s site. Also check out Donald Graft’s filters and Jim Casaburi’s filters. There are LOTS more. Just download them and place them in the \plugins directory of VirtualDub.

~jr
VideJoe wrote on 7/25/2005, 1:47 PM
Got it!

Thanks, Dries
cbrillow wrote on 7/25/2005, 7:32 PM
"Pinnacle Studio is then re-encoding the DV signal to MPEG2 in real-time during the capture. So you are doing two encodes anyway. I guarantee you that the MPEG encoding that Pinnacle Studio is doing during capture is extremely inferior to what you could get by having Vegas convert to MPEG2 after capture."


Just a minor point-of-order: Pinnacle Studio 9 can capture MPEG-2 a couple of different ways. On systems that are fast enough, encoding can be done in real-time, as JohnnyRoy stated. On slower machines, it captures first in avi, then automatically launches into an MPEG encode. The nasty little surprise is, you wind up with both a DV AVI file and an MPEG-2 file on your hard drive. Anyone capturing to MPEG-2 to save disk space is in for a shock...

My understanding is that there are also differences in the internal encoding paramaters -- the "on-the-fly" setting is optimized for speed, whereas that 2-step encode is optimized for quality.