Capture VHS with VF using Belkin USB VideoBus II?

VirtualDavid wrote on 4/16/2002, 10:09 PM

I'm ready to purchase VF but wish to confirm VF will capture video from analog devices, e.g., VCR, 8mm video camcorder, etc. using hardware similar to Dazzle - the Belkin USB VideoBus II capture hardware. Thank you.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 4/16/2002, 10:39 PM

It should work ... but not very well. USB isn't capable of handling a good video signal. At best, you'll probably get half frame (320x240) at 15 frames per second, or probably less than that. This isn't a limitation of Video Factory, but due to the fact that USB is too slow for video.

VirtualDavid wrote on 4/17/2002, 12:53 AM

I'm very grateful for your reply...thank you! I'm so new to this stuff I have nothing to compare against but I used VW5 to capture an 8.5 minute video clip with a resultant 2304.30 MBytes *.avi file. A right click on the file name in VW5 Library > Properties.. reports "30fps, 320x240 px". Would I expect to see a larger px size with VF?

Also, I'm confused why a USB, which supports 12Mbs transfer rates, is not fast enough for video. How fast is video? As far as I can tell, Microsoft Movie Maker only outputs 3Mbps files in their .wmv formats.

Born-confused-and getting-worse-virtual-david

Chienworks wrote on 4/17/2002, 7:13 AM

Broadcast quality DV files are about 30Mbps. Most USB devices don't function in DV though, they would send uncompressed AVI. 640x480x24bit 29.97fps would need over 145Mbps. USB2 and Firewire (ieee 1394) are the only consumer grade connections that can handle this. WMV and other compressed formats like MPEG are usually a low enough bitrate to squeeze through USB, but very few USB devices are powerful enough to compress in real time and still have a decent image quality.

VirtualDavid wrote on 4/17/2002, 9:19 AM

"I see", said the blind man to his deaf dog. Excuse me for not knowing better, but as I understand you, the 320x240, 16bit, YUY2, avi capture filesthat I'm getting are only a fraction of what I *could* be getting with a different capture device...or, said differently, I threw away $100 on the Belkin :(?

My only interest (for today, anyway) is to make end product WMV files and VCD's. The VCD I burned from the avi file (320x240, 16bit, YUY2) looks acceptable...but I'm not sure if it should look better than it does. It's rather blocky.

In your expert opinion, is the Belkin adequate for my purpose? I'm not doing any broadcast type stuff but am interested in providing some "for pay" services such as mentioned above.

Chienworks wrote on 4/17/2002, 11:19 AM

VCD is a pretty limited format, so the Belkin device might be adequate for that. I doubt you're really getting 30fps with it though. If you look carefully, zoom in and step frame by frame, i wouldn't be surprised if what you're really getting is every other frame duplicated, and unique frames only coming 15 per second. You might get slightly better and smoother colors with a better capture device, but in this case i'm sure the limiting factor is the VCD format itself.

You should definately consider a firewire capture device if you ever move on to better output formats.

VirtualDavid wrote on 4/17/2002, 12:13 PM

Ahhhhhhh....thank you...you've made my day. For what it's worth, I just did as you suggested, using an avi capture file of a TV newscast transition. Thirty frames of the transition effect, over one second, were all different. I'll guess I have this capability as the result of the very fast brand new computer 1.3GHz, 256Mb ram.

I really am resisting opening the new computer up. It'd be my luck I'd fall in ;)
For the time being, and in consideration of my current projects, I'll have to be content producing only VCD's and WMV.

I note Windows Movie Maker can produce 640x480 files. Although I've rendered some, and find them far superior to mpeg-1's, I'll have to find out if my avi capture limitation of 320x240 has any noticable degradation to them.

Again, thank you very, very much.