Cropping while capturing, then extra rendering

Mmmmm wrote on 9/22/2004, 7:41 PM

Hi folks

I've got a couple of questions so bear with me while I explain. Thanks.

Neither Vegas nor Premiere Pro will recognise my analogue capture board (ASUS TV 7134) despite the fact every single other video editing program I can find will. Including even the cr*piest freeware and shareware stuff you can download. It's not all bad stuff tho! Anyway this means I have to capture with VirtualDub, which is a brilliant little program. However it adds an extra step to my projects, which wastes time, and therefore money.

When I play VHS into my PC I get between 8 and twelve lines of noise at the bottom of my screen depending on the tape. I have tried switching players and adjusting tracking to no avail. Obviously this noise also gets captured and then has to be cropped out before rendering. This was not an issue before because I was rendering for SVCD's or just as straight MPEGs and it only required one render. (I'll explain this in a bit)

1st Quezzie.
VirtualDub has a great little feature that allows you to crop the framesize of the incoming video signal as you capture it rather than having to do it later. I thought my prayers were answered! This is a feature I was looking for, and I only found two programs that do it. (That I know of) The other one actually had a better interface but it kept hanging. However, when I crop during capture, even when I maintain the aspect ratio of the framesize correctly, when I play the captured file I get two black vertical bars on either side where the frame has been resized to fit the preview window. If the framesize ratio has been kept correct shouldn't the video fill the preview frame as it normally would? Or am I misunderstanding this concept? Or is my maths just really bad? Note that I've also experimented with the preview window size and the project framesize. Anyone got any ideas?

2nd Quezzie.
Irrespective of that (I think?), I now have a DVD burner so my projects are going to go on DVD instead of VCD. When rendering from Vegas 5b for burning in DVD Architect 2a I've tried to use the official Main Concept MPEG-2 DVD Architect PAL Video Stream (I'm in PALland). This is supposed to mean that Architect does not have to re-render the video file for burning because it's already in the correct format. Yes? That's what the documentation says. But Architect wants to re-render it anyway despite this. Anyone have any idea what's going ong on here?

This is such a collosal waste of time for me because I have to capture in one program, import, edit and render in another, then import and render again in another! Obviously I'm also losing quality in the extra rendering. Help!!!

Incidentally anyone know if there is a way to crop whilst capturing in Vegas? Not that I can right now anyway, but just in case I upgrade my board or Sony decides to support it.

Thanks

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 9/23/2004, 4:32 AM

A few answers, maybe ...

I don't see that you are wasting time capturing in VirtualDub. You have to capture anyway, so why would it take that much longer to capture in VirtualDub instead of Vegas? True, you have to import the captured clips into the media pool manually, but this takes only a few seconds. Compare that to the many minutes or hours of capture time and it's inconsequential. Capturing is a real-time operation and it takes however long the footage you are capturing is no matter what capture software you use.

Analog video signals generally do not fill the frame completely. There is a lot of overscan area that is left blank on purpose. Every analog capture i have done through any capture device with any software shows about 5% or more black area around the edge of the frame. This is the nature of analog. For that matter, so is the noise you see at the top or bottom of the screen, particularly from VHS. Since this noise and blank area fall in the overscan area of most televisions most people usually don't worry about it. Rather than crop, i'll usually mask the top and bottom few lines while rendering to get rid of it. The image doesn't fill the frame, but then the image is what the image is and will play back on a television the same size after capturing/rendering as it would before capturing it.

If the black border really bothers you when you are playing back the videos on your computer screen then i suggest you crop in Vegas before rendering. Drag the cropping border in enough to cut off the border and what's left of the image will fill the frame. Keep in mind though that if you do this and then watch the result on a television you will lose a lot more of the edges picture due to the television's overscan.

I'm not sure about your rendering issues. I'm in NTSCland and have no problem with it. I render with the MPEG-2 DVD Architect NTSC template and DVD Architect eats up the files with no problem. I could suggest you render to PAL DV-avi format then let DVD Architect do the MPEG-2 encoding, but this is probably not much faster than what's happening now. The only advantages is that your first render would go much faster and you wouldn't be re-encoding MPEG-2 again.

johnmeyer wrote on 9/23/2004, 9:43 AM

I second every word in Chienworks' post. Ditto.

Mmmmm wrote on 9/23/2004, 10:52 PM

Hey Guys thanks for the replies.

Yeah I know it's a bit petty, the VirtualDub thing, but I'm really pedantic about stuff like that. It just annoys me to have to keep switching from one program to another.

Interesting what you say about the black edges on "all" analogue capture you've done. I've never had that problem, only the noise at the bottom. My stuff fills the frame completely, that's why I think(thought?) I have a problem.

I am already doing the first render to avi so that's cool, it's really the time issue of having to do it twice that bugs me most. I'll try doing some tests with the NTSC stuff and see if they also stuff up. If not I'll use them.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Chienworks wrote on 9/24/2004, 4:38 AM

Well, if you want to get technical, when you capture with Vegas you're really not. You're actually capturing with VidCap which is a second program, so you're still switching between two programs. The only advantage is that VidCap automatically places the clips in Vegas' media pool for you.

clearvu wrote on 9/24/2004, 4:43 AM

And then again, you can run VidCap "without" Vegas and you don't get the clips placed in the media pool. Therefore you are back to the VirtualDub deal again.

So, no matter what, capturing is requiring a separate program to run anyways.

johnmeyer wrote on 9/24/2004, 7:57 AM

I think you can point to another capture program by changing your Preferences. Just put Virtualdub there, or Scenalyzer (my favorite capture program).