Do you use Vegas for video capturing? (what do you use)

Julius_911 wrote on 3/1/2004, 6:29 AM

Hi All-

Just curious if most people use Vegas for their video capturing or another tool?

I have been using Vegas for capturing but last night I had some problems. I had a few miniDV tapes (about 10 minutes each) and with Enable DV device contrl turned on. The video was captured, but it was all scrambled (this also happened on other tapes as well Hi8, MiniDV). After many failed attempts, I decided to go manual and turn off the Enable Device Control, and I was then able to succesfully capture...until I relaized that the audio was dropped off at some point....So I had to re-capture for the 10th time and final got the footage. Still don't know what the hell was happening. SO I started thinking if there is a better capturing software.
I heard http://www.scenalyzer.com is a good choice.

What I would like to have is:
-Date stamp capture
-Mark in and out points for capturing
-Visiable audio graphs (so I know the audio is coming in)
-Time Capturing..(I set the IN marker and let it capture for X amount of time...regardless if there ia a time break in the tapes)

Just my thoughts

Comments

donp wrote on 3/1/2004, 6:39 AM

Yes to capturing with Vegas. I use the Canopus ADVC-1394 though. Throughput is Camera>ADVC-1394>Vegas. Vegas nor the Computer sees the camera, just the Canopus card as the video device. Everything works fine. You didn't say how your video from the camera was captured, via a PC card or box?

TheHappyFriar wrote on 3/1/2004, 7:11 AM

I don't have a DV camera so I capture analog. I like iuVCR (www.iuvcr.com). I like it so much i bought it (~$30). Well worth it in my opinion. Does DV too. I don;t think you'll get a program that will let you monitor DV audio though (capturing via DV). The loudest DV audio can be is 0db, so nothing will go above that. It just "copies" the audio from the tape to the HD.

jetdv wrote on 3/1/2004, 7:43 AM

I use Vegas Capture for all of my capturing UNLESS I need 4 channel audio. Then I use Scenalyzer Live.

Julius_911 wrote on 3/1/2004, 9:02 AM

donp326.

I was more interested in the software tool you use to do the capturing. I mostly capture from a Hollywood bridge via firewire to my box. The tapes are DVCPRO mostly (my dvcpro camera doesn't have firewire). At other times I capture via my minidv camera which has a firewire port.

Thanks

jetdv wrote on 3/1/2004, 9:42 AM

Panasonic AG-DV2000 deck via firewire.

johnmeyer wrote on 3/1/2004, 11:13 AM

I ALWAYS use Scenalyzer. I find the capture application built into Vegas to be limited in a huge number of ways, awkward to use, non-intuitive interface, etc.

The things that make Scenalyzer special:

1. You can see a timeline representation of each clip, and can scrub and playback directly from these clips.

2. You can select any grouping of clips and record them back to tape directly from Scenalyzer.

3. You can use timers to start and stop your capture.

4. You can do time lapse capture and stop motion capture.

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.

6. You can batch capture, even on a tape that has interrupted timecode.

7. You can capture the second DV audio track (if you have dubbed a voice over on your tape), either as the main channel, or onto a separate WAV file which you can them place in Vegas below your main audio channel. Nice.

8. You can export stills directly from the Scenalyzer timeline.

9. You can preview your clips in up to full-screen, directly from the AVI DV file.

I have never found a single reason to use the Vegas capture application instead (i.e., there is no feature that Vegas has that is lacking in Scenalyzer, or at least nothing that I have yet needed to use).

Get Scenalyzer!

riredale wrote on 3/1/2004, 11:14 AM

Julius 911:

Get yourself immediately over to www.scenalyzer.com and download a copy of "ScenalyzerLive."

I love this capture program, and use it exclusively. It not only has the ability to name clips based on their shooting date and time, but it also allows one to look at the contents of a capture disk or folder in a sort of "contact sheet" fashion. Each captured clip is represented as a horizontal filmstrip, and you can mouse over the strips quickly or just pick out one and play it from any point. Very slick, and very stable.

Hmmm... I see JohnMeyer beat me to the punch by 30 seconds.

craftech wrote on 3/1/2004, 11:14 AM

Sony WV-DR9 deck or Sony VX2000 camera via firewire. Both work equally well along with Vegas VidCap 3.0 or 4.0.

John

donp wrote on 3/1/2004, 11:35 AM

Julius 911 I use Vegas Vidcap 4.0 but the Scenalyzer software is great too for the reasons the others have mentioned.

Julius_911 wrote on 3/1/2004, 12:55 PM

I hear that loud and clear...It's not that I have a big problem with Vegas, but I need to have that back-up plan so that the problems I had yesterday can be quickly resolved.

I just downloaded the software.

Thanks!

kentwolf wrote on 3/1/2004, 4:59 PM

Scenalyzer is the best. Hands down.

PainterPaul wrote on 3/2/2004, 11:52 AM

Thanks. Just downloaded the Demo. Looks great!

bw wrote on 3/2/2004, 11:13 PM

Yay, Scenalyser looks great waiting on email with unlock code.
Just the thing for all those analogue tapes I want to digitise.