Dare I say this, I think Windows Movie Maker has a go at it. Probably captures each clip as a separate avi. But I'd imagine coming off VHS any code is going to have a hard time of it.
Bob.

Thanks for the replies.

AVCutty looks promising but my German is about as good as my Latin :(

Maybe I need to clarify. There are packages out there that will do optical scene detection and but I need something that will write to a file so I can create chapters.

The search continues....

-Jason

If you use an optical scene detection program to split your souce file up into separate files you can then line up all the pieces on the timeline in order (one drag & drop will do it), move the cursor to the beginning of the project, then use Ctrl-Right Arrow to skip to the beginning of each piece and and type M to set a marker. Render this to MPEG-2 with the DVD Architect template and make sure you check the box that says "save metadata" when rendering. DVD Architect will then use these markers as chapter points.

True, you will double the hard drive use by having the original source video and all the separate clips. Once you've split the clips you can delete the original to save space. The advantage is that you won't have to copy timecodes to set the markers.

I have heard that Scenalyzer can do optical scene detection, but even though I use Scenalyzer, I am not sure how this works.

I believe it may be in the setup options.

>> AVCutty looks promising but my German is about as good as my Latin :(

I should have lead you to the english site which is www.avcutty.de/english/
AV-Cutty itself can be set to english too. Though I am not sure it will give you what you're looking for. Was more like a guess.

Marco

Scenalyzer is the program you should use. It has optical scene detection and has multiple threshhold settings. Click on the link to download the trial. It doesn't cost much.

This program has TONS of neat capture features that are detailed here:

Scenalyzer Features

Finally, while at the Scenealyzer site, you will find that there is an older freeware program, also called Scenalyzer that will do optical scene detection on AVI files that you have already captured. If you have already done the capture, this is all you need.

Back to the main Scenalyzer program (which is also called ScLive). The optical scene detection is very good, but not perfect. It can (and will) be fooled by someone walking directly in front of the camera. If you have video taken from a moving car, it will detect a scene every time a passing car goes by.

Handy Saw seems to do the job quite good. And according to their website the new version even produces a Vegas EDL file. I haven't tested t myself yet, but have a look at the site at http://www.davisr.com
Maybe it's what you're looking for.

" I haven't tested it myself yet,"

Well I have! After my original post I did a hard target search on the net (goooood olde Google).

Came across HandySaw and carved out an hour to play with it. I took some video around the house in different rooms and lighting conditions. Stoping and starting the camera each time.

Then I...

1. captured via V5 with scene detection on.

2. captured via v5 with scene detection off to have a continous video segement.

3. Used HandySaw (HS) to optically detect the scene changes and it nailed it. Same number of scenes that V5 found. You can adjust the scensitiveity to get more or less scene.

Some other notes...

You can tell HS to generate split AVI files, generate an external Vegas 4 EDL, a Text File and others. There is a util to convert the V4 EDL to V5. I tried it and it works. I can use this file and write a script to place markers at each scene.

Also really neat is, you can do a "Detect and Trim" which will put you in a UI to fine tune the scenes, set in/out points, merge scenes etc. When you are done you can re-generate the scenes. You can also print with thumbnails and times.

All in all pretty close to what I was looking for. I think it is about $60 US.

Still checking it out...

-Jason