Newbie Advice - Capture Codec for VCD

Bobaloo wrote on 12/21/2002, 5:04 PM
Hello,

New to Vegas and video editing.

What I want to do is simple.

- Capture (analog) from consumer grade camcorder
- Edit and burn to VCD

My question is should I capture to VCD compliant MPEG1 codec or to another Codec (such as using SF Video Capture) then render to VCD-MPEG1 as a final step? It seems to me that rendering time might be saved if I edit in the final format (but I may be wrong).

Any thoughts or help is appreciated.

Thanks

Comments

watson wrote on 12/21/2002, 5:38 PM
Your first thought was correct.
Edit in SF codec. Render to Mpeg-1 when your edits are finished.
Your quality will be bad otherwise.
W
Bobaloo wrote on 12/21/2002, 8:57 PM
Thank you.
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/21/2002, 9:06 PM
To be clear, (watson is absolutely right) what capture hardware are you using since it's an analog source? If it's via an All In Wonder or similar that Vidcap doesn't recognize, you'll want to either get an analog to DV converter, or else capture with the avi codec that comes with your analog input/capture tool. Lesser quality, but cheaper.
watson wrote on 12/21/2002, 10:16 PM
Indubitably Holmes!
Thanks DSE
W
Bobaloo wrote on 12/22/2002, 4:46 PM
SPOT,

Thanks for the advice. I have an All In Wonder and was planning to use that. I can capture with VidCap to (what I think is)an uncompressed AVI format.

Two other things I'm wondering.....

With an external analog to DV converter, can I do things with it in Vidcap that I can't with the A.I.W. ?

Also, should I capture in AVI larger than 352x240 (since that's what I'll render the VCD to) or is the format the thing that matters.

Again, thanks!
Hunter wrote on 12/22/2002, 6:50 PM
Bobaloo, I to have an AiW. Nice card BUT, there is always a but with ATI. I've tried to change the avi encoder in the Digital VCR thing with no luck, if you set the custom setting to AVI 720x480 with the DV encoder you will get a very large file. About 20 meg a second avg. bit rate. If you change the size to 320x240 you will get a some what small file but video will be fuzzy. If you change the settings to a MPEG type file size comes way down but <there it is, the but> editing is a joke ... dropped frames audio sync problems, just the thought makes me shiver LOL.
So I would recommend one of three routes.
1: buy a canopus analog to DV card - like I did, ADVC-50 will be here Monday (yea ha)
2: If you have a DV camcorder with DV pass, input your analog to it then capture - I did that to
3: Capture to mpeg then go straight to disc - tried that once ... LOL
mattiasj wrote on 12/30/2002, 2:24 AM
1. You can get lots of info about theese things on www.vcdhelp.com. Great site!

2. I would recommend another AVI codec.
- Huffyuv (http://math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html). Free, lossless, low compression.
- PicVideo MJPEG (http://www.pegasusimaging.com/picvideomjpeg.htm). $18 for home users, lossy but configurable compression.