Pinnacle 8 vs. VV3 capturing aspect

bapski wrote on 9/12/2002, 11:42 AM

got a copy of studio 8 today and what struck me most is its capability to capture at VCD settings... which i dont think i can do with VV3.. (unless otherwise, of course if its possible and yet i just do not know how)

i brought up this topic because it has come to my knowledge (through countless forum visits) that to produce good quality video, a video should be encoded to settings nearest if not identical to the capture settings..

therefore, if i capture using VCD settings on studio 8 then i should get better quality VCD? if so, where does this put VV3?

Comments

Cheesehole wrote on 9/12/2002, 2:11 PM

>>>therefore, if i capture using VCD settings on studio 8 then i should get better quality VCD? if so, where does this put VV3?

if you are talking about DV capture, you will be transferring video digitally over firewire. there is no such thing as capturing at a different resolution because it is basically a file copy.

if you are talking about analog capture, I'm not sure what capabilities VV capture has or lacks there.

but I don't agree that you would get better results capturing at VCD resolution. the worst that could happen capturing at full resolution is a little bit of blur will be introduced when Vegas resizes the video, but that can actually help improve the look of the video after it is compressed by reducing the likelihood of block artifacts or pulsating pixels being introduced.

Former user wrote on 9/12/2002, 2:20 PM

Part of the advertised features of Studio 8 is the ability to encode to MPEG on the fly. Based upon the speed of processor. This is probably what Bapski is referring to.

Dave T2

spidey2002 wrote on 9/12/2002, 9:19 PM

I just recently bought a digi8 cam but I don't have a firewire card yet, just analog for captures off satellite, dvd player(don't have a dvd drive either), vhs and now digi8. I have an old system, cel 500mhz. If I get a firewire card just for my digi8 use only, can my system handle dv capture as you've said it is just a transfer of what's in the cam and not actually capturing it? And is there a setting in vv3 if I just want to capture at 480x480 resolution only(don't have a dvd burner either)? I've been capturing via analog card, vcd compliant with only one frame dropped per minute of video using vdub and huffyuv codec for almost two years now. Thnx.

Cheesehole wrote on 9/12/2002, 11:54 PM

>>>I have an old system, cel 500mhz. If I get a firewire card just for my digi8 use only, can my system handle dv capture

it might. I capture on a dual 450 with no problems.

Former user wrote on 9/13/2002, 7:49 AM

I have an AMD K62-450 and can capture DV and Analog with no problems. You won't be able to capture your DV at 480 x480 though. As you noticed, DV captures are a file transfer and the standard for DVis 720 x 480.

Dave T2

riredale wrote on 9/13/2002, 11:10 AM

Bapski, are you referring to the ability of Studio to capture at reduced resolution? I have not played with S8, but did a lot of work with S7 last year, and one of the nicest features of that product was the ability to capture at reduced resolution. In that manner, I was able to capture all 14 hours of my video project to just 15GB of hard disk space. After all my editing, S7 then automatically went out to the original tapes and recaptured at full resolution only those segments it needed to render the final product.

I wish VV had this clever ability also, but perhaps it will make little difference 2 years from now when we all have 1TB hard drives.

spidey2002 wrote on 9/13/2002, 5:19 PM

Thnx guys. I'll look into it but my problem is, I wanna render the file to its default setting and not dv setting and that means it would take a lot more space. I have 27 gigs just for my video files. I just want to make svcds or cvds (not vcds) coz I don't have a dvd burner yet and my system is old. Can't afford one right now.

bapski wrote on 9/15/2002, 11:35 AM

riredale,

yes, thats what i meant.. i am addressing this issue, again because of my quest to get a GOOD QUALITY vcd... and as i have learned from several forums.. to get the best quality VIDEO..it should you be rendered nearest if not similar to its source...and well, dont you think this capability of PS8 is the answer?

John_Beech wrote on 9/15/2002, 3:00 PM

Bapski, in my opinion, it's smarter to capture in a higher quality and then render to whatever you want - and have the ability to render to other formats as needed, than to have to re-capture when you want to repurpose a movie for a differnet market, or use.

For example, say you're hired to make a short product video for a company to put on their web site. Capture it your way and when the company goes along with the notion of dubbbing off 20,000 VHS copies for a direct campaign you have more work to do. Meanwhile, I would simply output a master to send to the duplicator because the material is ready for re-use.

Hence, who did the job more easily and efficiently - and by extension made more money, pal? In this game you have to think. I mean, who cares how you get to VCD quality - everybody can do that pretty much equally well (I bet there's not a nickle's differnce between the VCD files), they're both crap visually compared to a DVD, right?

Even on a budget, a few hundred bucks (even less than 100) can give you many, many minutes of space - so why edit in low resolution, or artificially limit your ability to quickly repurpose material (it takes the same real-time minute to capture a minute with all the editors under discussion)?

John Beech

bapski wrote on 9/15/2002, 6:34 PM

nice point john.. but because in my case, as i am just starting out, i am yet to produce an acceptable VCD video :(, so i cant really think yet of the volume of copies i can make .. :(

maybe, john, if you can suggest the best way to produce a good quality VCD using high quality capture we (am sure am not the only one having this problem) would really appreciate it...thanks...

Former user wrote on 9/15/2002, 7:08 PM

I would agree with John Beech. A Good quality VCD is kind of an oxymoron. There are acceptable quality VCD's, but VCD by nature is a low resolution, low bitrate, high compressed file. You are better off, in most cases, laying back to VHS. VHS is uncompressed, full frame video. The only compression in VHS is the capture, which is either, in most cases, DV encoded or MJPEG.

SVCD or XSVCD can give better quality, but neither will be as good as the original footage. It is just the nature of compression and computers.

For what it is worth.

Dave T2

John_Beech wrote on 9/15/2002, 9:36 PM

What do you mean by acceptable?

The beauty of VCD is many client's machines will play it - even some set-top DVD players handle it. In my limited experience with mpeg1 stuff however, I quickly realized it's good enough for some jobs and inadequate for others - depends on the goal of the program. Perhaps if you divulged exactly what you are trying to do it would help folks judge if they had valid input for your consideration. JB

riredale wrote on 9/15/2002, 11:03 PM

Bapski:
Sorry for the delay in getting back to this thread.

The reduced-resolution capture feature in S7 and presumably S8 is there simply to allow one to get more video material on a limited-size hard disk. It was never meant to be an output format. Studio takes the final edited file and creates a full-resolution mirror-image of it from the source tapes. You would never be able to use that intermediate file as the final output--I don't recall ever seeing any mechanism for using that .stu file as the final output.

On a conceptual level, you never want to work with a format that is less than the quality of the final output (obviously). It would never hurt to work with a format that is significantly better than the final result, except that it would be somewhat wasteful of resources. But in this case, do your final output in the DV avi format--you never know, you might want to revisit those files down the road when the markedly superior resolution is needed.

Rich

mikkie wrote on 9/16/2002, 11:49 AM

With DV, you're basically transferring the files from one place to another -- ie: camcorder to hard drive. Anything that requires re-encoding/re-compression is going to lessen the quality of the original stream, so logically should be kept to a minimum. So, recording the video stream at something other then the original format or the completed project format is gonna cost.

With analog it's another thing entirely - the video stream is converted to digital and stored in whatever format you choose. Ideally you would capture the stream uncompressed, but with real world limitations most find I think Huffyuv, Picvideo, or Morgan codecs very acceptable (in that order). The captured video is (after editing) then encoded into your chosen final format.

In the last couple of years as horsepower has increased, capturing directly to mpeg2, realmedia, & winmedia formats has become possible. I think the first to come up with decent mpg1 & mpg2 capture (vcd/svcd/dvd formats) was Ulead; you can get it with their inexpensive Video Studio & it works. Problem is, while winmedia 9 Beta may offer some hope in the future, there is no way to edit anything without rendering the stream and recompressing it with costs in both time and quality. If you wanted to end up with SVCD then, it would only pay off if you captured in the exact same format settings to avoid ANY editing, although I suppose I should mention you can usually trim & join mpeg2 streams without any penalties using freeware.

For general analog capture, I am one of many, many die hard fans of AVI-IO, and highly recomend it.