Thanks for the welcome and the quick response.

I'm a bit unclear, though.

Are you recommending the codec I should use to re-render, or telling me that I can somehow acquire an MJPEG codec that Vegas will use to open my existing files?

Veags will not access the Pinnacle codec. YOu need to download and install a third party MJPEG codec. Morgan, Picvideo and Mainconcept all make one.

Dave T2

For a long-term solution you may want to get an analog to digital converter like the Canopus ADVC-100 and capture through firewire as DV.

Canopus makes several different analog to digital oonverters. ADS also makes one, the ADS A/V Link

> Veags will not access the Pinnacle codec

Are you sure? This is what musicvid is claiming he does and it’s been a while since I had my DC10 card installed but I thought there was no problem with other applications using the MJPEG Hardware codec on the Pinnacle card. It’s only when you remove the card that you need to get a software MJPEG codec. You can’t print to tape with the hardware codec but I thought you could render to a file with it. I remember using it with VirtualDub.

Anyway, if Vegas can’t view the video in the files then I guess it can’t find the codec. I would try installing the demo of the PicVideo or Morgan MJPEG codec just to see if that clears it up.

~jr

Wonderful suggestions, all, but I'm hoping for a free solution. I'm a part-time hobbyist who just wants to get family VHS onto DVD (and, perhaps have some fun with it).

Pinnacle was really all I needed feature-wise. It just had this pesky problem of not being able to render a DVD without pushing the audio about 10 seconds out of sync. It makes a beautiful preview, though!

Buying Vegas +DVD was already out of my budget. Purchasing more codecs or a firewire converter (since I don't even have a fireware card) isn't an option for me right now.

I have successfully re-rendered my captures using Cinepak, Indeo, and the DV codecs.

Which one is likely to be the best?

I've noticed that the DV has a vastly different resolution (720x480 instead of 682x480). It looks squished in Media Player, but fine on DVD.

Mostly, I just want to know which "standard" codec has the best quality. Indeo and Cinepak seem to produce a very different color-cast.

-----------

Oh yeah,
I noticed musicvid mentioned Matrox as possibly having free MJPEG codec. I have a Matrox Millenium G450 but I can't find a downloadable codec on their site.

If you need to re-render then you want to use the DV codec. It will give you the best quality (only has 5:1 compression) and is already the correct resolution for DVD MPEG2. I think the free Matrox MJPEG codec is a decoder only. It will not encode. They provide this because they have hardware MJPEG cards and the codec allows you to play back the files without the card.

The PicVideo MJPEG codec is only $28 for non-commercial use.

~jr

"> Veags will not access the Pinnacle codec
Are you sure? This is what musicvid is claiming he does and it’s been a while since I had my DC10 card installed but I thought there was no problem with other applications using the MJPEG Hardware codec on the Pinnacle card. It’s only when you remove the card that you need to get a software MJPEG codec."

Yes, this is what I do, but with the qualification: I'm using VV2 on Win98SE with a DC10+ and the 1.06 VFW (mci) drivers. An awful lot has changed since then and I have no knowledge if VV4 on XP will see the Pinnacle WDM drivers with the DC10+ (Studio AV) card installed. I defer to Dave T2 on this because he has kept up on both fronts. In any case, the software codecs mentioned by both of us will do the trick because I have used them with VV and other editors on a machine that does not have the DC10+ installed.

Hope this clarifies the discussion, but sorry if it has overcomplicated the issue for you, cubelodyte. The short answer is yes, a third party MJPEG codec will allow you to open, edit, preview, and render files within Vegas. SonyEPM has previously recommended Matrox because it is free.

>>...I use an analog camera and am obliged to use Studio 7/8 to do
>>my video captures.

The Studio 8 breakout box works superbly with the Scenalyzer capture program.

www.scenalyzer.com

This is a very worthy investment, and very inexpensive. There is also a free demo to download.

The Studio 8 breakout box PLUS Scenalyzer captures all audio in synch perfectly, regardless of any problems you may have had with Pinnacle.

I came to Vegas for exactly the same reason(s). :)

A lot of people here even use Scenalyzer with Vegas. It's a great capture program. Even better than Vegas', in my (any many other's) opinion.

OK, this makes perfect sense now. I was using Windows Me at the time I used my DC10+ card and I remember now that Win2000/XP was a different set of drivers that only worked with Studio. By then I had my Pinnacle Deluxe card so I never tried the DC10+ on XP. Looks like the software codecs are the only solution.

~jr

The Morgan JPEG(M-JPEG) it is free for download. Vegas will reconize the codec and open in timeline. The render in any format you want.
Have a fun

This "Matrox codec" seems to be somewhat mythical.

I've been searching the Matrox site and all the forum entries there have Matrox staff sending people to Morgan or Pegasus.

Does anyone have a link to download the "free Matrox codec"?

btw
I have been re-rendering using the DV codec. Its a different resolution, but it seems to be the only one that doesn't give me horizontal wave distortion on movement.

Here's the link SonyEPM gave for the Matrox codec:
http://matrox.com/video/support/ds/software/codec/home.cfm

I haven't downloaded the Morgan codec recently, but from what I remember the free version was watermarked. You could use it to open files, but not to render to.

Great.
That link got me a codec.exe file. I'll try it ASAP.
I also downloaded the Morgan codec. It says its a 60-day demo. Perhaps that's what you mean by the watermark on render.

I'm not concerned with render, so that should be fine too.

Thanks for all the help!

I tried the Matrox codec. It still won't recognized the video stream.
I tried the Morgan codec, it recognized the video stream but the results were dismal. Horizontal distortion a motion points and severe pixelation on diagonal lines.

Looks like re-rendering to DV is going to be the way to go. Perhaps I'll take a break until I can afford a real capture device.

It may that the Morgan codec is not recognizing the field order correctly. The Pinnacle DC10/AV card captures upper field first (field order A) while DV is lower field first (field order B). If there are settings in the Morgan codec for field order I would just flip it. When I used my DC10+ card I used the PicVideo codec so I know that one works fine.

~jr

Once more into the breach...

I have installed the Matrox codecs and capture from camera or VHS via the ADVC-1394 with the Vidcap in Vegas. Vegas recognizes and uses the Matrox DV codec for it's capture. I have not had any problems yet. I removed my DC10 card once I installed the Canopus card before Vegas. Pinnacle saw and used the Canopus ADVC-1394 just fine. As Vegas does as well.

I haven't read the entire thread, and so I apologize if someone said this earlier. I too have lots of files captured with the Pinnacle DC10+, and Vegas cannot see them. What I do is to render the clip as an AVI with Pinnacle, using the DV codec. Although Pinnacle does have lots of OOS issues, I find that in simply rendering a clip, w/o transitions, editing etc. into an AVI, it's fine. The rendered AVI can be imported into Vegas. I've done this a number of times. It works fine.