Comments

Chienworks wrote on 10/16/2001, 3:10 PM
I haven't done much TV capturing, but i've captured a ton of stuff from
VHS tapes. I usually use AVI, 320x240 YUV9. I'll admit, i have
absolutely no idea what YUV9 is, but i've played with all of the options
in the capture software i use from RGB24 & 15 through YUV12, 9, 2,
etc. and the YUV9 seems to give very acceptable quality with minimal
file size. Since i'm usually going to be rendering to MPEG, i usually
capture at 24fps.

I choose 320x240 instead of 640x480 because VHS really only has a
resolution of about 200 lines anyway. Capturing at 480 just gives the
fuzziness 4 times as many pixels to be fuzzy in and wastes a ton of drive
space. The final MPEG files actually look sharper and clearer from 240
captures than from 480. However, if you're capturing from a broadcast
TV signal rather than from analog videotape, you may very well find that
640x480 is worth it.

I haven't bothered with SVCD or VCD rendering since my target
audience will just be playing the files back on a computer with Media
Player. I render to MPEG 1, and calculate the bit rate so that the file
fits nicely on one CD. What i do is divide 89,000 by the length of the
video in minutes, subtract out the audio bitrate i want, and use the
remaining number as the video bitrate. For example, if the video is 75
minutes, 89,000 / 75 = 1186.7. I usually set the audio bitrate to 128,
so 1186.7 - 128 = 1058.7, which i round down slightly so i would use
1050 for the video bitrate. This will give a file that fits on a 650MB CD
with very little room left over.

Why 89,000? I dunno. I calculated it one night at about 4am after way
too much Mountain Dew. I assume i figured out how many bits fit on a
CD and went from there.
rb56 wrote on 10/16/2001, 5:18 PM
Thanks for the reply. You didn't mention what software you were using to capture video. I didn't see the options that you refer to in Video Capture 2.5a that comes with VF so I'm asuming that you are using a different program. Capturing the video is my main concern as from there it seems like a saving to mpeg to render in Nero is the way to go

thanks
rb56
Chienworks wrote on 10/16/2001, 8:53 PM
Sorry about that. I'm using a program called Win_TV capture that
comes with the Hauppauge WinTV card i have. It doesn't have as many
bells & whistles as SF's VideoCapture, but it works with that card much
better.

I'm planning on upgrading to the Sony DVMC-DA2 as soon as the
package arrives. Then i'll be doing all my captures through firewire
in DV format ... even from VHS
discdude wrote on 10/16/2001, 10:04 PM
I own an ATI TV Wonder card which uses the same chipset (the bt8x8) as the Hauppauge, AverMedia and Pinnacle's TV cards.

I use three applications to caputre video
(1) VirtualDub - a great program that captures and processes video. Best of all, it is free. I highly recommend it. Get it at http://www.virtualdub.org

(2)iuVCR - if VirtualDub has a weakness, it is that it doesn't (natively) support capture cards that use WDM drivers. iuVCR does. Unlike most other capture programs that claim to support WDM capture devices, iuVCR works. However, its shareware so it costs a little money ($25). Go to http://www.iuvcr.com to download.

(3) AMcap - the only other application that I found that properly works with WDM capture devices (and it should too since Microsoft made it). It is free and open source! However, it is very simplistic. Also, it is hard to download all by itself (it comes bundled with various MS SDK's).

Most of the time I capture 320x240 YUY2 (the colorspace that the tuner card natively uses) with 16bit 44kHz stereo sound. I sometimes use HuffYUV instead of uncompressed YUY2.
rb56 wrote on 10/18/2001, 12:08 AM
Thanks for the replies, I will sure try some of the suggestions that you both have given. I'll post back with results as I try them.

rb56