Problems with capturing clips from camcoder

[Theo Van laar]

Was the audio recorded as 12bit or 16bit?

Theo

[Dimitri Chapov]

12 bit. I thought about that. There’s no way to convert it on Panasonic NV-GS230 as I understand. I found a “workaround” – captured the tape with Microsoft Windows Movie Maker and then used in the Vegas editor. Would quality be higher if I could have done it in Vegas? Also, what affects the quality of the captured video, besides the camcorder itself – fire-up vs USB, type of capturing software, computer hardware?

I’m sorry if my questions are naive – I’m just playing around with that for the first few days. And I am not an expert in Video/Audio compression either. 🙁

Dimitri

[Theo Van laar]

Do you mean that you can not record audio with your Panasonic NV-GS230 in 16bit mode??? Most likely that would solve your problem.

Theo

[Dimitri Chapov]

Yes, I can. But I already have over three hours of recorded footage in 12 bit. There’s no way I can re-sample on such an inexpensive camera. For some reasons there’s nothing I can do with the *.avi odtained by the capturing through Vegas – SoundForge just doesn show any sound in it, even though File Properties dialog tells there is, and I can play audio with video in Sony Capture 6 normally.

Movies Maker doesn’t complain about capturing at all and everything works afterwards – both video and audio.

Generally, if there’s no difference in capturing quality, I can live with that. If there is – I am going to record video with 16 bits sound encoding NEXT time. But I was thinking about salvaging those three hours of footage. Nothing important but, you know, of sentimental value – family life shootings, my wife, son and I, you know.

I just hate the very idea that I don’t have understanding and control over that technical crap.

Theo, thank you so much for you time! What do you think affects quality of *.avi on the computer:

1/ USB vs Fire-Up Cable
2/ Algorithm (Vegas vs Movies Maker)
3/ Computer hardware

Thanks a bunch. I really appreciate your advice.

[Theo Van laar]

‘What do you think affects quality of *.avi on the computer’

If you are talking about DV-avi: capturing means nothing else as copying, so without loss. However, as soon as you render (i.e. recalculate the video or audio) you loose quality.

Theo

[Dimitri Chapov]

So, if my picture is not like that on Discovery Channel when I render off DV quality (“as is”, up to 178Mb per minute of footage) it means Panasonic is a shitty camcorder for $600 (in Moscow, Russia, two years ago) and I need something for $5,000-6,000 to make clips like National Geographic? I mean, their DVDs show great picture on my computer – I want the same. I don’t mind having lighting problems, you know, I just want to have that “crisp”.

[Dimitri Chapov]

Now I have another one… With DVD Architect this time:

Refuses to burn a DVD, saying that:

‘SFMMCX’-(17)
“-(2)
-‘TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-H653N HB02’-(0)
Module
f:\source\sonic3\release\dvdarchitect\5.0\cddrvs\sfcd\sfmmcx.cpp Line 1869 (sounds like a line in C++ code on a drive I don’t even have)
A hardware error occured.
Unknown Additional Sense 08 03

Status 00020202
(+plus some hex memory dump)

What can I do?