Video Capture recomendation

[Gary Kleiner]

The piece of the puzzle you left out was what device are you playing your source material on?

Gary Kleiner

Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com

[Mike Kujbida]

Just get a basic firewire card ($25 or less) for capturing and you won’t have any more problems. You’ll end up with NTSC (or PAL, as the case may be) DV-AVI footage which Vegas deals with extremely well.
If you want to capture analog video (from VHS, for example) either use the pass-through feature of your miniDV camcorder (if it has it) or get a box like the Canopus ADVC-110.

[Alejandro Torres]

Ok, sorry for the lack of information on those aspects.

I mainly capture from a Hi-8 camcorder (analog) and a VHS player. I connect them via RCA to DVDirect or MovieBox Deluxe and want to capture them directly to my computer.

I can’t manage to capture anything from DVDirect with any software, it just works within the hardware itself (does it really good but does not support even the most insignificant editing as it burns in real time).

I can just capture to my computer from the MovieBox Deluxe Via Pinnacle’s software and Windows MovieMaker (which I doesn’t help as it is slow, dull and exports it to wmv and I have to convert it again).

I can manage to capture from Firewire devices but what I really need is to capture from RCA outputs.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Alejandro

[Mike Kujbida]

You’ve said that you’re not happy with the capture results with either box so my recommendation for the Canopus ADVC-110 still stands.
If you only need to get the video into the computer, then the ADVC-55 would fill your needs.
The other decent box is the ADS PYRO A /V Link .
Any of these boxes will do an excellent job of converting footage from your HI-8 or VHS into a digital signal for further editing.

BTW, you can tell MovieMaker to capture video in the DV-AVI format instead of WMV. I know it’s an option somewhere as I’ve done it before.

[Alejandro Torres]

Thanks for your recommendations but as I’ve said I currently don’t want to spend money in hardware (I live in Mexico and finding this type of things is impossible) so I would like to know if somebody could direct me to a Video capturing software compatible with my devices. I would also like to know why does sony video capture does not work, not even with their own hardware (DVDirect)…

Furthermore I will follow your advice and try to buy one of these when I visit the States, and I’ll try to search for that option in WMMK but I still have a serious audio problem with the program…

Thanks in advance

Alejandro

[Rick Mac]

[capsat] “so I would like to know if somebody could direct me to a Video capturing software compatible with my devices.”

You already have it. Your hardware came with compatible software.
The hardware you bought is not designed to work with other editing software (such as Vegas).

Vegas is designed to capture via firewire and a couple of high end cards such as decklink. For my old 8mm video (analog) I use a DV converter from DataVideo. I plug my camcorder into it and it outputs firewire DV Video to my computer. If you want to use Vegas you either need a DV Converter or a DV Camcorder that you can pass thru it as a converter for your High-8.

Regards, Rick.

[Alejandro Torres]

So I guess this means my only choice is to buy a new device because Pinnacle’s software is just horrible, it is slow, it crashes every 10 minutes and does really strange things from time to time (like dropping 30000 frames in a 40 minute video capture!, really annoying).

I hoped Sony Video capture could work around this as it does recognize the MovieBox but says it’s being used by other application (even with a fresh restart of Windows and a meticulous check of the processes for other software that may be using it).

I tried once to use Virtual Dub, it did recognize the hardware but I couldn’t manage to get audio synchronization and as I’ve said Nero Xpress wont work with DVDirect (even though it is intended to as it is the bundled software)…

Anyways, thanks for your help.

Regards

Alejandro

[Rick Mac]

One more tip,

If you purchase a DV Converter stay away from the ADS PYRO A /V Link.
Many folks have had problems with them, including me. I tried to save a few dollars buying the ADS Pyro, went thru two units that never worked. Then I bought the DataVideo unit that has worked great for 3 years now.

Another really cool thing about the Converter box is that after you have captured your clips and you are editing on the timeline, the conveter now outputs a composite video output to your video monitor.
Just click on the external Monitor button and you will be previewing on your video monitor instead of a computer monitor.

Regards, Rick.

[Alejandro Torres]

Thanks for the tip! I’ll consider staying away from it and see the others you recommend

Regards

Alejandro