The several avenues to capturing and editing analogue video?

Hi,

I have been searching through the excellent repository of AVf, still to have a few doubts, and seek some help. I'll try to put them in a systematic way, to be useful by others:

- PROBLEM: I have a sony trv digital8 camera, and i want to convert all my cassetes into digital material in my PC (a 2GHz P4, 512M RAM, NVIDIA GFORCE graphics board). The camera outputs composite or Svideo.

1- first tries using asus video capture sw with the graphics board yielded a jumpy mpeg2 video... (all other capture SW was worse, but this is the one that came with the board.

2- So, decided to switch to dedicated HW. I analysed: Pinnacle studio moviebox DV or USB; Dazzle; Canopus. The reviews in several places are contradicting, and they left me several doubts, that you guys might or not confirm:

- The best performer would be the Canopus series. It looks flawless though.... , but also most expensive.

Q- (ADVC-100 a best price-performance ratio?

- Pinnacle would be the best price-performance choice. But many complain about the "video-audio desync":

Q- does it occur during storage of the captured masters, or just when we are editing, and thus would be Studio 8 SW's fault, not the capture track from camera to disk? This is important, because I could then use another editing SW. What I really want above things is flawless high-quality (no frame loss etc.) video capture (i.e. quality near to my current cassetes...)

Q- And apart from that, is it true that Pinnacle doesn't lose frames?

3- And within the fields of option above, I have an additional question:

Q- When using these dedicated devices, i.e. Pinnacle Mbox, what difference does it make if I connect it to the PC via USB or FireWire? (i don't mean the camera, i mean the capture device output)
Pinnacle adverts say even USB1 would be ok, but i want to be sure...

Thanks for any help.
paulo

[Kevo]

Doesn't the camera have a firewire socket?

If so then this would be your best route as there will be no quality loss unlike with S-video or composite.

[MartinImber]

One answer and the only answerFirewire!

[MarkE19]

I love Martins subtlety , but what he has said is totaly true. The only way you should be connecting a digital camcorder to a PC or Mac is via firewire. You will also save yourself a lot of money as a firewire card can be bought for around £10 and this will include the cable to connect the camcorder to it. Also transfer via firewire will keep the quality at 100% so you will get the best possible final PQ on DVD etc.

Mark.

Thanks a lot for the prompt answers.

In fact, i went to check the manual again, and it looks like it does render animated video, though at *100MBPS* (it's the S100 substandard). It's a year 2000 camera, i was trying to remember why i got convinced DV out was only for still image (maybe at that time's technology it was all we could get?...)

I'll let you know out of curiosity if it worked, after buying my new PCI Firewire card :-) (100MBPS on the 2GHZ P4, that should do it)

Anyway, I still have *phase two*, a set of VHS cassetes full of material to go digital, and a plain old analogue VCR. So my questions on video capture devices still hold, unfortunately. Any help here?

cheers
paulo

PS- Trivial tech question: what makes ilink (400mbps) better than usb2.0 (480mbs) ?

firewire is sustained, USB rate is a theoretical maximum, dependant on device speed and PC speed, it's like having a jaguar that cruises along the motorway at 120 all day, or an XR2 which burns out every 1000 miles, USB2 has a higher maximum trnsfer rate (& is always better thanUSB1), but firewire is more stable.

[MartinImber]

Glad to have helped

Do you have analogue in for your video camera - if so you can use the camera A-D converter

Martin,

yes, at least it says it has s-video in/out, i've just used the out so far.

How would that work? Would it go in through the s-video, and come out in real-time in digital through the iLink socket?

But what about the audio? it does not have audio in, won't it be a mess to synchronize?

what would be the set-up to end-up with an mpeg2 in my disk?

it's a sony trv320e, by the way.

tks gt the help
paulo

[Bassbin]

Originally Posted by paulo

- The best performer would be the Canopus series. It looks flawless though.... , but also most expensive.

Q- (ADVC-100 a best price-performance ratio?

I've got one of these for capturing odd bits of analogue footage and it is a great bit of kit. I actually chose it as they were doing good bundle pricing with Premiere Pro last year. As it's a standalone item that just connects to your PC as a DV device it can be easily used with different PCs and will last through several upgrades.

[MarkE19]

Some camcorders with AV-in will encode analogue to digital in real time, others will only record to DV tape from an analogue source.
The camcorder will have the S-Video input and normally a combined composite & stereo audio phono plugs at one end to a jack type of plug at the other. You should have a dedicated lead supplied with the camcorder to use these ports with standard equipment such as a VCR etc.
Capture from analogue source connected via DV cam (or record to DV tape first if needed with your cam) to PC via firewire with standard editing software. Edit as required and then author the AVI file to MPEG-2 DVD complient format.

Mark.

[TonyM19]

Any chance of some form of thread/sticky on which camcorders support analogue to digital passthrough?

[MartinImber]

If there is video in there must be audio in

ANyway even if you have to record than playback - once you are in DV format you will not lose any quality

DIgital 8 is DV standard

[MarkE19]

Originally Posted by TonyM19

Any chance of some form of thread/sticky on which camcorders support analogue to digital passthrough?

This sort of thing has been suggested in the past, but due to the speed at which the models change (plus different specs or model numbers in different countries) it would be too much of a nightmare to keep up to date. I'm afraid its down to good old homework to find out what cams do what

Mark.

All,
Thanks a lot for the interesting and very helpful replies. So, either direct analogue to DV, or DV tape recording would do the service.

Remaining problem would be that indeed the Sony TRV320E has the following as I/O:
- S-video IN and OUT
- the jack mentioned by Mark, for the cable whose other end would be RCA plugs, but this is *only* OUT (this is what i used for the analogue capture experiments with my graphics board).
- and then the DV out (Fwire)

Now, your observations made me go back have a close look. The only available audio input is the MIC input. I have to make some experiments. It's stereo, which is good. But it may have too high sensivity to be fed by the audio out from the VCR. We'll see, maybe there's a good AGC ....

Thanks all for yr help, i'll report results
paulo