Terratec Grabster AV 400 - Is it any good?

[adamscbot]

Ive just purhased a Terratec Grabster AV 400 to convert my ageing anlogue tapes to digital format so i can edit them and dump them onto DVD's.

This has cost me a lot of money to get all the equipment. First my old analogue camcorder broke so I bought a new samsung one off ebay. Then I purchased this converter.

Has any else had any exerience with this converter. Its the best one the compnay offers (hardware encoding) but I want to know if anyone else has had a good experience.

Also, the converter claims to output these resolutions:

# Capture rate PAL: Up to 720x576 pixel/25 fps
# Capture rate NTSC: Up to 720x480 pixel/29,9 fps

I am assuming (as the videos are pal) that I will output at 720x576. At what point does it change to widescreen to fit on my TV? I am assuming it is up to the TV to sort it - but thats ok, because my Sony V32 does a fine job of that.

I have also purchased a Dual Layer writer. Is this necessary to offer the best quality video. The tapes last 1 hour 30 mins each.

I just want to make sure, Im doing everything right.

Adam
PS Tell me if this is the wrong forum!

[redsox_mark]

Adam,

You are in the right forum.

I don’t have any experience of this converter. It converts to MPEG, which has advantages as your destination is DVD, especially if your edits are just simple cuts. If you were to do a lot of advanced editing a converter to DV might have been better…but this requires a lengthy render to MPEG to get out to DVD. I see this converter comes with Ulead Videostudio (and DVD Movie Factory); Videostudio edits MPEG2 pretty well.

For full resolution, yes 720x576 pixel/25 fps is the standard PAL format. Note the resolution is the same regardless of if the video is widescreen or not (widescreen just has different shaped pixels). I assume your analogue footage is not widescreen. You could try and change the format to widescreen in the editor, but I think it best to keep it in the original format. Then you can use the options on your TV as to how you display it.

With the converter you can set the bitrate depending on how much you want to fit on a single disc. With a single layer disc you can use a rate of around 6000 kbps, which is good quality and fit 1.5 hours. If you want to use the highest possible rate that is around 9000 kbps, which would fit 1 hour on a single disc. Dual layer you can fit double, so with dual layer you can fit 1.5 hours at the highest quality setting with room to spare. But depending on the quality of the source material.. you may not be able to notice any difference between 6000 and 9000 kbps. Note some DVD players struggle if the rate is pushing the maximum, so you may not want to go as high as 9000 anyway.

Mark

[adamscbot]

Thanks. That helped a lot.

With videostudio, will i be able to add effects and titles despite the fact is is not converted to DV format?

Adam

[redsox_mark]

Yes, you will be able to add titles and effects with Videostudio editing the mpeg2 stream, and it should work fine. If you are editing with lots of different video tracks it could be slow… and things like colour correction are hard to do accurately on a format like mpeg. But for most things, especially if you have a reasonably fast PC, you should be fine.

Mark