[FONT="Fixedsys"]Heres my question........I was wondering when you capture vidoe from a mini dv camera, does the video card determine the quality of the video or does it just come in uncompressed always. I dont believe its coming through my card anyway. Its goin through my fire wire ports on the side of my laptop. So will this make a difference in the video quality and do i need to invest in a pinnacle or matrox card to get pure clean video? And if it helps I have a NDVIA Quadro Go FX 1400. [/FONT]

[redsox_mark]

If you capture DV via firewire, it is a straight copy of the data, unaltered. So any compliant firewire card/port is all you need.

Mark

thanks alot.....i got 2 more questions....does it matter what camera you are capturing from.....the video was shot on a 3,000 camera and i tooke the dv tape and captured it from my 300 dollar jvc camcorder.....also im gettin another computer soon waht would b a good vidoe card to get jsut for editing?

[redsox_mark]

The catpure is just copying digital data, so it won't matter that you are using a £300 camcorder to do the capture.

If you buy a new PC, you don't need any special video card for editing. Just getting a fast PC will do! (Even a not so fast PC will do).

I believe some editing software can take advantage of some graphics cards to further accelerate editing, but others can comment on this; this isn't an area I know well. But with a fast PC and editing DV, I doubt this is needed. For editing HDV which is more CPU impacting it can help.

Mark

[evans]

When you capture and set your capture program to uncompressed then you will have a huge avi file of over 50 gb for less than an hour. Your other choice is dv avi format which is compressed to fit about 13 gb of your hard disk. Most people use this and i have been experementing with different codecs that compress the footage and this makes a difference in color and sharpness of the picture.

Codecs I recommend are canopus dv codec, and the one i use canopus HQ codec. I didnt like the output from the mainconcept codec at all.

[redsox_mark]

“Pixelminded” has a MiniDV camcorder, and is capturing via Firewire. When you shoot MiniDV, it is already compressed in the camcorder. When you capture, it is simply a copy of data. There is no codec involved. It will be ~13 GB per hour. Agree you don’t want to capture uncompressed, and there is no reason to.

A DV codec only comes into play when editing/rendering. A good editing program will come with a good DV codec, you should be able to render many generations of DV without any noticeable loss of quality. Editing programs also “smart render”, so they only render any parts you change. Parts you don’t change remain as the original.

Mark

[evans]

well all of the capture programs give the option of the codec during capture and believe me it is noticable when viewing and in final production as compared to using other codecs. For instance the canopus codec HQ gives better color and more crispness. If you use say canopus codec and right click on the captured avi and click properties and summary you will see video compression as canopus HQ, so i would presume that it is compressed on the tape and uncompressed to your pc and then recompressed using the codec.

encoding from avi to mpeg 2 is another compression and this is more important in quality, only a handleful i have tried are any good. canopus procoder 2 is good but slow and image is softened also you cant use a matrix to get better quality. cinemacraft is the best IMHO as it is fast quality is good but hard to use and expensive.

[redsox_mark]

I capture with the “Sony Video Capture” application which comes with Sony Vegas. It does not give any options for a codec during capture. And again it makes no logical sense to do anything other than a straight data copy when capturing DV. I can’t see how uncompressing the video and then recompressing it back to DV can give better colour and crispness.

What are you capturing with, and is it from a DV camcorder? What you are saying only makes sense to me if you are capturing analogue video – in this case you would need to do some encoding, so a choice of codecs makes sense. It also makes sense if capturing MPEG2, where you might want to convert to a DV codec for editing. Or with HDV MPEG2, where you may want to convert to an intermediate codec for editing.

You have further confused me in that according to this reference, Canopus HQ is a HD intermediate codec:
http://www.canopus.com/contentfiles/...paper70b72.pdf

Maybe I have something to learn here, but I’ve never seen anyone recommend anything other than a straight copy of DV, unchanged, when capturing DV. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else shares your view.

Mark

[evans]

the capture program i use is nero vision express 3 if you go to the capture section it clearly gives you options of video compressor for capturing. No sure on the sony program i have vegas 5 but havent used this to capture. The canopus codec HQ comes with the edius editing software version 3.

[redsox_mark]

That’s interesting that you can select different DV codecs when capturing in Nero. I still believe that an unaltered direct capture of DV is the best workflow.

Mark

[evans]

yes it is other capturing programs as well as nero vision, i have also used on some occasions scenalyzer program and that gives you the third party codec option as well.

right now my problem is shaky video not capturing and i have downloaded try out of adobe after effects so i can use Boris Continuum Complete try out to use their optical stablizer which is suppose to be easy to use unlike others i have tried where you have to use tracking points and it is too difficult to use.

[Nvening]

If your getting new pc for video editing then your best with a dual core intel pentium D processor.

[redsox_mark]

evans,

When you say that the colours look better etc when you capture with the HQ codec, is this viewed on the PC?

While capturing DV should be a straight data copy, if editing, viewing (even previewing while capturing) the PC will need to use a codec. When you look at the file properties I believe that is what you see. I've also seen people report that the HQ codec shows the colours better on the PC when previewing/editing. This doesn't mean it was used in the capture, or that the actual footage was improved.

Back to the original question, for capturing DV, the card doesn't matter (as long as it is a complient firewire one), and codec also doesn't matter.

Mark