a question on video capture

[reevesy]

hi all,
basically at work we have just got a underwater rov with an attached video camera for filming an inshore sea bed...
thing the debate in going on with how to get the film footage simply edited and onto disc...cutting a very long story short and bearing in mind how unbelievable tight the boss is i was thinking the easist route might be a video capture card in the nearby pc so a video composite lead can go straight in, saved to drive and fannied about with,with the results burned to dvd disc.
i've got a few questions as i know practically zilch about video capturing and editing
basically how does this sound as a way to go?
what are the best video capture devices out there and roughly how much do they cost?
do these tend to come with some baic editing software?
can you get external video capture devices via usb as well as internal ones?
lastly and probably the most important one is once a video capture device is fitted to the pc and a video line from the camera connected to it, will we effectively have a 'live' feed from the rov to the pc screen so we can watch the footage as it happens?

any help you folks could give me would be most appreciated and save me a bit of leg work.
cheers.

[MarkE19]

Originally Posted by reevesy

basically how does this sound as a way to go?

Your 'easiest' way to go would be to buy a standalone DVD recorder, but via a PC is also an option if you need the extra editing features.

Originally Posted by reevesy

what are the best video capture devices out there and roughly how much do they cost?

Best regardless of cost?
The best are the Canopus ADVC capture devices that start from around £80. You then have the cheap & chearful ~£30 USB2.0 devices, but you really do get what you pay for.

Originally Posted by reevesy

do these tend to come with some baic editing software?

Not the Canopus devices, but AFAIK all the USB devices do have basic software included.

Originally Posted by reevesy

can you get external video capture devices via usb as well as internal ones?

Yes, see my above comment. Most of the Canopus ADVC devices are also external but connect via firewire.

Originally Posted by reevesy

lastly and probably the most important one is once a video capture device is fitted to the pc and a video line from the camera connected to it, will we effectively have a 'live' feed from the rov to the pc screen so we can watch the footage as it happens?

any help you folks could give me would be most appreciated and save me a bit of leg work.
cheers.

Most if not all editng software has a monitor window during capture, but this is unlikely to be full screen.

Mark.

how much money you intend spending on a video capture card ?

I use good brand capture card, which later on, can connect to a TV monitor to output the signal (or show signal as on 'external monitor') while connected to my computer.

I transfer footage via firewire on disk, via FCP (equivalent is premier on PC etc.) while watching it play on monitor.

You will need minimum 500GB hard drive. Firewire RAID is a good choice.

This is a MUST before you begin thinking of the rest. No SPACE no video transfer in reality.

The right way to go is definitely by buying a video capture/ play card. Also you need the editing s/w and storage. The rest can be learnt by experience or reading a good book, if you are a newbie to this job.

But you need internal capture card !. External ones are usually the so-called break-out boxes. But these still get connected to a card. So why the hassle with all the cable mess on your desk ?

[reevesy]

thanks for the input...i had thought about a normal standalone dvd recorder.....would this option provide a 'live' picture...this, like i said is the most important feature..
also on the editing side of things,only basic title and cutting out the boring bits is needed,so i'll assume one with a built in hard disc would be more useful.
....i hear panasonics are the best for editing features?

[Mr.D]

Just about any cheap capture card will work with a freeware app called Dscaler. This will give you a very good quality live image. You can also record with Dscaler but even with a powerful machine you may not be able to compress on the fly very effectively.

You could always capture uncompressed but you would need a lot of diskspace (allow about 1GB a minute for uncompressed PAL) , you could then edit and compress as a post process (tmpgenc is a good quality cheap software encoder). Then author to dvd.

Potentially this would be the cheapest route ( assuming you have the diskspace) and offer very good picture quality ,probably better than the cheap consumer level realtime encoding devices.

There are freeware apps that will allow you to edit and author to dvd and for the most part are as capable as the paid for rivals.

Assuming you have a reasonable machine (P4 3.0GHz or better) with a couple of hundred GB spare on the Harddrive you would only be looking at the cost of a half decent analogue capture card...20quid say. You might have to spend a little while familiarising yourself with some of the issues involved but you would end up with a very flexible route to get your video. If your graphics card has its own capture stage you might not even have to buy a capture card.

[reevesy]

....1 GB a min ....i can see more problems occurring,i think the machines about 2 ghz and hard drive of about 50gb....plus win 2000 ....
another thing i've thought about is one of those archos 100 GB media players,with the built in screen...but was not sure if the footage would have to be encoded/re-encoded and how long that would take.on the plus side as this can record straight from the telly,it should be quite easy to store and transfer the footage presumably.
thing is they're like everyone else,they want to do the lot for a cheap as possible.

[Mr.D]

W2K isn't a big problem , my main serious PC still uses it and I do a lot of video work on it. You might be able to upgrade the cpu for not a lot of money to something above a 2.4 and hard drive space is cheap as chips these days.

The 2GHz might be okay if you don't run lots of filters and use a lower quality deinterlace for display in Dscaler, the good thing about it is you can tweak it to get acceptable results on lower spec'd machines. It ran just fine for me on a 1.13GHz P3 for a few years but that was just for live display no capture , but lossless capture shouldn't be that intensive on the CPU as its really just dumping the memory out to disk. Even if you don't go this route you willl probably need a bit more diskspace.

Dscaler also has lots of decent filters that will help clean up a composite feed , sharpening might be benificial for your particular purposes.

As for software encoding it will run as fast as it can on your hardware , a faster machine will do the encode more quickly but the end results will be the same quality wise.

Have a look at what output options you have on the ROV , s-video is significantly better than composite and should run the same distances ( I'm assuming its a tethered feed) and most capture devices also offer s-video inputs these days. Component is better again but the capture cards can be pricey , I have a sweetspot analogue component capture card which offers brilliant quality but is over 150quid to buy new last time I checked. (still cheap for component capture)

Make sure you know your output options from the ROV , no point doing all this analogue stuff if its got a firewire output for example although I suspect the length of the cable might mean analogue is more robust.

If you did go the Dscaler route with some diskspace all in I reckon you could do it for less than 200quid including encoding software , a couple of hundred Gigs and a capture card.

[reevesy]

thanks to all....i'll have to re run some options to them

[rickyt]

The more I read the threads the more I think about another better way to record the dives. Would you want to record everytime the ROV enters the water ?. I think using a PC would be a bad idea . Would you want to record to hard drive or DVD disk in real time ? Recording to hard drive will mean it's going to get pretty full at some time or other and will need deleting and de-fragging and recording to DVD disk does'nt take into account a duff disk you may encounter. I would be thinking in terms of a tape method for recording and storage.Maybe something like a miniDV recording unit [dont even know it they exsist ] . Tapes are cheap ,you can use one per dive and keep them for backup .Anything that's interesting can be transfered to PC for editing , then put on DVD. Just an idea you understand .

ps. just checked on that well known auction site and they have the very things , some of them arn't cheap but the Sony one would just suit your needs .Just do a search for miniDV recorders and you'll see what I mean.

[MarkE19]

yep, miniDV recorders are around - but at a hefty price! IMO if you want to go the 'record to tape' route you would be better off getting a fairly cheap camcorder with AV-in (check the specs of any cam closely as many don't have AV-in). You then can use the cam to record an analogue input to tape and edit from the tape later.

Mark.

[Mr.D]

yep maybe go with tape as I spent the entire weekend playing around with the recording in the latest version of Dscaler and the net result is that its gone from being not bad to crashing my machine . Live viewing still works well though.

[reevesy]

well basically once the rov is on the bottom of the sea bed (under 50ft.......we're not exactly talking the abiss here ) then recording can start...
admittingly when the company who sell these demo'ed the gear they were using a sony dv recorder thingy with a little 8 or 10" screen....big bucks as i understand it.....you'd think after paying the 10 or so grand for the rov with all the bells and whistles that a few hundre quid would'nt be a problem.

[Mr.D]

If you get a cheap miniDV cam that has an analogue video in and has a video out that's still active during record.

You could use the miniDV cam as a recorder and pass the signal through to a PC running Dscaler with a cheap video capture card.

You can then display the image from the miniDV cam either live or recorded on your PC screen , you could also have it windowed and displayed alongside any other apps you require to operate the ROV possibly. Save on a secondary display at least.

[rickyt]

As I said in my post ,I would go for some sort of tape recording ,BUT out of curiocity , whats the video quality like if you use a camcorder with an AV input ? I've read lots of posts about people being able to "pass through" their camcorders to capture footage and just wondered .

[MarkE19]

The quality you get with using the AV input on a camcorder is dependent on the quality of the camera feeding the camcorder. Some bullet cams have a lower resolution than that of a camcorder, so the quality will be reduced. If the cam is of high quality then very little quality should be lost on transfer to the camcorder and onto miniDV tape.
If you connect the camcorder to a laptop via firewire then you should be able to record directly onto it, or just use it to monitor the rov. You could however just use the LCD screen on the camcorder for monitoring.

Mark.