video capture hardware help

[Chipburner]

Hello:
Need help finding video capture hardware (from VHS to PC) in order to record my home videos.I would like to keep my 4 year daugther talent show in a CD format :-) .Any suggestions about hardware (USB,PCI), video card & software I can use for it?

[audiyoda]

First, keep in mind that broadcast quality video (640x480@29.97fps) will take up roughly 1 Gig for every 6 minutes of footage (AVI file format). With that said, here's a quick how to.

As for capture cards, Pinnacle Systems has a few that are MotionJPEG compliant and won't break the bank. M-JPEG is an older video codec that for short clips (10 minutes and under) is really good in terms of compression but rather bad in terms of audio to video sync. Most clips under 10 minutes you won't notice the snc issues, over 10 and you're in trouble. Capture cards that are native to MPEG or AVI are going to get expensive ($450+) but are a much better option if you think you're going to do a ton of capture/transfers.

Pinnacle Systems capture cards are the best in the market. For M-JPEG cards, their Studio 400 card (~$100) is very good but is still somewhat limiting. Their MiroVideo DC-30 Pro (~$450) is their best 'prosumer' card and will offer the consumer many professional benefits.

Your other option for capture is a "all in one" AGP or PCI video card. ATI's All In Wonder 128 or All In Wonder Radeon are great cards and capture in native AVI and MPEG 1 & 2. The capture quality is not quite as good as a dedicated card, but the cost advantage is huge as is the option of MPEG-2 capture. You can fit 23 minutes/Gig of 640x480 @ 29.97fps video on your HDD.

Your other big concern is data transfer rates. You'll need at least a ATA-66 hard drive. ATA-33 won't cut it for video capture even at low resolution.

Once you've captured your video, you'll need to edit it. ULead's Video Studio is the best consumer video editor on the market (and comes bundled with all ATI All In Wonder cards). The learning curve isn't that high with the program although it will only allow simple splice edits and really no real transitions from one clip to the next.

Burning the clip to CD entails two things. One, making sure the footage will fit onto a CD. The CD is limited to 650Meg so edit wisely. The other option is to create a VideoCD. This requires the video footage to MPEG-1, at a resolution of 352x240@29.97fps. VideoCD is a DVD compliant format that will only play computers with MPEG-2 decoders and it will also play on most consumer DVD players. Basically, the video footage is changed to data packets and saved in a DVD compliant file system. This allows much more footage than normal to be stored on a CD-R. The problem, as I stated, is the VideoCD will only play on some computers (with MPEG-2 hardware decoding) and most consumer DVD players.

Now that I've hit you will probrably more information than your thought you'd want or need, narrow down what questions you have and ask away.

-Craig

[Chipburner]

First,thank you for fast replying to my post...It looks like you are a "maestro" in video auditing! And thanks to PC MECH for having this space,great job! Only two more things:1.I have heard about a video format called "DIV-X" where you can have 2 hours of video in a CD. Is this true?Can I format this way my video file after following the procedures you explained? 2.How much space you calculate I will need in the HDD for 1 hour of video may I say in a VCD format?

[audiyoda]

DIVX:-) is a 'form' of MPEG-4. It's based off MPEG layer 1 which is still an industry 'standard'. MPEG-2 has better quality, but MPEG-4 has MUCH better compression and the quality is almost as good as MPEG-2. The only big problem with DIVX:-) is for playback: both computers MUST have the DIVX:-) codec installed on the system. Not just any MPEG-4 codec. For example, if you burn a CD-R with a DIVX:-) encoded video and run hte CD-R on another system using Window$ Media Player, if hte codec is not there, Media Player will see the video as just another MPEG-4 and try to download the generic MPEG-4 codec whcihc won't work. Another small problem is Media Player doesn't like the DIVX:-) codec very mcuh -- it's been known to freeze up during playback. There is a DIVX:-) player on the market so playback isn't really an issue as it's a much better utility than Window$ Media Player ever thought of being.

The other isse with DIVX:-) is it is only a codec. To my knowledge, there are no DIVX:-) converters so whatever editing program you use will have to recognize the codec. Most professional editors like Avid and Premiere will recognize the codec and allow files to be saved using the codec. But some programs in the professional market don't (such as Speed Razor and MediaStudio (Ulead's pro editor). So to some extent, DIVX:-) is still a crap shoot.

For me to say how much space you'll need to make a V-CD is hard to say. Most V-CD encoders (like Ligos and Panasonic) use variable bitrate encoding to get the best possible picture using the least space thereby allowing greater playback times. So a 10 minute video encoded for V-CD could in theory be larger file than a 30 minute video also encoded for V-CD. The 10 minute video would be of better playback resolution based on the variable bitrate. I personally have done my entire wedding footage on V-CD -- over 1.5 hours and the resolution wasn't that bad. The only other thing I'll say about V-CD is to reiterate that it will not playback on all computers or all DVD players.