I want to create DVD's from my set of S-VHS family video tapes. I have
a Dell Optiplex 2.4 GHz with a 20 MB and a 200 MB drive and a Canopus
ADVC-100. I have tried a number of programs, including Pinnacle Studio
8, Adobe Premier, and Sonic DVD for capture.
The best results so far come from using Pinnacle or Premier to
capture, Premier to edit, TMPEnc to encode the MPG, and DVD Lab to
make the DVD. However, even then the video quality on the DVD is well
below that on the analog super-VHS tape.
Is there a solution? Do I have to spend $550 on a high-end capture
board? The Pinnacle board I used at work was even worse. The Canopus
does a good job of synching the audio to the video, but perhaps
low-end board don't do good A-D conversion. |
Request for Question Clarification by
endo-ga
on
21 Nov 2003 09:15 PST
Hi,
What codec, bit rate and resolution are you using to capture? Also
when you encode the MPG do you notice a decrease in quality or does it
remain constant compared to the capture? What settings are you using
with TMPGEnc?
Thanks.
endo
|
Request for Question Clarification by
omniscientbeing-ga
on
21 Nov 2003 09:17 PST
bobt-ga,
What video card is in your PC?
I use a Canon ZR-45 mini DV cam with firewire connection to a generic
firewire port, capture with Adobe Premiere 6.5, edit with Adobe
Premiere 6.5, export to MPEG with Adobe Premeiere 6.5 MPEG encoder,
and do the DVD authoring process with Sonic MyDVD, and burn the DVD at
the slowest possible speed, and my videos come out "near-broadcast
quality"--good enough for public access TV. My PC is a 2.4 GHz, 512 MB
RAM, 200 GB HDD, but the video card is a 128MB DDR ATI RADEON? 9800
Pro Graphics Card with TV-Out and DVI.
Are you using fresh tapes in the camcorder, or recording over the same
tapes all the time? Probably you should indicate your settings (PAL or
NTSC?)
How do the movies look before you burn them to DVD? In other words,
after you export to MPEG format but before the DVD authoring, how does
the MPG look when played on Win Media PLayer or QUickTime Viewer or
whatever?
omniscientbeing-ga
Google Answers Research
|
Clarification of Question by
bobt-ga
on
22 Nov 2003 07:10 PST
I am using a Radeon 7000 series video card, original equipment from
Dell. I'm not sure how to tell which codec I'm actually using since
several are on the computer, I think. When using TMPenc, I encoded at
a high (8K or so) variable bit rate with 2 passes. The other programs
have a fixed bit rate.
When I view the .AVI video in Windows media player on my 15" LCD
monitor, it looks somewhat grainy. The MPG is only a little worse. The
final product (DVD)seems even more grainy.
An important part of the problem is that these are analog (S-VHS)
tapes. The person replying about their experience with digital video
tapes did not seem to notice that. The Canopus analog-digital
converter is certainly part of the equation here.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
endo-ga
on
22 Nov 2003 08:34 PST
Hi,
Thank you for your clarificaiton.
You might want to try the Huffyuv codec to rule out a codec problem
when converting from analog to digital. Huffyuv is a lossless codec so
encodes the video at the best possible quality. It will take up a lot
of space though, so just try a few minutes to see if you get better
quality this way.
Huffyuv
http://www.divx-digest.com/software/huffyuv.html
After looking at a few sites, I'm not sure you can choose the codec
you encode with using the standard Canopus application. Also the
Canopus seems to be a high quality product, so the conversion should
be of good quality. When you say the final product looks worse, is
this on your TV or still on your monitor? Once the video is on your
PC, I think you need to maximise the settings to maintain the quality
you already have.
Here's a page on quality settings in TMPGEnc, although you seem to
have the correct settings already.
Configuring TMPGEnc for high-quality, DVD-compliant MPEG-2
http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html
Have you tried another cable going from your camcorder to the Canopus
device? A high quality cable, it might make a small difference.
Thanks.
endo
|
Clarification of Question by
bobt-ga
on
22 Nov 2003 15:15 PST
Thanks for the response. I did download the Huffyuv today, but I don't
think that it can be used with the Canopus. I have some recollection
that the Canopus only can use the built-in codec. Do you have any idea
how using the Huffyuv might be done on the Canopus? Generally, how do
you change codecs. How do you tell the software which codec you want
to use?
I did get a gold tipped S-VHS cable a while ago.
When I refer to the final product, I meant on the TV, but the MPG and
AVI grainyness are also visible on the computer monitor.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
endo-ga
on
22 Nov 2003 18:13 PST
Hi,
It is possible that the Canopus can only use a specific codec built in
to the hardware, in which case there's not much to do. Generally in
capturing applications, there's an 'encoding' option where you can
choose settings including bitrate and codec used. In Premiere it is
under 'Export movie settings' as in the following page, the codec is
the 'compressor':
Guides to make your homevideos look cooler with Adobe Premiere
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/userguides/92223.php#export
To make sure I have fully understood, you use Premiere to obtain an
AVI file from the camcorder, which you then reencode into MPEG2 to
burn on DVD?
If that is the case, I suspect that the loss in quality is happening
in the actual capture, and I believe that the codec/bitrate of capture
is essential.
Thanks.
endo
|
Request for Question Clarification by
endo-ga
on
26 Nov 2003 06:21 PST
Hi,
Are you still stuck with this problem?
Thanks.
endo
|
Clarification of Question by
bobt-ga
on
27 Nov 2003 07:04 PST
I haven't made any progress on this so far. It seems to be that I am
not getting the results from the Canopus 1394 that others have gotten
and the cause remains unknown.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
endo-ga
on
27 Nov 2003 07:59 PST
Hi,
The Canopus 1394 is a firewire card with digital input. It is normal
that you don't get the same results since you are doing an analogue to
digital conversion with limited precision. Have you tried any of the
recommendations above, such as trying to change the original
compression codec?
Thanks.
endo
|
Clarification of Question by
bobt-ga
on
27 Nov 2003 08:12 PST
The Canopus does the A-D conversion and looks to the video editing
software like a firewire connection. I have left a question on the
Canopus site but my understanding is that no other codec can be used
because the processing is done using the Canopus hardware and built-in
codec rather than with the computers processor.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
endo-ga
on
27 Nov 2003 08:20 PST
Hi,
I'm sorry to hear that. Then there's not much that can be done,
because if the quality is poor coming out of the Canopus then you
don't have much to work with.
Are you using the same connection/cable to connect your playback
device (I assume a camcorder) to the TV as you use to connect to the
Canopus? It might be possible that the output isn't as good if you use
2 different outputs.
Failing that, you could invest in a cheaper capture card, without a
hardware encoder and do the encoding with your computer CPU. This will
be of course much more CPU intensive, and you might want to capture to
a lossless codec first, then re-encode into your authoring format to
maximize quality. The problem is that it cannot be guaranteed that you
will get a better quality.
You can get such cards for less than $50 or you can get MPEG2 hardware
encoders for a bit over $100. If you want I can get you information
about such cards.
Thanks.
endo
|
Request for Question Clarification by
sycophant-ga
on
30 Nov 2003 01:31 PST
Hi,
I'll have a little stab at this...
From what I've been able to gather here and with a few searches the
ADVC-1394 appears to software as a standard OHCI device, and spits out
DV data.
This means the video coming through the card is at 25Mbit/s (aka
DV25). Despite having a proprietary codec, you should still be able to
chose a capture format in Premiere. If you can, then you want to stay
as simple as possible and choose a basic DV one, not any
recompression.
However, the last time I used Premiere I seem to recall it was a
little tricky to get it to behave in the smartest manner sometimes.
If you are really eager, I might suggest having a go with Avid FreeDV,
which is far more no-nonsense about how it handles video. You can
download it from http://www.avid.com/freedv/
There is a slight learning curve, but you should be able to capture
and export without much trouble. If the problem was with the
capturing, then that may help.
Also, keep in mind that if the video was noisey to start with (as SVHS
can be) then you may find that MPEG compression fails miserably, as it
doesn't handle random noise well.
Let me if any of that helps, and anything else you learn.
Regards,
Sycophant-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
bobt-ga
on
02 Dec 2003 15:51 PST
I will take a look at Avid, but I may still be limited by the Canopus
1394. I think that the video is fairly clean (though it was dubbed
from S-VHS-C to S-VHS). I have seem degradation both when redoing an
AVI after editing and when making the MPG. I am going to try some
digital video capture when time permits.
|
