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Video Capturing Guide at Ars Technica 167

Posted by michael from the hunt-the-wumpus dept.
Deffexor writes "For those of you who read Ars Technica, but do not visit our forum, we have an active Audio/Visual Club where we talk shop about everything ranging from TVs to Stereos to Speakers to Videocards and everything in between. Lately, there has been a lot of interest in capturing broadcast television and converting old VHS home movies to a more timeless digital format, such as VCD, SVCD, and DVD. As more and more people become interested, it becomes increasingly difficult to educate everyone on how to do this properly. Tapping the collective consciousness of the Ars A/V forum, we bring you the 1st part of the Ars Technica Guide to Video Capturing, Cleaning, and Compression."
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Video Capturing Guide at Ars Technica More

Video Capturing Guide at Ars Technica

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  • Linux (Score:1, Informative)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
    Feh. The article is all about capturing video on a PC with 'Microsoft Windows98/ME/2000/XP'. How about linking to some of the interesting work happening in Linux video capture instead.
    • I agree!! Why don't they cover OS X and Linux. Maybe it is because they are only 5% of the market, but I would bet that they are a larger part of the video capture crowd. People see Tivo and think they can do it themselves under Linux and a guide to show them how to that would be interesting, since one can develop for free under Linux. I wonder how many people are into video capture under Linux. I bet that percentage is around 20-30% of the video capture audience.
      • http://homepage.mac.com/rnc/

        They mention using Roxio's Toast for creating the SVCD. I just copied the image files and toc to my linux box and used cdrdao to create the SVCD.

      • Re:Linux (Score:2, Interesting)

        by sh00z ( 206503 )
        Why don't they cover OS X and Linux
        Well, make that Linux at least. The guide to OS X is going to be pretty darned short:

        iLife.

        • Re:Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ian Wolf ( 171633 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @10:20AM (#5555503) Homepage
          I don't like Macs and I have to agree whole-heartedly. I've done video capture on a Mac and if it got any easier it would do it itself. On the PC platform, things get much more complex.

          Working with Pinnacle on Winxp, I ran in to some DV capture issues. The tech support rep sent me a "Things to try" document with over 200 bullet items ranging from the obvious, reinstall the firewire card to the time-consuming reinstall the OS to the head scratching "disable font-smoothing". Ultimately, I built a dedicated video machine that works fine and never determined the real problem.

          • Re:Linux (Score:3, Informative)

            by Curien ( 267780 )
            Not sure about XP, but in 2K, you can disable font-smoothing by going to the Display Properties control panel, selecting the Effects tab, and deselect "Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts".

            And if you didn't know how to do this, it's all explained in the handy-dandy HELP SYSTEM (Start menu, Help). Just open it, go to the index, and type in "smothing fonts". You don't even have to type it all in... it'll find it after the "smo".

            Why do people who always read man pages and README files in Linux never think to do the
            • I suspect the head-scratching was not over how to disable font smoothing, but rather why the hell that would influence video capture and editing in the first place. This is the kind of unexpected, undesirable dependency that makes some of us use macs.

    • I think the interesting point of comparison would be to see how the system requirements might change under a Linux setup. This article lists a 800mhz CPU, for example. Under Linux, could you get away with significantly less than that? I've got a 300mhz AMD K6-2 that I'd love to find some use for...

      • Re:Linux (Score:5, Informative)

        by Christopher Bibbs ( 14 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @09:47AM (#5555212) Homepage Journal
        If you add firewire and use an external capture device (like a DV camera or DV bridge) you can do quite a bit with an older processor. However, any video editing you attempt will be slow and painful. If I use my XP 2000+ to edit things go fast enough to not make it bothersome, but rendering can still take awhile. I've also used my wife's dual G4 and while it isn't any faster, the OS and software is so much better to work with, you wouldn't believe it.

        Personally, I'd prefer Linux to finish polishing the end user experience for Office and Desktop Publishing software (because that's what I use most) before getting into the video editing relm.
        • I wasn't thinking so much about video editing per se as straightforward PVR duty... any thoughts on that?
          • PVR useage is significantly different from what I do as that requires an actualy TV tuner or at least control over a cablebox. However, a K6-2 300 if equipped with Firewire and a DV bridge should be able to handle the recording. The biggest benefit of using a DV bridge over a typical capture card is that you don't have the same problem with maintaining audio sync over long captures.
      • Capture is primarily dependent on disk speed, and codec complexity. If you're capturing HuffYUV in Linux (possible) you could be capturing 512x384@29.97fps on a K6-2.

        Problem is the driver support. Rage Theatre capture is not particular mature and the gatos project avview requires ALSA to capture sound for some reason.

        Encoding on a 300MHz box will be damned slow though. Be happy with 1 or 2fps on such a box.
      • While by no means am I suggesting this as anything but anecdotal evidence, I've been quite pleased with some capturing I've been doing in Linux. There's so many changes, OS, drivers, codec, file format, that I can't really point at any one thing as the reason my captures have been so good in Linux, compared to windows. But I've found myself able to capture with higher resolutions, better audio quality, and amazingly less processor load than when I was using windows. In Linux I'm using nuppelvideo for the ca

    • Re:Linux (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I agree absolutely. A while back a recall that
      linux gazette had a nice article about converting
      video to DVD's under linux. You can read this
      article [linuxgazette.com]
      here.


      It's really amazing how much more advanced the tools are under Windows, especially when it comes to dvd authoring. I would think with all the great dvd players that more people would be working on authoring.

    • I know about video encoding, not necessarily capture, but there's really no comparison between the Windows and Linux offerings as things stand today. One thing I really admire Ars Technica for is that they most always choose the right tool for the job, and for video encoding (and, I could speculate, capture as well) the right OS at this point is Windows. The competitors, as far as encoding is concerned, are VirtualDub on Windows vs. mencoder and transcode on Linux. I find VirtualDub not only much more us

    • Re:Linux (Score:3, Informative)

      by Gheesh ( 191858 )

      I don't know any good guide on how to do this, but using MPlayer [mplayerhq.hu] under Linux you "just" issue the following command:

      mencoder -tv on:driver=v4l:input=1:width=640:height=480:adevice =/dev/dsp:amode=0 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=128 -o myvideo.avi

      with the correct video capture device loaded (e.g. bttv), video cable plugged to the video input, sound cable to the soundcard, and you obtain a 640x480 DivX with MP3 stereo audio, on the fly, using a 600MHz+ machine :-)

      • Thanks!

        I had no idea the sound problem had been fixed. I'll give it a try and hopefully get rid of `vcr'.

        Fantastic!

  • hmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by e8johan ( 605347 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @09:24AM (#5555013) Homepage Journal
    We bring you the 1st part of the Ars Technica Guide to p0rn^H^H^H^HVideo Capturing, Cleaning, and Compression.

  • For ATI AIW Cards... (Score:5, Informative)

    by da3dAlus ( 20553 ) <dustin.grau@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Thursday March 20, 2003 @09:26AM (#5555037) Homepage Journal
    1. Capture source (& clean on the fly with the new Video Soap in the MMC 8.1 software).
    2. Export .vcr file to mpeg2 (ATI likes capturing in it's own format better).
    3. Run mpg file through FlaskMPEG to convert to DivX video with MP3 audio.
    4. Cut commercials in VirtualDub and save using Direct Stream Copy (on Audio & Video settings)
    5. Enjoy your capped copy of the (hopefully not) last episode of Farscape :)
    • ATI likes capturing in it's own format better

      The card itself doesn't particularly care. It's a raw YUV card. And while I haven't tried MMC8 series, MMC 7 series would only let you capture either MPEG (on the fly encode) or raw uncompressed YUV.

      Virtualdub lets you capture to Huffyuv through Window's WDM->VFW wrapper. Or to DivX directly if your box is sufficiently l33t.

      Finally, MP3 audio has fairly big blocks, and Virtualdub can only cut blocks at their divisions. So near every cut you will receive so
    • This is so timely, I could just gasp in astonishment.

      I bought an AIW 9700 yesterday, getting home and installing it, just in time to miss the first couple minutes, but able to capture about 3 hours, before it became seriously rehashed news. On the spur of the moment I saved the TV as mpeg and tried it this morning. The picture is find, but sound is horrible. Any suggestions?

      • If you can avoid it, don't use the line-in passthrough. Instead use CD-audio passthrough.

        Also make sure you have the latest drivers for your sound card, and that your computer is not under high load. Audio sampling is very timing-sensitive.
        • If you can avoid it, don't use the line-in passthrough. Instead use CD-audio passthrough.

          I just used the line cable that came with it, as I was scrambling to get it hooked up. Bummer. Guess there's a trip to the electronics shop in this morning's errand run. (I'm at home, sick, and running out of food, feed a cold sorta thing.)

          Also make sure you have the latest drivers for your sound card, and that your computer is not under high load. Audio sampling is very timing-sensitive

          Latest drivers, check.

          • im using a nearly identical setup (nforce2 audio, AIW capture); the audio needs to be really strong coming into the AIW's input header. Get a pre-amp or switch to a better sound card.

    • Re:For ATI AIW Cards... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by foxtrot ( 14140 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @10:50AM (#5555814)
      2. Export .vcr file to mpeg2 (ATI likes capturing in it's own format better).

      You'll wind up with better output if you can capture in something that's not compressed in a lossy format (like, for example, ATI's VCR format.) huffyuv makes an excellent on-the-fly compressor, though of course ATI's software won't let you use it.

      3. Run mpg file through FlaskMPEG to convert to DivX video with MP3 audio.

      You'll wind up with even better output if you don't go from one lossy compressor to another lossy compressor to yet a third lossy compressor.

      I've been using VirtualDub with my ATI All-in-wonder and things are coming up pretty well so far. You have to jump through a number of hoops to get there-- ATI ships with WDM, but VitualDub wants VFW, so you need a wrapper to get there...

      • Re:For ATI AIW Cards... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Sancho ( 17056 )
        Watch it, dude, you're spreading bad information.

        huffyuv makes an excellent on-the-fly compressor, though of course ATI's software won't let you use it.

        Actually the most recent version of the software lets you choose your AVI codec, assuming it's installed on your system. I routinely capture in HuffYUV to my 80gig RAID drive. Of course, I convert shortly thereafter.

        You'll wind up with even better output if you don't go from one lossy compressor to another lossy compressor to yet a third lossy compre
    • 5. Enjoy your capped copy of the (hopefully not) last episode of Farscape :)

      Sadly, I've gone so far as to re-install my OS in preparation for this event.

  • timeless? (Score:5, Funny)

    by new death barbie ( 240326 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @09:26AM (#5555040)
    Lately, there has been a lot of interest in capturing broadcast television and converting old VHS home movies to a more timeless digital format, such as VCD, SVCD, and DVD.


    Timeless? Hardly. If the media lasts 50 years, the technology certainly won't. The answer: convert all your old home videos to microfilm. It' s the way of the future.

    • Re:timeless? (Score:3, Funny)

      by nolife ( 233813 )
      Damn, I just did all mine in Microfiche. I was getting pretty good at moving the slide around to achieve 29.975 fps..
  • I've got the Hauppauge bt848 based tv-tuner, but how do I record with Linux? I'm looking to make it almost Tivo-like. Any ideas?
  • ...i.e. video capture and conversion to VCD/SVCD (as well as others).

    Note.. this is very Windows biased though.

    Anyhoo... here it is [dvdrhelp.com]. Enjoy.

  • Next generation problems... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @09:32AM (#5555086) Homepage
    One thing here is that this is fine for grabbing TV or plugging into a video camera....

    But in Europe and Japan we have a different problem, we have mobile phones that can capture video, send video and even play video streams. Transcoding of this is a massive deal and will be "very cool to have" going forwards.

    I like this article for the summary it gives of the problems I had yesterday.

    But with a more connected world are the problems the same ?

  • much simpler solution (Score:5, Informative)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @09:34AM (#5555097)
    Get yourself a DV-Bridge like this one [dazzle.com]. It will convert your analog video into digital video just like from a camcorder. That's probably a much better solution than mucking around with PCI boards.

    If you want control and easy scripting, get Linux and capture with something like "dvgrab" and compress it with "ffmpeg" or "transcode" (search on Google, they pop right up). You can view with "xine" or "mplayer", and there are a bunch of editing solutions for Linux as well (although probably not as good as the commercial stuff).

    If you want a no-frills, no-thoughts solutions, just get a Mac and use iMovie. It lets you capture, do some edits, then compress and burn to disk. Very easy to use (but nowhere near as flexible as the Linux solution).

    • I am the happy owner of a bridge.

      With that being said, some caveats for new Dazzle customers. Dazzle has historically had customer service problems, particularly in regards to the bridge. The first versions of the bridge had some rather serious technical problems. (they also stripped out macrovision, but thats beside the point) The newer models don't seem to have as many issues as the older ones did. Problems included lock ups, artifacting, timing problems.

      My bridge is now nearly 3 years old. It runs
      • Note that there are other manufacturers of analog-to-DV converters, so you can pick a different one if you don't like the Dazzle.
    • If you happen to own a Canon Elura 2MC (or similar), you have a miniDV camera that can record from analog inputs thus negating the need for a DV-bridge device.

      My encoding solution has been:
      1) record material to DV with videocamera;
      2) transfer DV to AVI video through Firewire with DVIO [carr-engineering.com]
      3) encode to some MPEG format with TMPGEnc [tmpgenc.net]

      I haven't tried this personally, but there is also a product called MyDVD [mydvd.com], which claims to transfer DV to DVD directly in one step (they call it "direct to disc" recording)
    • Another solution is to get a card like the Matrox RT.X10. It's got inputs for composite, components, and DV. Same thing for output. So that takes care of the capturing part. Also, it will make editing realtime in Adobe Premiere (which comes bundled with with for those who care about the legit part).
    • Reading reviews at [dvdrhelp.com]
      VCDHelper I picked the Canopus [canopus.com] equivalent product over the Dazzle one. I get no dropped frames and perfect audio/video sync. I am alot happier compared to the days when I used my Matrox Marvel G400. The Dazzle is rated at 7.2/10 with 41 votes and the Canopus is rated at 9.4/10 with 85 votes.

      BTW, VCD help has a bunch of Video Capture guides that seem to be better than the one in the article.
    • Those DV Bridges cost roughly $300; you can get an analog TV tuner for $50.

      • Re:Much more expensive solution (Score:5, Informative)

        by ip_vjl ( 410654 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @11:03AM (#5555958) Homepage
        Yes, you can get a capture card cheaper ... but it requires there be working drivers for not only the system you run now, but the one you run in a couple years.

        The Canopus ADVC100 (which I own) or the other "bridge" type products require no drivers other your computer having a working Firewire setup the same as you'd have with a DV cam.

        --

        BTW. These products are not TV tuner cards. They only convert an input video source. If you want TV capture, they're not the right solution.

    • Don't buy Dazzle bridges. We made the mistake of buying 3 of the Firewire ones. (Don't buy a USB bridge in any circumstance: they're worthless.)

      The first batch of 3 would simply lock up when you tried to do anything longer than 5 minutes. The time got shorter as the bridges heated up. Dazzle replaced all three after many, many emails.

      The second batch was no better, although one would occasionally work. More emails: we sent those back.

      Batch 3: still all bad. At this point I simply gave up and wen

    • That solution is perfect if you want to capture from your DV camcorder. If you want to capture from other sources, it's no help. Recording from VCR to camcorder to DV-Bridge is sub-optimal.

    • DV capture under Linux is not perfect.

      dvgrab works OK, but files are *HUGE*, and I've found there is some kind of limit that does not allow recording of more than about 15 minutes at a time in a single file. Transcoding those files and splicing them does not work for me, and at any rate it's a pain.

      In contrast, using a dirt cheap BT8x8 card is very well supported, using something like `vcr' produces small files of good enough quality for TV. Size limits correspond to about 90 minutes of continuous grabbi
  • Why don't you just have a little simple link to this somewhere on the side of the site, and put in a good story in this slot instead.

    • "Hey, we're the guys from Ars Technica, and we thought that you would all love to see this on our site."

      "Oh, by the way, we've just installed some new servers and we'd like to test them for load balancing and, coincidentally, we're about to be audited to see what kind of audience we have and to work out how much we can charge for ads and stuff, so why not try slashdotting our servers right now? It'll save the techies an afternoon of testing so they can go to the movies instead and it'll keep the suits happ

      • Re:Yet another commercial (Score:4, Informative)

        by Hannibal_Ars ( 227413 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @11:05AM (#5555981) Homepage
        "Hey, I'm a complete moron who, in between late-night one-handed surfing sessions, likes to make inane and ignorant slashdot posts bashing anyone with the initiative to make a contribution to the online tech community. I didn't actually read the article, so I wouldn't know that it was put together by a group of volunteers who donated their time and effort so that people like me can have easy access to technical information."

        "Oh, by the way, I also have no clue about Ars in general, so I wouldn't know that the entire site (with the exception of the forums) runs on a single server, and that the guys who own it, run it, and contribute to it have day jobs in order to support themselves so that they can spend their precious free time creating high-quality web content that they give away for free. I would get a life, but it's just too easy to sit back and fire off a cynical post to Slashdot, hoping someone will mod me up and I'll have my very own flaccid little moment of poseur fame--a moment that, unlike the folks who contributed to the article I'm bashing, I didn't actually have to do any work for. "
        • Chill. I actually visit your site quite frequently and find it informative and useful.

          My post was a light-hearted joke, aimed as much at Slashdot's poor editorial standards (everything from story selection and verification to duping to being caught out by fakes to the lack of spelling and grammar checking) as it was to you or your site.

          I'm disappointed - as a great many Slashdot readers - that the editorial standards of this site are a great deal poorer than those of most school newspapers. As a journalis
  • I recently started a thread [infopop.net] on Ars asking for information for external input boxes so I could watch cable television without the television. I received many responses and have since started to look into TV tuner cards as well as a few more external solutions.

    If anyone has any other suggestions, good bad or indifferent feel free to let me know, the more choices and information I have the better.
    • ATI All-in-Wonder cards. Decent 3D performance and you have all the input and output you could ever possibly want.

      While using the old 8500 core, the Radeon 8500DV has SVideo in/out, RCA Video in/out, RCA audio conversion in, SP/DIF out, cable/antenna in, and IEEE1394 in. On a "general purpose" video card!

      The Rage Theatre chip is a general YUV capture chip, so you can choose an arbitrary framerate too.

      And it even comes with a remote control! X10 based RF remote.
      • I got my 8500 AIW in last week (the 128 one not the DV) and I can say that while the card is excellent the multimedia center software it comes with is pretty crappy, I still haven't managed to record a show without crashing, and I've tried 3 versions of mmc.

        also when I went to ati for the software upgrade, some components weren't available without an extra fee. this on a product that I've owned for 1 week! I was still getting free driver upgrades on my geforce2 card 2+ years later.

        also the remote doesn't

  • *whew* glad I don't have to bother with that!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mantrid ( 250133 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @09:38AM (#5555136) Journal
    Well I read the article and I must say that I'm glad I just don't have to bother - I have a 30Hr PVR that is fully integrated with the satellite receiver and can IR blast to control my VCR if necessary. The picture quality is indistinguishable from the live broadcast, it even records high end audiostreams when available (though I keep meaning to expirement and see if it is even recording SAP and other signals...). But most importantly my wife can use it - in fact she loves the system to death...she would get quite anxious if a PC appeared attached to the entertainment system... Pause/Record etc all the standard VCR controls are built into the remote.

    Though they seem to have the best settings all ready to go - maybe someone will write software to handle all of this automatically?

    Even better will be once DVD-R stereo component style decks become common place and affordable. That would be much nicer for archiving than the VCR!
  • where we talk shop about everything ranging from TVs to Stereos to Speakers to Videocards and everything in between

    in between those things??
    That would be cables...

  • Buy drives. Lots and lots of drives. (Score:5, Informative)

    by chiph ( 523845 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @09:43AM (#5555182)
    I've been working on doing this very same thing - transferring some 8" & 12" laserdiscs that will never be released on a modern format (80's music videos, mostly).

    One thing I've saw is that the article specifies a 40gb hard drive as a minimum. That's laughably small. I have twin 80gb drives spanned via RAID, and I filled them up with most of one side of a movie (about 50 minutes of video). Not only do I need more room for the 2nd side of the movie, I also need room for producing the final DVD MPEG files before burning them. Next paycheck I'm buying a couple of 200gb drives to replace them with, and I'm concerned that even they might not be large enough.

    It also doesn't hurt to have the fastest CPU available. I'm on a Athlon XP 1800, and mastering/producing takes longer than the source material is (15min of material takes ~20min to produce). Don't think dual CPUs will help, as the production process is pretty much single-threaded.

    Chip H.
    • Single threaded, but you can cluster the work. At worst, you prepare a network that has a server handing off 150-300 frames at a time. (And if you're putting keyframes in at a lower rate than that, your video random seek times must suck.)

    • Re:Buy drives. Lots and lots of drives. (Score:5, Informative)

      by fruey ( 563914 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @10:15AM (#5555457) Homepage Journal
      If you're using that much space, then you're capturing everything as AVI no compression.

      Use at least a lossless compressor like HuffYUV or even, with a good machine, you could DivX or something on the fly at a high bitrate, and you /could/ even capture the audio in MP3 directly, or else just at 44.1Khz/16bit.

      There's no way you should be needing that much hard disk space for a 50 min capture. I only have 80 Gig in all, and I captured and compressed a 2 hour film in MPEG-1 format, high quality, on the fly, on a PII - 350MHz @ 400x300 or something around that don't remember the exact figure. If I had a better CPU I could do better resolution and MPEG-2 on the fly.

    • Don't think dual CPUs will help, as the production process is pretty much single-threaded.

      Not sure about all aspects, but for MPEG2 encoding (making DVD's & SVCD's) it is a serious boost. Even Hyperthreading helps.

      TMPGEnc w/ Hyperthreading [tmpgenc.net]

      • You only get significant boots if you're encoding with the whole video stream. MPEG-2 works something like this:
        1. Grab 15 frames of the source
        2. Encode first frame as an I frame (no dependancies).
        3. Encode second frame as a P frame (depends on the last I frame.)
        4. Encode a few B frames (Bi-Directional, depends on the last and next P frames).
        5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until all 15 frames are used up.

        Wash, rinse, repeat until you've consumed your input video.

        If you are capturing while you are encoding, you h
    • One thing I've saw is that the article specifies a 40gb hard drive as a minimum. That's laughably small.

      If you're working with raw video, it is small. However with MJPEG at 95% quality 40GB would give you about 3 hours at 25fps, full size PAL (figures for NTSC shouldn't be too different, frame rate is higher but image is smaller). The quality loss is insignificant, especially if you're going to later use MPEG1/2/4 or similar compression. I have 30GB partition for capture and can easily fit 2 hours high qu

  • That's the "old" way, and it's a pain... (Score:3, Informative)

    by sdo1 ( 213835 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @09:58AM (#5555283) Journal
    I've been working on capturing my laserdiscs to put them on SVCD (and eventually DVD). It's a royal pain to get it even close to right using those methods. It is the method that will allow you the best quality though.

    BUT, the MUCH easier way is to use a device with a built in MPEG2 encoder chip. Plug in analog and it spits out an MPEG2 file. As mentioned previously, the Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge [dazzle.com]. The Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 [hauppauge.com] is another product with a hardware MPEG2 encoder.

    But probably the easiest way to do this is to just go buy a Standalone DVD recorder [panasonic.com].

    -S

    • Agreed! (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )
      DV bridges (such as the Dazzle or the Canopus products) are great for creating DV streams, but they don't solve the MPEG2 or other transcoding problems since they often rely on software codecs and real-time encoding.

      I had high hopes for the Hauppauge 350 card, but the one I got was awful. On the first system I used it in (PIII700) it wouldn't work at all until I re-loaded all the drivers with a batch of beta ones supplied by Tech support. The card then *mostly* worked (it did produce good MPEG2 captures)
    • Unfortunately the problem I see most is that if someone buys an extrenal card it's a lower end one without an hardware MPEG2 encoder & using USB 1.X... Not an optimal solution...

      I'd rather see them get a PCI card than those... Most won't pay a coupel hundred for a external hardware MPEG2 encoder and a Firwire card (since most systems don't have one by default in the PC world)...
    • There is no consumer-level hardware MPEG2 encoder that will give you the same performance that CCE or TMPGEnc will give you.

      Sure, it'll be easier and save you some time. But if you want *quality*, go with a software encoder.

  • A few tips for those out to try (Score:5, Informative)

    by lavalyn ( 649886 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @10:03AM (#5555324) Homepage Journal
    1. Capture in as lossless and high resolution a format as you can. It's much easier to discard information than to make more in upscaling.

    2. Halving the resolution means you can reduce the picture size by 4 times. But this does not mean you can quarter the bandwidth. Smaller pictures contain more detail per macroblock of 8x8 or 16x16.

    3. Lots and lots of disk space. I purchased another 60 gigs just for the capture space. Never mind the processing space.

    4. Since the article stays in Windows, try avisynth to do some of the post-processing. It saves quite a bit of disk space, but at the expense of time if doing two stage encoding.

    5. If using Linux, transcode is fairly good, but it lacks the configurability of avisynth and Virtualdub with filters. It's just not as complete a set.

    6. Interlacing bites. And an analog TV signal will definitely have an interlaced signal. You don't notice it on television because of the permanance of phosphorence. On a monitor that will do 85Hz, it's glaringly obvious. So do an inverse telecine on the video before encoding.

    7. Big iron box. Encoding with any nontrivial filters (like an unsharp mask, or worse yet, noise smoother) will take a lot more CPU time than you could have imagined. Thank goodness that encoding is one of the most parallelizable things to do out there though.

    I'd post more but I think this is enough noise for today.
    • 6. Interlacing does bite, but only NTSC signals will definitely have it. PAL can be progressive. Inverse telecine works on movies and dramatic TV programs, but you'll want something else for television that isn't shot on film (e.g. news).

      7. The fun part of parallized processing is that you've got to stack several instances of VirtualDub to take advantage of it.
    • 5. If using Linux, transcode is fairly good, but it lacks the configurability of avisynth and Virtualdub with filters. It's just not as complete a set.

      For my use, avidemux [fixounet.free.fr] has been great as a replacement for VirtualDub in Linux. I used to resort to running VirtualDub in wine, but all the filters I used have analogues in avidemux at this time.
    • You would want to use a "deinterlace" filter to remove the interlacing from your NTSC source. You would want to use an "inverse telecine" filter to convert a movie (sourced at 24fps) that was shown on video (30fps) back to 24fps.

  • "Timeless"?! (Score:2, Informative)

    by autophile ( 640621 )
    to a more timeless digital format, such as VCD, SVCD, and DVD

    "Timeless" is not the word for these formats. "Reproducible with high fidelty", maybe, but in general hard drives and digital optical media don't survive all that long. For archival purposes, these media are next to worthless.

    Unfortunately, the only solution seems to be to rerecord from old media every time there is a media upgrade (e.g. film -> VHS -> DVD -> ?) otherwise you run the chance of not being able to read the media!

    --Rob

  • More timeless format? Not if you have kids... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hoggoth ( 414195 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @10:04AM (#5555336) Journal
    > converting old VHS home movies to a more timeless digital format, such as VCD, SVCD, and DVD

    I have kids that handle my videotapes and DVDs, and let me tell you ALL of the videotapes are still going strong and most of the DVDs have been rendered useless from mishandling. When I borrow movies from the library (not yet a felony) I always choose videotapes over DVDs because heavily used DVDs are almost always unwatchable due to freezes, skips, and garbled scenes.

    My paid-for DVDs are being destroyed by normal use, and the MPAA would like to make me a criminal if I make copies of those DVDs... but that's a different rant...

  • USB Instant DVD (Score:2, Informative)

    by Flabby Boohoo ( 606425 )
    This is a decent product that comes with a great set of bundled software.. Only about $125 too...

    This is an external device that does the mpeg compression on the fly. I have had very good results making DVDs out of my old 15-20 yearold VHS tapes. Some advice: Buy a new VCR, makes a lot of difference, and they are cheap now (my Toshiba from Sam's Club was only $60).

    adstech.com is the home page for thier products.

  • My Low-Cost VHS Capture Experiences (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jetkust ( 596906 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @10:19AM (#5555495)
    A few months ago, I made some attempt to digitize some VHS Tapes, with 4 different devices each reletively cheap (under $100) (Linx USB Plus Video Capture Cable, Belkin USB VideoBus II Video Capture Adapter, ATI TV Wonder, and Creative Labs Video Blaster Digital VCR). I was able to get the best quality out of Digital VCR though the software was buggy and annoying. The one click remote control recording was great, but once recorded, the movies are difficult to work with and extract to a file (The ridiculous little program it came with to extract video files was pure trash). The two usb devices were convenient, but neither could offer a serious representation of the vhs (each allowing a very limited resolution and quality with the very limited usb 1.0 bandwidth). As for the ATI tv-wonder, i had endless problems with color and quality as well as dropped frames. By the way, I was using an amd 1700+ with a 60gb harddrive. Some of my problems may have been user based, but after all this trouble, the next time i'll probably go for an analog to dv converter, or a digital camcorder with analog in.
  • I have been running a site called www.dazzlegeek.com for several years now... Video capture is the main focus and there is some great resources.

    http://www.dazzlegeek.com

    heyday
    __________

    http://www.phonebillsaver.com

  • Might have been useful, but... (Score:3, Informative)

    by nedron ( 5294 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @10:40AM (#5555698) Homepage
    This article might have been useful if they had made it more broadbased and dealt with issues surrounding tape-to-digital conversion in general. As it is, all they've really done is give a specific example of how to use a particular device to do the capture. Not much real information to help people with other setups.

    Also, they recommend a $1000 dollar "edit" VCR or a standalone time base corrector. You could just as easily buy a digital VHS [bestbuy.com] deck with a built in time base corrector and built in digital noise correction for $800. I use this deck to stream VHS tapes to my Mac via a Firewire bridge for transfer to DVD. The built-in TBC makes a noticeable difference. In any case, maybe it's time for me to add something to my Faq-O-Matic about transferring VHS for all systems.

  • Surely iMovie is all we need to do this. Unless your a hobbyist freak with pixel perfect vision and audiophile ears you'll be pushed to tell much difference - and the several weeks of your life you saved can be spent playing frisbee on a beach.

    Now lets see... a: Frisbee on a beach, or b: Hacking about with a capture card. Mmmmm frisbeeeee

  • From the article:

    "We strongly recommend using a Windows2000/XP machine since the NTFS file system has no such file size limitation."

    In fact, NTFS does have an upper bound on how large a single file can be. In theory, NTFS can have a file that is 16 exabytes minus 1 KB (2^64 bytes minus 1 KB). However, from an implementation standpoint, NTFS can only have a file as large as 16 terabytes minus 64 KB (2^44 bytes minus 64 KB) (yeah, way to go MS...). Not that anyone will be making video files that are 16 T

  • Ok, I know it's been mentioned a couple times already that DVD/VCD/etc are hardly "timeless" formats. This goes doubly for your run-of-the-mill blanks that are burned. They've got what? A 10 year life-span if you never touch them before they start to degrade?

    Regular film and microfilm have been around for decades and still going strong for archiving. You can still find VHS tapes from 20+ years ago that are watchable. Heck, books have been around for millenia.

    Beyond degradation of the media, the techno
  • 1. Turn on Formac DV [formac.com].
    2. Plug RCA/Coax/S-Video into Formac DV/TV.
    3. Turn on iMovie [apple.com] or BTV [bensoftware.com].
    4. Done.

    From there, I can capture movies (and convert to MP4, add effects, etc), or capture screenshots. No muss, no fuss.
  • I own a P4 2GHz machine with an ASUS GeForce4 Ti4400 which I use hooked up to a VCR to record old family videos. Since the videos were recorded with a camcorder from the very early 1990s, the quality isn't too good - not to mention that the VHS tapes themselves are 12 years old. Therefore, I don't expect to get better resolution than 320x240.

    At this resolution, using VirtualDub, I can capture direct to a DivX AVI file (usually with a 2048kbs bitrate) without dropping a single frame. Sound is recorded unc
  • Anyone know of any cards that can capture component (or rgb) video at 1080?

    Uncompressed is fine.

  • Some Suggestions for a Linux Environment (Score:3, Informative)

    by GroundBounce ( 20126 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @01:04PM (#5557084)
    My son and I have been capturing analog video and producing short digital videos and movies for past few months. We have made a goal to do this entirely in Linux and have learned a bit along the way that may be of use to others. My son has recently made some videos for his high school classes that have been voted best in the class. Here's what worked for us:

    1. Start with a reasonably recent model PC, such as an Athlon 1700+ or better built on a decent motherboard. Give it at least 512Mb of RAM and make sure you have at least 20Mb or more of free disk space.

    2. Use a relatively recent version of Linux with at least a 2.4.18 kernel. Most distributions which use this kernel (e.g., Red Hat 7.3) include drivers which support the capture cards listed below.

    3. We've been using two types of PCI capture cards: an Iomega Buz, and a Linux Media Labs LML33 [linuxmedialabs.com]. The Buz is out of production, but it can regularly be had on ebay for $20-$40. It is based on the Zoran MJPEG chipset and Phillips video encoder chips. As a side benefit, it also contains an ultra SCSI controller that is supposedly supported in Linux, though I haven't tried it yet. The LML33 was designed spefically with Linux in mind, and is also based on the Zoran MJPEG chipset, but it uses a BrookTree video encoder. It is also a bit more expensive; we paid $125 for a used one on ebay. Both cards are well supported in Linux, and produce high quality DVD-resolution 720x480 video at 30 frames/second.

    4. Install a recent version of mjpegtools [sourceforge.net]. The most important piece of mjpegtools is the lavrec utility, which supports recording from the Zoran cards to either AVI or Quicktime formatted MJPEG files. mjpegtools also includes several other useful utilities.

    5. Install a recent distribution of Transcode [uni-goettingen.de]. Transcode is a very useful suite of command line utilities for transcoding and processing videos and supports just about every video codec available on Linux.

    6. Install Cinelerra [heroinewarrior.com] and Blender [blender3d.org]. Cinelerra is a bit quirky, still tends to crash a lot, and is butt-ugly, but it has some awesome editing and compositing abilities including multiple layer editing and compositing, and keyframe-based effects control. The most recent version also contains a nice adaptive de-interlace filter. Cinelerra also contains a very nice translate filter that can be used to trim edge artifacts that often appear in captured video. Blender is gread for things like generating 3-D titles and short 3-D blurbs and transition animations if you like to do those kinds of things. Gimp is also quite useful for generating titles and editing individual frames if that is required.

    With the above combination of hardware and software, you can achive very close to DVD quality results with very little outlay of cash in a completely Linux environment, and the results can be quite satisfying. My son has been making videos for his high school classes and I have been digitizing old home videos and it's been quite fun.
  • Even ignoring the questionable grammar of this assertion, the concepts behind it are dubious at best.

    Timeless Format? Ain't no such thing. I have a bunch of "modern" 5.25 floppies, less than 25 years old, and there's no way to get my data from them, for love or money. Try finding someone who can read your 40 MB Syquest cartridges from 1990. Wait five or ten years, and try to read data off of those 3.5 inch floppies.

    Oh sure, we say, we'll burn it on a CD or DVD, and we'll *always* be able to read those.

    We
    • The difference is that CDROM is a format that is ubiquitous in the mass market, and Syquest drives are not and have never been. It may eventually happen, but it will be a much longer time before equipment to read CDs is completely unavailable, even after it is no longer a popular format. Media technology that has become ubiquitous will be readable for a longer time because there will sufficient demand to justify products for a longer period of time.

      An example is vinyl LPs. Very few consumers have purcha
      • As for 5.25" floppies, I still have several 5.25" floppy drives, and I can still plug a them into the floppy controller of a modern PC motherboard and read the disks, assuming the data is still readable.

        Well, you probably can read quad-density soft-sector floppies, but I haven't found anyone who can read my data off of my old 40 track, double density hard-sectored floppies. And turntables are actually more available today than five years ago due to their re-emergence in the DJ scene.

        However, I agree that

  • Other capture/conversion resources... (Score:3, Informative)

    by hendridm ( 302246 ) on Thursday March 20, 2003 @02:02PM (#5557881) Homepage

    I got started [danhendricks.com] by reading the excellent guides at doom9.org [doom9.org]. They mostly describe how to rip DVDs, but you can also learn a lot about video conversion in the process.

    There are also some good tutorials [dapcentral.org] and forum information at the Digital Archive Project [dapcentral.org] and Luke's Video Guide [lukesvideo.com].

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