Anybody own a camcorder ?
I recently bought this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 28-8500405

Got it plugged into the pc no probs and have used nero to capture onto hd in either avi or mpeg 2.
the quality on the pc seems darker than on the camcorders screen and I'm wondering if there is better software or is it because it's a reletivly cheap camera ?
anybody got any expertise ?

Its a DV camera, and imo the best is winDV (freeware). Really lightweight. Your using a DV camera you don't want to convert to mpeg2 without using CCE! What you need to do is a modification of what I used to do. Originally, the method I used was the following:
http://forum.dead-donkey.com/viewtopic. ... references
I don't use pinnacle studio to capture, as said above. But the codec advise still stands, that's the best codec.


Then what I do is output a huge Avi file to my hdd, and from there do the processing by creating a suitable avs file to load the avi into gknot, get the cropping details, then add it back to an avs. I'd end up with something like this:



and for DVDs, to maintain AR, you have to add on black borders:


As for darkness, are you sure your monitor isn't just dark or you have directshow filters on too dark. Then again, I did experience darkness in my captures, my league of gentlemen Series 3 captures tended to be a bit dark. So to fix this, you load into virtualdubmod and well its a bit complicated, so I'm going to post this just to check your monitor is setup (please don't tell me you just have it on plug and play? )


from:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t248429.html

oh and I forgot to mention:
AviSource("I:\Capture\indy.avs")
just points to an avisynth that has this:


I did a lot of capturing and that way I only needed one file to change and it was all easier to manager, you can just use the latter one and point right to your avi

I'm certainly no expert but I settled on using Pinnacle 9, despite certain criticisms about it crashing a lot. Once I'd patched from to 9 to 9.1 it works OK for me, but I do tend to keep things simple.

However for a quick dump of video to hdd, the built in Movie Maker bundled with winXP does quite a decent job, except for that horrid .wmv format.

I also tried Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas, but just got frustrated with those.

My cam is a Sony HC30E

WOW thanx Spud theres a lot to take in I'm gonna read thru and prob come back with a 100 q
first thing tho gonna sort out that PNP thing I'm not sure what it set at
4 your help

OK been messin with the formats I can capture with nero and got this back from G Spot
NVECapture..avi
Duration: 00h 01m 07s
Video Codec: DVC/DV Video
Aspect Ratio: 720 x 576 (1.250 : 1)
Audio Codec: PCM Audio
Audio Bitrate: 1024 kb/s (512/ch x 2 ch)
Video Frame Rate: 25.000 FPS

From reading the link thats ok isn't it

Well as long as you don't drop any frames, it doesn't matter. You absolutely do not want to encode in any of these all in one programs though.

If your doing an Xvid --> gknot
If your doing a DVD --> CCE (or TMPGenc if you so choose )

edit:

Can't say. I go on visual quality mainly, but if you mean is there anything wrong with that capture no. Here's one from one of my young indiana jones films I capped:

<table border="0" cellpadding="6"> <tr><td width="20"> </td><td>Specs:</td></tr> <tr><td width="20"> </td><td class="quote"> <table border="0" cellpadding="1"> <tr><td>File Name:</td><td>Young.Indiana.Jones.Chapter.12.Attack.of.the.Hawkmen.avi</td></tr> <tr><td>File Size:</td><td>20,949,716,992 bytes</td></tr> <tr><td>Runtime:</td><td>01:31:32</td></tr> <tr><td> <br> </td></tr> <tr><td>Video Codec:</td><td>DVC/DV Video</td></tr> <tr><td>Frame Size:</td><td>720x576 (1.25) [=5:4]</td></tr> <tr><td>Framerate:</td><td>25.000 FPS</td></tr> <tr><td>Video Bitrate:</td><td>21 kb/s</td></tr> <tr><td>Bits per Pixel:</td><td>0.002 bpp</td></tr> <tr><td>B-VOP, QPel, GMC:</td><td>, , </td></tr> <tr><td> <br> </td></tr> <tr><td>Audio Codec:</td><td>PCM Audio</td></tr> <tr><td>Sample Rate:</td><td>48000 Hz</td></tr> <tr><td>Audio Bitrate:</td><td>1536 kb/s [2 channel(s)] </td></tr> <tr><td>Interleave:</td><td></td></tr> <tr><td># audio streams:</td><td>1</td></tr> </table> </td></tr></table>

ignore the bitrate and bits/pixel, gknot is bust... doesn't support that high.

Great at least i know which format to capture 4 best results. grabbing CCE off the mule now

WinDV has it beat, its smaller, faster, and better. One of the best apps for the pc imo.

Dont know what u guys think of this
http://www.virtualedit.net/downloads.htm
It captures in a unreconisable file format( tho u can open it with media player classic) you then have the option of rendering the file in a variety of formats inclding the codecs installed on your pc like Xvid and DivX with all the options for those too like 1 pass or 2 pass. u also have the option of aspect ratio to cut down on size. I managed to get a 1.21 gb file down to a 155mb Xvid file 640x480 very watchable on the pc.

tho thats still quite big as it was only 5 min

My apologies for resurrecting an old thread but that little link doesn't work spud and I can't find acemcp593pro.exe anywhere. In fact the only way it seems of getting the Adaptec DVsoft Codec is from some hideous codec pack, which I refuse to install. Have you still got this anywhere spud please? TIA

Ace Media Codec i'm afraid. Its not really included elsewhere. Hit the checkboxes for what you do and don't want to install

Thank you spud. Codec packs though - eeuhhh!!!