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Video Capture / Ulead VIs Studio 6

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9 replies

by ghstinshll 2 views

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Here's my setup...

AMD 1Ghz Athlon
1GB of RAM
75GB IBM Deskstar (7200)
ATI RADEON 8500DV (64MB) All in Wonder
JVC 505DV camcorder

Last October I promised my cousin that his wedding gift would be his wedding on DVD (since he only has a DVD player at home). I had recently built this machine last summer and thought it would be the best thing in the world to burn videos of my baby to VCD and mail to family, etc... I know this isn't the best set up in the world, but it's pretty decent, I'dthink...

When I capture video, I drop about 10% of frames, and the video looks bad on my computer, and seems like it's not worth putting on VCD...

Here's my real question: Does anyone know if a better video card will help (Pinnacle) or would it be better for my cost to purchase a Philips DVDR device for my entertainment center? Does anyone have any experience with these devices? Can you write to a DVD straight from firewire and have it not drop any frames?

Thanks for the advice.

9 replies

by areets

I use one of the Pinnacle models of Video/TV card. Not much excitement: AGP Pro+ board that I run on an Intel PIII 600 MHz, but I can not say that I witness frame jumps. I even record directly to a network drive.

512 Mb

My hard drives and the Yamaha CD Writer are on SCSI connectors.

Not using firewire!

TSP

by ghstinshll

Can anyone confirm that they believe a pinnacle card would fix the issues, or should I need the entertainment center component from Philips?

by guruofdos

A Pinnacle card would probably make it worse!

The best bet is an external USB2 device made by Dazzle called the DVC150. The capture codec is in the hardware and performs direct conversion of the video signal to mpg2 format before transferring to the PC. This only weighs in at about $150 and is almost as good as the internal Fast AVMaster2000, which unfortunately is now obsolete. Pinnacle cards rely heavily on software codecs and so do not perform anywhere as well as dedicated hardware cards.

by oz_media

I have setup six video capture systems in the past year for my staff.
U-Lead has been U-seless 4 out of 6 times.
They clain hardware faults, with 4 different capture cards? I don't think so.
The people using them are professional videographers that have been doing this worldwide for many years now and U-Lead offer pathetic support. Even though I LOVE cool 3D pro by U-Lead.
Pinnacle has worked in ALL cases yet I just personally have a thing against Pinnacle, it works though.
Adobe Premier gave me th best control yet is somewhat limited for overlays.
My best advice, Pinnacle works no matter which way you look at it.

by oz_media

I have setup six video capture systems in the past year for my staff.
U-Lead has been U-seless 4 out of 6 times.
They clain hardware faults, with 4 different capture cards? I don't think so.
The people using them are professional videographers that have been doing this worldwide for many years now and U-Lead offer pathetic
support. Even though I LOVE cool 3D pro by U-Lead.
Pinnacle has worked in ALL cases yet I just personally have a thing against Pinnacle, it works though.
Adobe Premier gave me th best control yet is somewhat limited for overlays.
My best advice, Pinnacle works no matter which way you look at it.
The best CAPTURE card I've used is Hauppage DVDWizard PRo, unfortunately it comes with U-lead software but just use your own instead.
Good luck

by oz_media

Sorry, I added that to my post but resubbed the entire post again.
Hauppage DVDWizard Pro works great with Digital Camera to firewire.
My 6 videographers use Canon XL-1S and GL-2 Cameras which are very high end but broadcast quality cameras into Hauppage Capture boards, Optical and firewire. Unfortunately MOST Hauppage cards come bundled with free U-Lead software but you can always use yuor Pinnacle software instead, it works beter even though I prefer U-misLead.

by guruofdos

Pinnacle...a better card?!!! I think not!

Having been working in the field of digital video for simulator systems for over 10 years and used virtually every capture device going for the PC...I have to ask several questions...

1) Are you running on a 'clean' system...i.e., NO BACKGROUND PROCESSES WHATSOEVER??? Make sure your video capture machine has no virus checker running...this is VITAL for good captures!

2) What OS are you using??? Do you have the latest version of DirectX? If you are using DX8.0, do you have Microsofts DV patch?

3) Is your hard disk fully defragged and are you using a permanent swap file instead of allowing Windows to manage it?

4) Have you turned OFF write behind caching in the Performance Settings of My Computer?

I can capture analogue video at 768x576 x50 fps on an AMD K6-500 with 10Gb of hard disk from a FAST AV2000 card on a system with 64Mb of RAM and no dropped frames even after 45 minutes of continuous video capture! Your machine should work equally well, but I suspect you haven't tuned your PC for video capture and you have other processes running during capture!

by ghstinshll

That's quite possible since I use that as my home PC and all... It's home-built with Win2k and doesn't have a lot running in the background, but it might need a little tuning. I have been meaning to put in an additional drive just for the swap file, etc... I just with my wife would give me the time to figure it out! (-:{

by guruofdos

Well, I'd forget it then! As anyone with experience with video editing will tell you, it should be done on a dedicated machine for best results. No network, no antivirus, no nothing. By all means, fit a CDRW drive to take the captured/edited video off, but only use Nero software as this loads the least number of drivers into the background. Win2k is by far the least 'video-capture friendly' OS...XP is better but 98SE is by far the best solution. This applies to Pinnacle, FAST and Hauppage as well as most other capture hardware, especially for analogue captures and believe it or not, DV captures are much more reliable under 98 than XP or Win2K/WinNT4.

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