Holiday Capture

[dar1us]

I am off to America (florida specifically ... groan, no offense to floridians, but a nice big city is much more up my alley) for 2 weeks from the 23rd of octoberto the 3rd of november (so... it is 10 days).

SKY One is airing (re-airing) 'Is Harry on the Boat', due to them never releasing this on DVD, I will capture it. The issue is (hope it is becomming a little obvious now) is that I need it captured whils't I am gone. Some of the family are staying here, so to avoid it recording the wrong channel on SKY, I have set it to 'Series-Link' and 'Autoview' Star-Trek: The Next Generation every night which is on before 'Is Harry on the Boat', this will change my Digital Satellite box to channel 106 ready for the 2:40 (am!!!) play of each episode.

My question is this;

I use VirtualDub (sync fix thingy) to capture my programms at 576x576 (to convert to 576x432 xvid) or 480x576 (to convert to svcd)... How can I make Virtual Dub start capturing at 2:38ish every night for 60 mins, with a decent level of reliability. I think I have enough room for what would be about 8-10 hours of XVID at either 576x576 or obviously more at 480x576.

If anyone has any ideas about what to do with the little red dot as I cant series link it to my sky one entry in 'other channels', please, dont hold your peace!

Cheers in advance

[Boulder]

Try this:

http://www.virtualdub.net

It includes the sync patch and a timer tool. I couldn't get it working with the BTWinCap drivers so I ended up messing around with ScriptIt (uses scripts to automate processes).

[communist]

If you want to capture directly to XviD - use 1pass Quant 3 and set min and max I frame interval to 1.

Oh and I think it would be better to capture at 720x576 / 768x576 and not 576x576 ;)

[dar1us]

that is supposed to be the german...

also, is there a way in the event of a power cut, that I can make my pc (KD7-Raid ABit board) to switch back on, (it logs in to win2k automatically) and resume capturing timer?


harrison

[dar1us]

eek! only 8 max settings for timer. I am gonna need 10 or more i think. 8 might just do it, but more would be better as I am probably gonna be useless on return, plus I will have a lot of work to catch up on!


harrison


addition:: actually, I could get round that issue by changing what it classes as a workday, the program is on Tuesday through Saturday.

a little help

[dar1us]

Oh... and why do you think it would be better capturing it at 720/768 x 576...

I am hardly a beginner to the world of capturing m8y.

Please tell me what benifit capping at 768 has. When I want to store it at 576; all it does is take up more room. My card can resize (bicubically) fine.

Please, enlighten me...

And by the way. I know how to capture to XVID, I didn't ask for a settings list. Anyways, Quant 3, are you INSANE! Quant 1 all the way baby, min I-Frame 1. I was the first person who started using XVID to capture TV (about 1 or 2 years ago), everyone else (still does?) swear by Huff though it is to verbose (the right word?); too lossless.

EXCUSE:: I must excuse all of the posts, I hadn't seen communists post at time of writing the first one, or the second one as i only JUST got the e-mail. As for the second one, that must just have been plain cheeky. Apologies


harrison

[Boulder]

Originally posted by dar1us

also, is there a way in the event of a power cut, that I can make my pc (KD7-Raid ABit board) to switch back on, (it logs in to win2k automatically) and resume capturing timer?


Your computer's BIOS may have an option to turn the computer on after an AC power loss.

[communist]

Originally posted by dar1us
Oh... and why do you think it would be better capturing it at 720/768 x 576...

I am hardly a beginner to the world of capturing m8y.

Please tell me what benifit capping at 768 has. When I want to store it at 576; all it does is take up more room. My card can resize (bicubically) fine.
576x576 does not contain as much info as 7XXx576 - I'm sure you agree on this ;)
iMHO its better to start as lossless as possible - especially if you want to do lot of filtering.
But if you want to capture at that res and quality is good for you then do so.

[ronnylov]

You might want to try AVI_IO as capturing application. It has built in timer and you can set it up to record at the same time every day.

[Boulder]

The problem with AVI_IO is that it doesn't resample the audio to keep the sync. It just adds or drops frames, which is not nice at all when you can use a free program to get proper sync without that:)

Using the timer or creating scripts to automate capturing is not that hard, it just takes a little time and effort to check that everything works before leaving on holiday.

[dar1us]

It contains more info than I want, I only want 576x576 much of info so I can convert it down to 576x432... 720 is (144?) more than I want, just wasted PRECIOUS space.

End of argument.

i'd like to use VirtualDub if possible because it has given me smashing results in the past, plus the noise reduce on 4 really does make my S-Video box shine!


harrison