fischju
1st August 2009, 23:36
Using an slightly old Sony camcorder with Hi8 tapes
I picked up a Dazzle DVD recorder for $20 on woot a while ago and finally got a component cable at radioshack (Yea, I know, I'm doing horribly so far) and the quality is surprisingly good (after I found drivers for x64).
I tried using the guide to use virtualdubmod (Virtual VCR crashes on startup)to capture files but the quality wasn't as high as the Pinnacle Studio software that came with it (deinterlacing issues). It produces either MJPEG or DV (DVSD/PCM) files that are as good as I would expect them to look. Except that a 2 hour file is 23GB. I could live with this as I have more than enough space to convert a stack of tapes like this, but there must be another way.
I've used VDM to split the files into shorter scenes and used every profile in autoMKV, meGUI, WinAVI (using the official xvid codec as it has support for multiple cores and SSE4.1), and even tried using Nero Vision to capture the video and encode, but they never measure up and always seem to cut a bit of the black border (the picture is off center on some tapes) which slightly squishes the video. The only one that I could live with is MPEG2 using my video card's AVIVO converter (as it has no interlacing problems, but there is still some loss of detail)
So...uh, any suggestions? And should I try using svideo instead of composite?
Thanks
Edit: And what would you guys recommend to show the input with audio? I have an urge to hook a cable box to this. Something with a bare window option would be preferred...
Edit 2: figured out that VLC will show the stream
I picked up a Dazzle DVD recorder for $20 on woot a while ago and finally got a component cable at radioshack (Yea, I know, I'm doing horribly so far) and the quality is surprisingly good (after I found drivers for x64).
I tried using the guide to use virtualdubmod (Virtual VCR crashes on startup)to capture files but the quality wasn't as high as the Pinnacle Studio software that came with it (deinterlacing issues). It produces either MJPEG or DV (DVSD/PCM) files that are as good as I would expect them to look. Except that a 2 hour file is 23GB. I could live with this as I have more than enough space to convert a stack of tapes like this, but there must be another way.
I've used VDM to split the files into shorter scenes and used every profile in autoMKV, meGUI, WinAVI (using the official xvid codec as it has support for multiple cores and SSE4.1), and even tried using Nero Vision to capture the video and encode, but they never measure up and always seem to cut a bit of the black border (the picture is off center on some tapes) which slightly squishes the video. The only one that I could live with is MPEG2 using my video card's AVIVO converter (as it has no interlacing problems, but there is still some loss of detail)
So...uh, any suggestions? And should I try using svideo instead of composite?
Thanks
Edit: And what would you guys recommend to show the input with audio? I have an urge to hook a cable box to this. Something with a bare window option would be preferred...
Edit 2: figured out that VLC will show the stream