Made mistake while capturing video: Can two recordings be merged?

[Superstar]

I was capturing about a 3 hr video, and I turned my monitor off while it was doing it and walked away for a few hours, and out of instinct i accidently turned my computer off (thinking i was turning it on) and there was 8 mins left on the video.

Am I going to have to recapture the whole video, or is there a way I can capture the last 8 mins and somehow merge the two captures into one in my DVD Workshop or another program?

[kpmedia]

It really depends on what capture hardware and software you were using. Sometimes you can salvage 90-95% of what you've captured, and other times the whole file is corrupt. If you're capturing to AVI in VirtualDub, and the system either crashes (or is turned off mid-capture), or the system halts because the drive fills up, then the whole file is trash. That happens to me once in a while, when I'm not paying attention to drive space available versus what's going to be needed for the capture. A few times, I fell asleep on the studio couch while capturing -- oops -- and woke up to an error message and hours of lost work.

MPEG files are a bit more resilient, and can be salvaged in Womble MPEG Video Wizard.

Never use Ulead DVD Workshop for editing video. This would count as editing. DVDWS is authorware only.

[Superstar]

Thanks for the advice, I just went ahead and re-captured it. I've noticed on the last 2 DVDs that I've made, when I watch them, there's a group of like, whiteish lines at the bottom, and they last the entire DVD.

Why are they there & how can I fix that from happening again on future DVDs that I make?

Thanks!

[admin]

Is it in the overscan? Read this: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...converted.html
Sounds like standard tape head-switching noise.

It's not something that can really be "fixed" -- but it can be masked, if it's really necessary.
Note that you won't see head switching noise when viewed on a TV, although it can eat into your bitrate use.

I'd have to see an image, to give a better guess on what it is.

[Superstar]

yeah, actually it does look very similiar to the first picture...

[jmac698]

I was just reading about VCR's. That head switching noise is because the video heads are positioned to overlap in their reading. The switching is supposed to make the transition between heads smooth I guess. There's a standard for it, and we know it will occur 0-10 lines before vertical sync (that is, on the bottom of the screen). The standard is IEC756.