First time user: VirtualDub for PAL captures?
 

Hi

Love the site btw, I've been doing alot of reading - but I'm no further out of the rabbit hole from whence I started.

Varied opinions I've read on the equipment I have at my disposal, but in for a penny in for a pound. I hope this forum will be of help.

My computers fairly decent 2.20GHz, 1.21Gb of RAM. I'm working from 8mm tapes via camcorder into a dazzle100. Initially worked with Pinnacle Studio Ultimate however the capture was dissappointing. The outcome was grainy, and at the various settings I tried the audio and video were out of sync with one-another. I heard alot about virtualdub and after a little hesitation decided to give it a go.

I downloaded the pre-loaded version on this site but couldn't follow the instructions. I assume the step-by-step guide on this site is for an older version. I managed to work my way and changed around the default settings. There was a hue green on the rhs but the picture was a bit better than before. I don't really want to crop anything out.

I would be using PAL but the capture settings where stuck at 29.97fps. It wouldn't change. Another thing, do I need to download and install HuffYUV are any other suitable codec? Are these already installed with the application? I put the settings at YUY2 YUV:4:2:2 interleaved. Most of this is pure jargan to me but I'm slowly coming around. What aspect ratio should I use? The camcorder has been set at 16:9. So I should have something related to this when capturing? There is the date and time in the left hand corner and this can be obtrusive sometimes to the picture.

I would like to edit in Pinnacle and do a nice job. However impossible this seems.

This seemed like such an easy task when I decided to do this.

Would welcome any wisdom!

Thanks for reading.

DP

--- edit ---

Yeah, author with pinnacle, menus, chapters etc. Output to DVD then.

Cheers

Thanks. :congrats:

Well, let's see if I can pull you out by the ears. :P

Nothing special here, but it meets the safe minimums. (2.0Ghz+, 1GB+)

This is par for the course. Dazzle/Pinnacle hardware and software is all pretty miserable. Supposedly some of the long-discontinued high-end pro hardware was passable, but I never saw the point in spending those kinds of bucks when ATI gear cost less, and Matrox/Canopus hardware was in the same price range.

Technically, yes, the guide was created with an older version ... but nothing has really changed on VirtualDub for most of the past decade. When I started using it around 2002 or so, it looked pretty much the same as it does now. At most, there's a few more preferences menus, and some more filters. But the overall capturing experience is identical (or closely thereabouts). I'll review that guide this month, and update it if needed.

Don't use VirtualDub 1.10.x -- stick to 1.9.x for now. I've caught 1.10.x doing odd things. It's still in beta/unstable from what I last saw anyway.

RHS? Is that a typo? I'm not sure I follow you here...

Agreed. Cropping interlaced videos makes a total mess.

There are three places where resolution can be changes. Sometimes changing one changes them all. Sometimes it's stubborn, and you have to change them all manually.

1. The lower right corner of the main capturing window
2. Video menu > Capture Pin menu
3. Video menu > Capture filter menu

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Change everything to PAL specs: PAL (PAL I = UK), 720x576.

Yes. I would stick with Huffyuv, as it's the most universal of lossless codecs. I would not capture with a lossy codec, and VirtualDub is pretty well limited to lossless and uncompressed codecs anyway -- especially with the CPU specs of your current computer.

No.

YUY2 is uncompressed. The file size will be about 75GB/hour. By comparison, Huffyuv (lossless AVI) would only be 35-40GB/hour. And both will have the same visual quality. Huffyuv uses a non-lossy data compression. (For sake of comparison, DVD-Video uses MPEG-2, which is an example of lossy image compression.)

If this is Video8 or Hi8, then it would most assuredly be 4:3 ratio. Most Digital8 would be 4:3, too, though I would imagine some obscure cameras may have allowed for 16:9, since it was 720x480 DV data. It's hard to say. Just guessing, I'd say you had 4:3.

This isn't something that can be easily removed. In fact, trying to remove it generally just makes it more obnoxious, by turning it into a distracting blurry blob. The other option is to fully crop the video. Personally, I'd just leave it alone. It's the least distracting option available, outside of time travel in a DeLorian and telling yourself to turn off the stupid clock.

Pinnacle Studio is just not very good. If you want a quality video editor, then look at getting Adobe Premiere Elements. I'd still capture in VirtualDub, mind you, but import the captures into Premiere for the actual editing tasks. Premiere can also export the videos to MPEG-2, and do a good job at it, since it implements an encoder based around the MainConcept SDK.

Tip: Amazon.co.uk probably has a boxed version of Adobe Premiere Elements that's cheaper than the download version available from Adobe.co.uk. So keep that in mind. In USD, Premiere is about $75. So ... 50 quid (GBP), give or take. You can often buy Premiere and Photoshop together for only $25 more ($100), making it the best deal if you don't already have Photoshop.

Premiere can author, too. I generally suggest the freeware Simple DVD Creator for menu-less DVDs. (Most DVDs don't really need menus anyway. Having a "Play Me" button, or "chapter skip menu" is rather pointless.) For burning, always use ImgBurn, never anything else. It is the single more compliant burning program available on a Windows computer.

I know the feeling. I'm doing some complicated coding work right now that isn't going as planned. :mad4: