Hoping for some advice regarding tape video capture.
My capture PC is based around an HP xw9400, ATI PCIe video card (6790 or 6970, can never remember which), and a Matrox RT.X2 (full fat version).
Source is an SVHS VCR, connected via component video.
I want to capture VHS - and possibly some DV cam tapes - to transfer to DVD. There may or may not be some editing/restoring involved.
I'm somewhat disappointed with the RTX2 as a 'capture' card; the only options for file capture are (from top of head) DV, DVCPro, Matrox MPEG-I. I understand I dont want to use DV (4:1:1 reduced colourspace). I tried a VHS tape using MPEG-I. A 1 hour capture was 5GB in size, even at 10MB/sec. And 10/mbit is the minimum capture rate. I'm pretty sure VHS doesnt need 10mb/sec - even broadcast quality video was 2mb/sec (wasn't it?).
Questions:
1. If I use S-VHS, I only get black and white video - and no idea why or how to fix this?
2. Is there any way to use other software to capture via the RTX2? Had a quick look at
VirtualDub but it doesn't see any capture device. TMPGenc, perhaps? Or can I persuade Vdub to so so? Or something else?
3. For the tapes I need to 'restore', I should capture uncompressed video. The most I want to do at capture stage is crop/mask the picture to remove bottom picture tearing or ragged right hand image. Simply because its a step saved later, and why capture data I cant' fix and wont be working with... Can I capture uncompressed video with the RTX2?
4. Worst case scenario is the X2 is a bust for capture. My PC is wholly PCIe, what solution would you recommend? VCR->DV Cam-firewire->PC?
Many thanks, and I'll try to remember to upgrade membership this week!
