I now have a Blaupunkt RTV-950 (Panasonic FS200 clone), a Pinnacle 710-USB that I purchased from Lord Smurf a few years ago now (before I was forced to put the project on the back burner), a working, period correct Intel iGPU only Windows 7 PC that has
VirtualDub 1.9.11 + Filters,
HuffYUV, the Pinnacle driver provided in one of LS's posts, and CrossbarThing all installed. I'm able to get a video and audio signal from the Pinnacle (unlike when I tried with my Win7 era period correct Nvidia GTX670 system).
I don't know what the next step should be now, though.
0. Would someone be so kind as to provide a high level overview of what my workflow is likely to be? For example...
Get software working > adjust Virtualdub settings > capture video > ?????????? > ????????? > watched final product
1. Is there any software I should be using before I begin capturing footage with Virtualdub?
2. With my first attempted capture, the video was extremely dark. So I adjusted some of the filters in Virtualdub.
2a. Is there any way to save the filter / settings adjustments I make in Virtualdub or do I have to adjust them every time I launch Virtualdub?
2b.... or not 2b, whatever... Anyway, how exacting do I need to be with my filter settings or will the issues that are fixed by filter settings, also be addressed by the rendering step?
3. With my first test capture, the file size was already over 4GB after about 10 minutes of footage. Is this to be expected and what kind of file sizes should I expect per hour of captured footage*?
4. Further to question 3, I'm in the UK. So PAL_I but when I set the video standard to PAL_I in the "Capture filters...", I don't get any video. Just a black screen. When set to NTSC_M, I get video... albeit at the wrong resolution for the source tape. What am I missing?
5. The RTV-950 has a switch to enable and disable the TBC. Aside from that, are there any other settings I should make sure are on or off on the VCR itself?
6. In regards to my capture system. Is there any advantage to getting the GTX670 system working? It has an i5 2500k, where as my other system, a Lenovo TS140, has a Xeon E3 1226-v3... so very similar in terms of CPU performance. Aside from that, both systems are using SATA SSDs for boot, and both systems will capture to a second SSD (or SSD RAID) once I have my basic workflow figured out.
Thank you.