VHS to DVD

[BarMoo]

I recently went for the Pinnacle DVC 170 Seems to do its job, LOL.

I like the Firewire approach - but I haven't seen a camera in years that lets you put an external source into it [God forbid!!!]. In fact, my very old SONY Video8 Pro is the last camera I saw that let me do that.

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[kamaleon]

my panasonic 3ccd nv GS400 (quite state of the art, really) has composite AND svideo input.
A lot of the sony ones only have composite (don't have svideo anymore). But there's an awful lot of camcorders that still do analog inputs, i think even the latest sony HD/AVC one has their proprietary analog input (composite only AFAIK)
the day they stop doing it will be a shame!!

So you went for an on-board HW compression chip did ya. Personally, i wouldn't, but then again, if it makes you happy ;)

 

[Saturlight]

I just connect scart to scart from VCR to stand alone DVD recorder. Does me. Then mayb put the DVD into the pc and shrink it, to store more film if I want to reburn the DVD.

 

[kamaleon]

well yeah, but then again you need a dvd recorder for that

 

[BarMoo]

So you went for an on-board HW compression chip did ya. Personally, i wouldn't, but then again, if it makes you happy ;)

If I had the money, sorry, had won the lottery I would have bought a 1U rack-mount affair that does everything type thing. Much as I have with my analogue audio toys.

Sadly, I had to buy something on the fly (tedious story of DVD converting) and my choice was limited to the area where I was shopping (the local geek store CONRAD) didn't have the kit I was after so I ended up in a department store. And as we all know, department stores only sell high mark-up shiny things: hence the Pinnacle.

To be fair, the compression has to be done somewhere, I can save files in DV - and that's all what was needed for the job in hand ;-))

Why have I come over all protective about my purchase? Hehehe.

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[kamaleon]

don't get me wrong about my comment
I just meant that i wouldn't buy a HW compression card, as that can't be tweaked and you're compelled to using some sort of proprietary codec...
and it's usually more expensive than buying a low-end capture card with a BT878 or a philips chip or whatever, capture it bulk with some kind of codec like mjpeg or something, then do all the encoding you wish, as you wish ;)
BTW, did you just say it can encode in DV?

 

[BarMoo]

don't get me wrong about my comment

I didn't, don't worry. Its already collecting dust. Must try a macrovision VHS ??

I am just pissed that I don't have any money to buy an all-in-one 1U rackmount digital encoder (that also has a TBC and strips Macrovision before going to any format I so bloody well like). :toke:

Yes, this shiny thing can export in DV - but not the DV that Adobe Premiere accepts. Had to pass it through another program to provide the uncompressed audio that Premeire likes :mad:

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[kamaleon]

but does the tiny marvel has an onboard HW chip that encodes or is it just your CPU that does the trick? must admit i'm a bit lazy to google for it

 

[BarMoo]

but does the tiny marvel has an onboard HW chip that encodes or is it just your CPU that does the trick? must admit i'm a bit lazy to google for it

It has a real-time Streaming Media Encoder, some SDRAM and a USB Microcontroller amongst other things all onboard.

See attached datasheet for the 7007SB Encoder.

For irregular HSYNCH video sources, the GO7007SB
delivers A/V synchronization with error resiliency.

Does that mean Macrovision stripping - Now I really must find out ;-))

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[kamaleon]

went briefly through your pdf barmoo,
does that mean it can actually HW encode in divx and mpeg2, and all that?
What's the max CBR for mpeg2 you can do with it?
(couldn't find out any info about DV though)

 

[BarMoo]

went briefly through your pdf barmoo,
does that mean it can actually HW encode in divx and mpeg2, and all that?
What's the max CBR for mpeg2 you can do with it?
(couldn't find out any info about DV though)

First off, you are right about DV. I used another program to convert to an Adobe Premiere happy DV format: clearly I lied ;-))

As for the other format encods (max res/rates):

DivX * 640x480 4000 Kbits/sec
MPEG2 * 720x576 10,000kbits/sec ('Best Quality' preset is 8400kbits/sec).
MPEG4 * 720x576 8,000kbits/sec

So, for an under €100.00 product - its a fair buy. There are others like Plextor which are probably better ;-))

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[kamaleon]

sounds interesting. What annoys me is that you can't really do much editing or tweaking with your video after it's been encoded. As you said, you went through further conversions later on as you needed to use premiere. I'd want to avoid that myself personnaly.
Is there any way of digitalizing the video to your hard drive bypassing the boxes HW encoder?
Which plextor exactly do you have in mind?

 

[BarMoo]

sounds interesting. What annoys me is that you can't really do much editing or tweaking with your video after it's been encoded. As you said, you went through further conversions later on as you needed to use premiere. I'd want to avoid that myself personnaly.
Is there any way of digitalizing the video to your hard drive bypassing the boxes HW encoder?
Which plextor exactly do you have in mind?

Here's how it works. You hook-up your alalogue device, the dazzle device encodes it (to one of many formats), and then you edit you material as much as you want in Pinnacle Studio (and then offload it to one of many formats).2

Why would I want to bypass Dazzle's encoder? Thats the whole point of the exercise, LOL. Besides, the 7007SB Encoder isn't made by Toys-R-us.

The issue with Premiere is possibly one of my own making. As I was relatively new to the program and was in a rush to encode about six hours of material - its possible I didn't set-up either the dazzle or the Adobe project properly.

For most projects the Dazzle and its software tools are sufficient in a home environment. Bear in mind that Adobe Premeire is over €1000.00 - so its reasonable to assume you'll be hooking-up semi-pro or pro kit [read: that will output DV the way Premiere likes it].

You can find details of Plextor on the Divx site.

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[kamaleon]

Why would I want to bypass Dazzle's encoder? Thats the whole point of the exercise, LOL. Besides, the 7007SB Encoder isn't made by Toys-R-us.

well dunno really maybe it's me that's loosing the plot somewhere. I don't know much about these issues really. Basically what i fancy doing is:
have something that can grab the analog signal and import it to my hard drive, but in some not-that-much compressed format like dunno, mjpeg or huffyuv (i reckon they are both losless compressed codecs? correct me if i'm wrong) so then i can have all the control
(yeah suppose i'm a control freak LOL) and do all the tweaking/editing/fiddling i want to and then, encode it just the way i want it to, in mpeg2 or mpeg4 or whatever... this is the way i learned. Another easier way is to rip the analog source through my camcorder, but then it will be encoded into DV.

but your box seems to work ok. any chance of uploading a tiny sample of a vhs you ripped using it at some point?

 

[BarMoo]

well dunno really maybe it's me that's loosing the plot somewhere. I don't know much about these issues really. Basically what i fancy doing is:
have something that can grab the analog signal and import it to my hard drive, but in some not-that-much compressed format like dunno, mjpeg or huffyuv (i reckon they are both losless compressed codecs? correct me if i'm wrong) so then i can have all the control
(yeah suppose i'm a control freak LOL) and do all the tweaking/editing/fiddling i want to and then, encode it just the way i want it to, in mpeg2 or mpeg4 or whatever... this is the way i learned. Another easier way is to rip the analog source through my camcorder, but then it will be encoded into DV.

but your box seems to work ok. any chance of uploading a tiny sample of a vhs you ripped using it at some point?

I'll put it like this. If you have either a DVD/HDD Recorder or SKY+ and you are happy with the quality - you will be happy with MPEG compression (at any level). Since the input through Dazzle is analogue - I really wouldn't pick a fight with the box. It really does do its job 2

In order that your PC doesn't become as slow as a snail - any compression will help the functionality of your editing program: unless you have a shit-load of cash for ram, pro editing kit, and a couple of terrabytes of HDD. I am sure people are already experiencing slowdowns (assumed) when editing content from their spanky new HD camcorders ;-))

Its not necessary to provide an example of encoder quality since you can encode at such high rates that it would be impossible to tell the difference from the original ;-))

If you want to see the edit capabilities of Premiere (and, I suppose, my editing talent - you can visit the website of my director friend. I made the website and under 'Showreel' you'll find a showreel clip. [note to self - upload better quality flash video ;-))]

www / ralphspark / dot / com

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[kamaleon]

Sorry Barmoo didn't get the jist at all of your last post.

I thought we were talking about ripping vhs, why are you talking about HD camcorders? and sky boxes?
I do have a pretty fast system and some ram to edit/tweak some analog rips from a capture card using the method i referred to before (two years ago my older system was already 'nuff fast for it anyway). I'm just wondering if the HW compression capture card can provide a result just as good as the one i'm used to. Or if you prefer, a result that would satisfy me (as "good" is obviously a very subjective thing, innit?). That's all.
I don't use Premiere at all to do this, i don't make movies out of my rips, i just rip them and filter them to remove some of the flickering on the borders, etc. Then encode them into mpeg2 using tmpgenc. Voilà.