Best / Favourite Video Cap Software

davil

Anyone like to post their favourite Video capture / Video editing suites or individual apps even?

At the minute I only have Cyberlink PowerVCRII {which I only used for the first time yesterday and seems to be good} , Peephole3, WinCoder/WinProducer[came with graphics card, seems okay] and some Camtasia program.

Also if anyone has a WDM driven capture option on their graphics card as I do can they tell me of their woes / successes

And Which option should I use here in Ireland for capture, PAL_B or PAL_D?????

Roller Toaster

#1 DVD Ripper is a great all in one program for ripping dvds.

Cloud

VirtualDub - it's free! www.virtualdub.org

davil

Originally posted by Roller Toaster
#1 DVD Ripper is a great all in one program for ripping dvds.

Ripping DVDs aint my prob though. I use Smartripper and Flaskmpeg for that [VIDOMI sucks and that Gordian Knot rippack sucks too] because it can include subtitles.

I have VirtualDub lying about somewhere too. I'll give it a go. When I record with PowerVCR and DivX codecs or XVID I get a lot of stuttering and A/V sync problems. It works fine on uncompressed AVI though - should I do that and convert it later with VIDOMI or LSX Mpeg encoder or something to that effect??

What would you choose if you want to just record medium quality mpeg/divx video captures?

daveg

Originally posted by Cloud
VirtualDub - it's free! www.virtualdub.org

Ditto.

Roller Toaster

Dr DivX has some great DivX codecs, have you tried that?

davil

Isn't that a commercial program, i.e. you have to pay for it??? If it is, no thanks. And what do you mean by great DivX codecs? I would have thought DivX 5.0.3 was good enough. Obviously I was wrong, yeah?

Roller Toaster

Well I'm no expert on this really but I've found that usually Dr DivX compiles all my film files into a tiny fraction of what they were before. I usually compile a film with the codecs on #1 dvd ripper but I've found that using Dr DivX afterwards reduces the file by at least 50%. You get a 7 day trial with Dr DivX anyway so you might as well try it out and see if it works for you, it's more than just a dvd ripper as it can compile pretty much any video file.

davil

Well thanks but unless I get a proper freeware solution or something I'm gonna give up on video editing altogether - no matter how many times I reinstall windows or codecs I always have trouble [especially with A/V sync.] eg. Even trying to whack one divx on the end of another in Adobe Premiere (is there an addon I need or a patch to allow Premiere to work with non-standard AVIs?

Standard Toaster

You have two options really.
You could capture with what's called VFW(video for windows) or DirectShow.

VirtualDub is VFW based. Use a modded version to help if you have video/sound synch problems. This is probably the best solution for most people.

You could try Directshow (formerly ActiveMovie in the oldin days;) )
This relies on DirectX for capture. Download AMCap 600kb Very simple and not resource hungry which is very important as not to drop precious frames.

Now, either way, do not use DivX of Xvid or similar to capture on the fly unless you have a supercomputer. Your wasting CPU time compressing video. Same applies to sound.
Captuing "uncompressed" is an option but you WILL run out of space in a few minutes.

Use Huffy codec if possible for capture. It's a lossless codec. You will get huge file sizes but not as hugh as uncompressed and we are trying to get the best quality anyway. If your system isn't up to scratch, use mjpeg codec instead. Use PCM wav @44000 16bit for sound.

Once you have a nice capture use your favourite editing app to convert to DivX or MPG or whatever you like.

Also, use PAL-I for Irish analog TV.

PowerVCRII is not bad. Captures to MPEG1&2 as far as I remember. You are losing quality though.

Remember that FAT32 will bomb out at 4Gb so use NTFS if possible. (There are ways around this though)

Davil, what hardware are you using for capture?