Thread: Analogue

I have an old analogue VHS-C Panasonic camcorder. What h/w do I need to capture and start making DVDs? I'm tired of messing around with old VCRs !!!

hi, and welcome to the forum.

There are a number of ways you can do this, but first i will need a few more details of the equipment you already have, this way i can give you a better answer.

Regarding your camcorder, do you have the exact model, or know the connections it has, such as SVHS out, etc ,(i can find out for you from them model number if your not sure).

Secondly what spec is your pc, things such as PIII , P4 , AMD etc, Ram, Hdd size, windows xp, and so on.

If you could let me know that would help



thanks

Thanks for your reply.
My camcorder is a Panasonic NV-S5B and has just the white/yellow video/audio composite outputs.
I have a fairly new Dell Dimension 2400 - 2.6GHz, 256MB RAM, XP Home, 40GB HDD, USB ports
I've had a quick look at video capture devices internal/external. I've installed cards before but I'd prefer external devices if poss.

I've had a quick look at devices such as Pinnacle Dazzle DVC 90 and 150, Pinnacle AV/DV, Adaptec VideOh, H&B TX100, EZMaker, etc. etc (minefield!!) Or am I better with a TV Tuner/capture card (seems to be hundreds).

In addition to capture direct from Camcorder I'd like to copy some VCR tapes to DVD - but I guess this would be via the same composite input.(BTW would a solution for this also allow me to cut LPs to CD??)

I don't need a professional solution - home use only.

I'd be just as keen to see what to avoid as much as what is good.

Thanks

Hi,

I know what you mean, there are so many products that could do the job for you its hard to know which one to pick,

have you seen this post Need help with hardware choice its very similar to your question any covers a few prodcuts which would do what your after.

also something like dvd express which runs of your USB port may be of interest, another way would be to put a 1394 (firewire) in your machine, and hook it up to a convertor.

The products shown are similar are from well know brands the editing market, so you should be ok with any of them, but if your looking to DVD movies too the something like DVD express would be easier to use.

good luck, hope this has been of some help

So here's my experience over the last couple of weeks.
I bought a Dazzle DVC90 which has Pinnacle Studio 9 Quick Start bundled. This solution was a disaster. Hardware and software installed OK but the quality of capture was appalling. I understand the difference between "professional" and "home" but this was just plain garbage. Pinnacle has a capture section and picks up the DVC device fine and also has a "dropped frames" counter which remained at zero despite the fact that the captured mpeg was choppy, jumpy, out of sync with audio and just un-usable. After looking at some on-line reviews of the DVC (should have done more of that first!!) there was a suggestion that the problem was the software not the hardware. So I tried a couple of feeware/shareware capture programmes. These performed much better than Pinnacle Studio for the video but I still had big audio sync problems. So I gave up. I liked the idea of the DVC becasue it is external USB but I decided to try a pci capture card.
Popped down to PC World and spent £40 on the Adaptec VideOh PCI AVC2410 (TV tuner and capture). It comes with WinDVR for TV and capture, Sonic MyDVD for capture and DVD authoring/buring and Arcsoft Showbiz for video editing (adding audio, stills, effects etc.). It works like a dream. For capturing from VHS-C camcorder I use the capture section in MyDVD and edit the clips with Showbiz. Got some great results on a friends wedding video. Final DVD quality is indistinguishable from plugging the camcorder directly into the back of the telly - and the words match the mouths!!
As a post-script, after cracking the capturing problem I thought I'd give Pinnacle Studio one more go. I thought I'd download the latest patches/upgrades (9.4.3) and then try some editing of the clips I'd captured with MyDVD. Was all going terribly well (it's more powerful and flexible that Showbiz) until it crashed when I was trying to render the final edit. I give up...

Sounds like you have had a bit of a nightmare with pinnacle, what happens when it crashes, do you get an error or does it hang up/quit the application etc

On this occasion it just hung. I'm not sure the (slightly) better functionality in Pinnacle QS than Showbiz is worth it. I know that on my set-up the MyDVD/Showbiz combination works well.

Well its seems your not the only person to be frustrated with the pinnacle software hanging, i dont know if you have looked on pinnacles web site but this is what they say about the problem.

There is more than one type of render hang problem. To identify the solutions you need to try, please look at the 3 failure modes below and follow the troubleshooting steps under that heading.

The failure modes are.

Case 1. Rendering stops immediately after it starts
Case 2. Rendering stops randomly in a project. It typically does not stop in the same spot if rendering is attempted multiple times.

Case 3. Render stops at the same spot in a project no matter how many times rendering is attempted. There is more than one cause of this failure mode.

Case 1. Rendering stops immediately after it starts

If the hang is immediately after pressing the "Create" button, them there is some configuration problem(2) on the system. Try rendering the demo file Photoshoot.mpg and if this fails, then the problem is confirmed as a system issue. (Since we have not been able to reproduce a render problem with the photoshoot file with our in-house testing).

Solutions
- (C1.1) uninstall, regdelete and reinstall Studio,
- (C1.2) uninstall other software that might conflict with Studio (i.e other video editing software, other video codecs, etc.),
- (C1.3) make sure that you have installed any Service Pack for the version of Windows you are running.
- (C1.4) reinstall Windows on top of itself. In XP this is called Repair.

Case #2 Rendering stops randomly in a project.

If the render hangs are random, even on the same project, then this failure may be due to background tasks, power management or a thermal problem in the computer.

Solutions would be to
- (C2.1) check the hard drive for errors and defrag it,
- (C2.2) end any background tasks (i.e. virus checkers, fax modems, etc.)
- (C2.3) turn off any power management,
- (C2.4) install cooling fans in the computer case.

Case #3. Render stops at the same spot in a project no matter how many times rendering is attempted.

If the render hangs at the same spot on a particular project you can try the following
3A. Try different projects. If only one project hangs, the project may have become corrupt.
3B. If other projects also hang, what are the similarities between these projects.

Solutions to this type of failure depend to some degree on if the user can identify the item in the project that is causing the render to stop. Removing the item or trimming it (if it is a video clip) may allow the rendering to complete. Some users will have the render now stop at some other spot in the project.

Some customer on the webboard have solved their render hangs by updating to the current version of Studio. From within Studio, click on the Help pulldown menu and select Software Updates. If you have an Internet connection, it will check for a more current version of Studio. If it finds one, then it will promt you do download the patch. Once the patch is downloaded, double-click on the patch file and it will install.

C3.1. Looking at the clips in the project for corrupt video frames. They may show up as gray, black, blocky or distorted frames. If you find any delete the distortion by trimming the clip to exclude the frames. You can also try to recapture the footage.

C3.2 defragging your hard drive.
C3.3. making sure you have 10's of Gigabytes of storage on your video disk. Rendering may take up large amounts of storage and running out of disk space (or running low) may cause the render to stop.

C3.4. If you have a separate capture disk, make sure to move the Aux folder to the capture disk.
C3.5. Trim the video or remove the effect at the point where the rendering stops. It may just fail further along.
C3.6. Copy the section where the render stops and put it into a new project. Typically you would want to copy 15 to 30 seconds before and after the point where therender stops. See if you can render this portion of your project to an AVI file and if this renders without problems, use this new AVI file to replace the section in your project where the render stops.

C3.7. Render the entire project to a AVI file and then create an new project and import this AVI file. If you are making a disc, you can now add chapter marks and menus. This workaround works best with NTFS partitions to avoid the 4GB file limit (18 minutes of DV video).

Another thing some users have done its to make sure they have the latest Graphics card drivers, chipset drivers etc installed on the machines.