Best Video capture software & Codec

[CrashPeer44]

Ok i have been recording some footage with my Cannon ZR 85 using the DV cable directly to my laptop.

I tried WIndows Movie Maker first but the quality was not too good

Next I tried Nero 7 with Nero Digital MP4 and it was eh ok

I would like to use XViD but I am un sure as it would lock up in Nero


WHat i am recording is a fast motion Robotics Competition straight onto a Dell M140 1GB Ram 100GB HD 1.73 Intel Pentium M

any suggestions?

[Spongebob Squarepants]

NeroVision Express is good but what format do you want the video in? are you trying to transcode while you're recording?

[CrashPeer44]

I would like to use XViD and not Nero Digital like i did before

and yes I am trying to transcode while recording

[Mels_Smileys45]

I would not recomend using xvid or divx in this case. These codecs are not made for real time fast capture video. Its gonna look like a crappy webcam. These codecs need very slow, multi pass, compression to look nice. I ve always used MPEG-2 at high bitrate and then encode it to divx or xvid with great results.



This reminds of my first pot at ZP back in april 2002, using the name Melvin Smiley. I saw someone asking about video capture and signed up to tell them how I was doing it.

[Boomer The Dog]

Assuming that your camcorder is sending progressive frames to the computer, you might want to set your mpeg2 encoder to capture in I-frame mode. That's essentially the way to capture progressively in mpeg, where each frame is a complete picture of the scene being captured.

When capturing mpeg2 I-frames, turn the bitrate of the capture file up as high as you can to get a better master; most default at 8000kbs, try to double that at least. That will make a master file that's gigs per hour, so watch the size, or your movie editor might have trouble opening it, if it's many gigs.

Now you can take your master mpeg and convert it to Xvid. If you do two pass encoding, it might take 3 hours per hour of video, but you'll probably have the beautiful video you are looking for, as a reward for your patience!

[CrashPeer44]

hmm So MPEG-2 is best compared to MPEG-4? for real time atleast

Also in Nero the file size for a DVD MPEG 2 file @ 720X480 with LPCM a 37 second clip is 38 MIN

While with MPEG 4 @ standard is about 5

is there a better program?

[CrashPeer44]

I tested WMV @ 2.1 Mbit vs SVCD and SVCD looks better
DVD seems a waste

I then will encode the MPEG-2 to XVID

[RACKnRAIL]

Does your laptop have onboard graphics? If it does it may help to maximize your allocated memory in your bios. I recently did this with my laptop and noticed a huge difference in editing video. I couldn't even use my tv tuner card before doing this, but now, it works fairly well.

[Mels_Smileys45]

I still use DVD setting instead of SVCD because of higher resolution but its all in how perfect you want it to be as a DVD, high bit rate, takes up a hell of a lot of space. Ive had films go up to 9gigs! As for programs, I really cant recomend any because I use the software that came with my hardware.


I know Ulead has a capture plug in but I never could get the program to run well on my system. Maybe newer versions are a bit better. Virtualdub also has a capture plug in but I couldnt get it to work. Look under "File" "capture avi".

[CrashPeer44]

Does your laptop have onboard graphics? If it does it may help to maximize your allocated memory in your bios. I recently did this with my laptop and noticed a huge difference in editing video. I couldn't even use my tv tuner card before doing this, but now, it works fairly well.

How do I do this>???

[RACKnRAIL]

To boot into your laptop's setup (bios) you usually hit the "delete key" or "F1" or "F2" when rebooting, that depends on the brand and model laptop. Most computers will tell you which key to hit for setup during boot up. In your bios settings look for onboard graphics using the arrow up & down key then select what you want by hitting enter and/or page up and page down. Each bios works a bit differently, but they all usually have some sort of instructions. You can probably get more specific info from your manufacturer's web site on onboard graphics and how to change them. It really isn't that hard.

[CrashPeer44]

Oh i have a Dell M140 and it seems it does not let me change it

any hacks?

[RACKnRAIL]

Oh i have a Dell M140 and it seems it does not let me change it

any hacks?

If I am not mistaken it can be adjusted. You need to boot into your bios. I believe it has one higher setting than it's default 128mb. If you have a gig of ram it should be able to handle it with ease.

[CrashPeer44]

it shows what it has but none of the options change it from 128

[WE_DELIVER]

To get the best possible quality, you should always capture DV or uncompressed. Then after you have that footage on your computer, you should reencode to whatever codec youre using to distribute. Not only will you save time recapturing, but also, youre gonna make it possible for some codecs that require multipass techniques to encode video that looks good.

Uncompressed footage will take up a hell lot of space and your computer might not be able to keep up with the troughput, but will look best. Capturing directly into a lossy codec, which might work fishy because youre encoding in real time, will probably produce a lot of artifacts and overall shitty video. DV might be the answer, since it wont eat up a lot of space that uncompressed footage would, will look pretty good compared to other codecs, and is pretty much designed for situations like yours(video capture over firewire from a DV camera)

Pretty much, I would stay away from codecs that put your computer into the bottleneck situation, and higher compression/more complicated codecs will do that. If your DV device(your camera) has to wait for your computer, then you will have problems.