Hi, I work with analogic-digital conversion and the dropped frames during the capture are driving me mad. For example, I captured a 2-hour footage from my VCR and more than 6000 frames were lost, almost 5 minutes of video was thrown away. What could be the cause of this? Is the tape in bad shape? There are some kind of alternative drivers? It's a hardware restriction? I own a Datavideo DAC-100 and I've been reading about capture hardware and only a few products are as reliable as DAC-100, so I'd like to hear from you guys what do you suggest. I'd also like to thank Akribie for his previous support, the Scenalyzer turned out to be quite an useful tool.
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Better capture equipment
- Thread starter Fuzer
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Hum, good point WizyWyg. I own a GeForce4 MX 440 8x, NVIDIA chipset, and after some research, and considering my low budget, it was the best choice then. But, if there's better hardware, the investment is compensatory. I'm open for suggestions.
The best way to get rid of dropped frames (and audio drift, which often goes hand-in-hand) is to capture using firewire, rather than thru an analog video card. Firewire captures at a fixed rate that most harddrives can keep up with today (the typical reason for dropped frames) and also has audio + video in the same signal/cable so there's no drift.
Firewire cards are <$100 and some audio cards actually have a firewire port. The trick is then getting from your VCR into firewire, and I've used two options that worked well.
1) if you have a digital video camera with analog in/outs. Connect the VCR to the camera and the camera's firewire to the pc...put the camera in record mode - press play on the VCR - and record with your software.
2) buy an A/D converter (<$300) I currently use the Canopus ADVC100 (there are lots of others out there) (fyi...this is also a great site for info). The advantage to the converter is that I can also "output" directly to my VCR for folks who want VHS copies.
HTH...Rob
Firewire cards are <$100 and some audio cards actually have a firewire port. The trick is then getting from your VCR into firewire, and I've used two options that worked well.
1) if you have a digital video camera with analog in/outs. Connect the VCR to the camera and the camera's firewire to the pc...put the camera in record mode - press play on the VCR - and record with your software.
2) buy an A/D converter (<$300) I currently use the Canopus ADVC100 (there are lots of others out there) (fyi...this is also a great site for info). The advantage to the converter is that I can also "output" directly to my VCR for folks who want VHS copies.
HTH...Rob
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