How To Capture from Samsung Digital Camcorder??

[jsteph]

Hi,
I am able to caputure 'video' from my samsung SCD103 digicam, by plugging the USB cable into it and the computer, and using 'Capture' from MS MovieMaker. However, the quality is very low--and this is not using it's memory-stick as source--it's using the mini-DV tape, which shows very high quality video when I hook up the av connector to the TV.

What I want to do is this: I want to use the USB cable to copy the raw video data from the Mini-DV tape in the digicam to the computer. I know it may be a huge file, I don't care. I know it may take hours--I don't care either. I have the room and the time, I just want to capture the pure, raw, high-quality video to my computer. After that I'll convert it to some compressed format, but I want to start with raw data.

Is there any way to do this, *without* getting a video card with an s-video or some other capture card and resampling. I just want to use the USB to simply transfer bits and bytes to my computer.

Is this possible?
Thanks,
--Jim

 

[norty303]

What capture settings are you using on Moviemaker?

Have you checked you're not capturing using a 'video for web' setting or similar?

 

[kiddpete]

USB is a known problem for video transfer. Use firewire. It will be much faster, and it will give you the quality you want.

 

[jsteph]

Thanks both for the replies. On MovieMaker I was using the highest setting (I can't remember what it is, but that was the first thing I checked for), and unfortunately I don't have a firewire port.

What I ended up doing was getting a capture device and it works very well. I think the issue was probably with the camera--I think it was made to use the usb strictly to transfer the Memory Stick video, which is lo-res, or to use with there cheap capture software. The capture device I got is Dazzle, which comes with Pinnacle Studio, and it's working out well; I hook it up to the video-out port on the Samsung, and it transfers at full resolution and quality.
--Jim

 

[kiddpete]

A firewire port would have been a lot cheaper, and would perform a digital rather than an analog (S-Video or component) transfer.

 

[jsteph]

kiddepete,
Yes, getting a firewire card will be on my list. I was reading that usb 2.0 (which is what my samsung has, as well as my computer) is faster than firewire. Is this true?

Also, the Dazzle device didn't have firewire input or output either, but it'll work out well for my older camcorder which only has rca jacks, and also my older vcr which only has rca jacks. So far when I capture via that device, at 30 fps, full quality video, it seems to average only 2 or 3 dropped frames per minute of video, which I can live with for now.
--Jim

 

[cdogg]

OK, let me just say that the advice here about USB vs. Firewire has been a load of hogwash so far. First of all, it doesn't matter which one you use. Both transfer digitally when directly connected to the camcorder. The Dazzle device uses analog and that's a different story.

USB 2.0 is slightly faster than Firewire, but most don't notice much difference.

The quality problem you were having in your original post was 100% MovieMaker's fault. You need to use the correct setting. By default, it tries to encode your video from your DV camcorder into the crappy WMV9 format. That format is lossy, and you can easily tell even when using the highest quality setting.

Instead, you need to choose the DV-AVI format, which will eat up many gigs of space. This is actually better than commercial DVD quality! See the link below for some reading on this:

http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/8691/3804.html

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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