video capture (crap digitised)

[sharonjpp]

I've just bought a innoDV TV-usb2 to transfer video to dvd
from a samsung camcorder 8mm, after loads of hassel changing composite leads to s-video finally got it all working but the picture is very blocky digitised
I,m running a amd 2200 xp, xp pro, radeon 7000 sapphire,
xp movie maker, is my system to weak?

 

[dakota81]

xp movie maker does software encoding of the video, which will always produce sub-par results. You need to get a video input device which does hardware encoding, like the PVR line of Hauppauge cards.

 

[felixc]

Your system is on the weak side. To capture at full resolution (640x480) you would need a more powerful system.
If your image is really blocky, I wonder if your system does have a USB 2.0 port. If your USB port is 1.1, you have no luck with this product.
Some USB 2.0 encoders have an integrated encoder, but it does not seem to be the case with yours. Any hiccup or background task running in your system will result in a jerky capture.

 

[dakota81]

The need is not to be upgrading your system to handle software encoding in real time, because even the fastest P4's cannot even come close to doing proper dvd resolution mpeg2 encoding in real time.

That's why the need for hardware encoding equipment is so important. I've got a Hauppauge PVR-250 hooked up to a Celeron 600MHz & the cpu usage is ~65% during recording, and the results are fantastic!

 

[norty303]

From the description of 'blocky' it may be that the cature resolution is set too low in the application (I'm sorry, i'm not familiar with it) If you'd have said 'jerky' or 'choppy' then i'd have suspected the processor was struggling.

I've captured from my DV camcorder (both by firewire and composite - Saphire Radeon 8500 vivo) at 640x480 on a AMD 2000XP and had neither choppiness nor pixellation.

Check your capture settings first before looking elsewhere. Also, check your encoding codecs

 

[sharonjpp]

thanks all for your replys, got it sorted now usb problem still working with 1.1 updated driver to 2 and is 100 times better, still not brilliant though should have gone for internal card not external,
again thanks for your help