[SWLUG] advice requested re: video capture

[Steve Anderson]

On 09/12/2007, Julian Hall <lists at kaotic.co.uk> wrote:

> Sorry forgot to mention.  This card does slightly *under* DVD quality at
> 720 * 480 rather than 720 * 576.

That's the standard NTSC DVD resolution. I imagine if you set it to
PAL it will do 576 lines instead. And there's more to quality than
resolution - a full HD frame of 1920x1080 will look rubbish at
3000kbps =)

Just to dip my oar in, a little late as I've been on a sabbatical - if
the camcorder has DV out, which any camcorder bought in the last five
years is likely to have, regardless of price, get a Firewire card and
use that. You get full native resolution (768x576 on Mini DV), sound
and camera control with one cable then. Even if you immediately
down-sample it and compress it, you get a better picture by staying
all digital. You just need a decent hard drive to store the footage on
as you capture it.

What I've taken to doing when I'm going from camcorder to web is hook
my camcorder to my domestic DVD recorder via Firewire and grab the
footage as high bitrate MPEG2 - still fantastic quality but not nearly
so big. But that's just me =)

Steve

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