Capturing Video

[Anonymous]

I have a HP Media Center and am using Premiere Pro CS3software to capture analog video from a VCR that’s connected to my front AV ports,however I cant seem to make the capture connection, Im assuming I have to get Premiere to connect to my video cards but seeing that I also have a TV tuner I’m confused as to which one to use,any ideas on how to do this?Thanks in advance.

[chuckengels]

Premiere captures via Firewire, very few capture cards, and almost no USB devices.

You will really need a digital converter or a minidv camcorder that allows passthrough.

It will not recognize the capture device on your Media Center PC and it will not be able to open files captured with the Media Center Software.

[Anonymous]

See if you can use Windows Movie Maker to capture your analog video!

As long as you have the composite video connections (yellow, red, white) then you should not have any problems!

[chuckengels]

The only problem may be that the video will look really bad, capture over firewire will make a huge difference. Worth a try I suppose but after trying dozens of other methods myself over 12 months and not accomplishing anything I found that nothing beats capture via Firewire, nothing 😉

[bobjr94]

He is capturing from a vcr, so firewire is not an option. I have copied a few tapes to the computer and had the same problem, my video editing program would not detect the capture card / port. I would go with RS and see if windows movie maker can find it, then just capture it as dv for the best quality and you can then edit it or enhance is in Premiere. I think when I did it I was able a basic program like ulead video studio and it would work with an analog capture card, then I edited it in another program. You can probably get a trail version that will be good enough to capture.

Remember most standard vcrs didnt have even an s-video port. Its an analog recording so its going to be an analog capture. Its not even the firewire that is giving you the excellent quality, a camera with a usb connection could do the same thing. Your not really capturing when using firewire or usb, more like copying data from the tape to the computer with no conversion. When capturing from a vcr, your converting a analog signal to digital, then compressing it (usually) in some way.

[chuckengels]

Why do you say that Firewire is not an option? That is all I use to capture analog video from many sources .

[Anonymous]

ditto, i plug my analog source into my canopus convertor and it feeds to the computer via…… yep, that’s right, firewire.

[chuckengels]

And I use a Pyro Link by ADS, not as good as the Canopus models but a little less expensive and it gets the job done very well 🙂

I wouldn’t think of capturing analog footage any other way anymore, I tried it and it doesn’t work very well at all without the converter. Capture cards, Windows Media Center, goofy USB connected devices, none of them come close to the quality of capturing from a digital converter over firewire, none. It is pain free, no headaches, always works, always has the best possible quality, nice and easy. I don’t have the time to fool around with a bunch of stuff that doesn’t work, captures poor quality, and gives me trouble all the time 😉

[bobjr94]

If you are doing analog capture on firewire you are just doing the conversion from analog = digital outside the computer. The quality you get depends on how much you spent. Im sure if you compared a 150$ converter box that uses firewire to one of those 20$ usb video capture things your quality would be much better, but thats more because of price and quality than if its firewire or usb or internal.

It just sound like some people are saying firewire is a capture format, it is just a data cable & port. Same as usb or even pci if using a capture card. Its just a method of moving data, the quality will be as good or bad the device capturing the video.

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