[Fishman44]

I am new at creating videos and am trying to copy a VHS tape to the Roxio Software where I can burn it to a DVD. After transferring video footage for about an hour, the computer starts to get very slow and freezes sometimes. When I test the video from the menu the sound keeps up but the video is slow and choppy. I am using a dell 8400 with pentium 4 3.0 ghz processor and 1 gb ram. Is the problem that the video file is getting to large for the pc memory to play it? If this is true then how do you create a 6 hour dvd or even a 2 hour for that matter without it freezing?

[grandpabruce]

Fishman44, on Aug 10 2006, 07:13 PM, said:

I am new at creating videos and am trying to copy a VHS tape to the Roxio Software where I can burn it to a DVD. After transferring video footage for about an hour, the computer starts to get very slow and freezes sometimes. When I test the video from the menu the sound keeps up but the video is slow and choppy. I am using a dell 8400 with pentium 4 3.0 ghz processor and 1 gb ram. Is the problem that the video file is getting to large for the pc memory to play it? If this is true then how do you create a 6 hour dvd or even a 2 hour for that matter without it freezing?

Try capturing a short segment of about 5 minutes, and see how that works for you. For capturing VHS tapes, I would never capture more than 15 minutes at a time, or there are problems with editing. It takes forever.

Capture in shorter segements. You can piece them together seamlessly, in VideoWave or MyDVD.

[james_hardin]

While your PC is nice, if you are capturing in mpeg2 you are taxing it with all the un-compression needed and swap file handling during editing.

I stick to AVI for capture and go with 1+ hour files. They edit smoothly most of the time.

If I see VW slowing down, I save/exit/reboot and things pickup again.

[Fishman44]

But for some reason after I capture a 20 minute video the file size is huge. It actuallly said it was 21.8 gigabytes. Why is it so big? Is there any way to make it smaller because my hardrive has about 4 gigabytes left out of like 80 total so does anyone know what I can do?

[sknis]

Fishman44, on Aug 11 2006, 08:33 PM, said:

But for some reason after I capture a 20 minute video the file size is huge. It actuallly said it was 21.8 gigabytes. Why is it so big? Is there any way to make it smaller because my hardrive has about 4 gigabytes left out of like 80 total so does anyone know what I can do?

21 gigs does seem high even if it is a avi file unless there is a lot of action. I have a couple of 20 minute avi files on my computer and they are about 1/3 that size. BUT with that hard drive as it is, you will never be able to do any video editing.

If you have a laptop, buy an external hard drive to store the junk you want to save that is now on that 40 gig drive. If you have a desk top, buy either an internal or external drive, the largest you can afford. You need as much space on that hard drive as you possibly can get.

Clean and defrag your hard drive. With only 4 gig left, you may even have trouble defragging it without deleting some files.

It helps if you post your computer profile as part of your signature. Use the My Control link at the top of the page and look down to the left to edit signature. If you do that, you won't have to keep posting it when you ask other questions.