Evaluating Emc10 Vs Cyberlink Powerdirector 7 And Others

[jhg08]

I'm trying to find software to do primarily the following:

 

1) Capture composite video from a VHS VCR through a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800

 

2) Edit the video. Editing will consist mostly of splitting long tapes into DVD-sized segments, adding chapter markers and possibly adding fade-in/out at the beginning and end.

 

I've evaluated a number of packages, and am really disappointed with the state of the art. Packages are either bloatware with lots of flashy bells and whistles that do a poor job of basic editing, or are just not capable of dealing with WinTV at all. Here are my results so far:

 

ULead DVD Workshop 2 - Unable to capture composite audio (no option for the HVR-1800 in the audio source selector)

AVS Audio Tools 5 - Captures audio but 2 seconds out of sync with videl

AVS Video Editor - ditto

Adobe Premiere Elements - Does not support analog audio/video at all

 

The only package I've found so far that works with the card is CyberLink PowerDirector 7. While it works, it has several annoying bugs and the editing usability leaves something to be desired. CyberLink's response to every query has been one of "Reinstall the software" or "Nobody else has reported that, so it's not a bug".

 

As for usability, there's a very nice looking zoomable timeline interface, but actually inserting mark-in and mark-out points requires going to a popup window with its own timeline and no zoom capability. If your source material is, say 2 hours long, a one-pixel shift in the cursor can be several dozen seconds so you can't insert marks with any accuracy except by noting the timecodes in the fancy zoomable timeline and manually entering them in the edit dialog. Also, it's unpredictable whether it will re-render video captured in DVD-HQ mode. Sometimes it just writes the DVD with 5% CPU usage, and sometimes it cranks both CPUs (PentiumD 3.0GHz) up to 100% (at least it will USE both CPUs :-) I suspect it depends on whether my initial mark-in hits an I-frame, but it would be nice for the software to snap to the nearest I-frame, or let me know where they are.

 

I'd really like to hear from anybody that has experience with both EMC10 and PD7 and get some comments about EMC10's usability for these tasks.

 

Thanks in advance

[gi7omy]

Now that's like asking Ford to comment on the difference between their cars and GM

[sknis]

I'm trying to find software to do primarily the following:

 

1) Capture composite video from a VHS VCR through a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800

 

2) Edit the video. Editing will consist mostly of splitting long tapes into DVD-sized segments, adding chapter markers and possibly adding fade-in/out at the beginning and end.

 

I'd really like to hear from anybody that has experience with both EMC10 and PD7 and get some comments about EMC10's usability for these tasks.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Since almost everyone who is on these forums (except those who ask these kinds of questions) has and uses EMC, they will tell you that it is the best but may have some quirks. Most of the frequent posters have more than one video editing program but continue to use the EMC (latest version is 10).

 

Here's an idea for you - download and run the trial version of EMC 9 and make the judgment for yourself. You may not like the program/user interface and reject it just on that.

 

I have three video editing programs on my computer (inclusing PD7) and use EMC 10 almost exclusively. There is nothing in the other programs that is not in EMC but you may have to search to find it. BTW, if you do the trial, do not use any of the Assistants. They are dumbed down applications that a experienced user would probably not use.

[jhg08]

Here's an idea for you - download and run the trial version of EMC 9 and make the judgment for yourself. You may not like the program/user interface and reject it just on that.

 

I tried your suggestion, but find that EMC9 suffers from the same problem as many other packages. It can't see the HVR-1800's composite audio input. You can select the Video device just fine, but on the video options dialog no audio device is shown and there's just no way to get audio. So far the only packages I've found that work with composite audio input are BeyondTV (not at all what I need in terms of capture and edit), and PowerDirector7. In both of those programs, the corresponding options dialog lists the Hauppauge card as a possible audio source. Below are two screenshots of what I'm referring to. The first one shows the EMC9 dialog after I pressed the "options" button just under the preview image. The dialog should list the Hauppauge WinTV card under Device, but nothing appears here, and no audio is heard either in preview mode or in the recorded file. The second image is the corresponding dialog from PD7.

 

Oh, and BTW, EMC9 seems to be doing the video encoding on the system CPU, ignoring the HVR-1800's hardware MPEG encoding. While in preview mode the system CPU is pegged at 50% (one processor of a 3.0GHz 2-core system pegged at 100%).

 

Are there any EMC10 users successfully capturing composite audio from the HVR-1800 without using a lot of CPU? So far in terms of UI I really like Roxio (I've owned Easy CD Creator versions 4, 5 and 6) but if I can't capture composite audio and use the card's MPEG encoder it's kind of a non-starter.

 

EMC9 Video Input Options Dialog

 

PD7 Video Input Options Dialog

 

[ggrussell]

if I can't capture composite audio and use the card's MPEG encoder it's kind of a non-starter.

You should be using the Hauppauge software then. As far as I know, nothing else really takes advantage of their hardware. Applications like EMC use DirectX commands ONLY and do not access hardware directly. There is no reason why you can't use the files created by WinTV with Videowave or MyDVD.

[Breckenridge]

I have not been able to get EMC 10 to record sound from my VCR and the video seems to be rather flakey. However, I was able to record both sound and video via Microsoft Moviemaker and use EMC 10 to send it to DVD. Roxio hasn't given me an answer on why EMC10 doesn't work. I am currently using a Sound Blaster Audigy2ZS card and Radeon X300 SE 128 MB hypermemory. There are better cards out there, but these should be able to work ok.

[jhg08]

You should be using the Hauppauge software then. As far as I know, nothing else really takes advantage of their hardware. Applications like EMC use DirectX commands ONLY and do not access hardware directly. There is no reason why you can't use the files created by WinTV with Videowave or MyDVD.

Hmmm... So far I've tried seven packages that were able to capture at least video, and all but EMC9 were able to read the hardware-encoded MPEG stream.

 

I've branched out into looking at less well-known capture apps -- the latest being VirtualDub. Since it's GPL open-source it makes no attempt to hide options from the user, and in 5 minutes I've learned a lot about the state of video capture. For starters, VirtualDub IS capable of capturing composite audio, but more importantly it tells me WHY -- because it implements DirectShow compatibility. With that turned off (i.e. selecting the VFW device) it behaves just like the other non-audio-capable programs. Using the DirectShow device I get both audio and video.

 

Is it true then that what's missing in EMC is DirectShow? Any chance

[ggrussell]

and all but EMC9 were able to read the hardware-encoded MPEG stream.

Are you saying that EMC will not import the MPEG files created by Hauppauge software? Kinda odd. As long as the MPEG files created are standard MPEG or hidef MPEG, Videowave/MyDVD 10 should not have any problems.

 

I had the HVR1600 for a few days. I used Media Center to record hidef TV channels fine. Just my reception was a hit or miss. I was able to bring those fine into Videowave/MyDVD. I ended up keeping my good old WinTV card.

[jhg08]

Are you saying that EMC will not import the MPEG files created by Hauppauge software? Kinda odd. As long as the MPEG files created are standard MPEG or hidef MPEG, Videowave/MyDVD 10 should not have any problems.

 

EMC9 is able to edit existing MPEG video, just not capture it from the HVR-1800. Based on what I saw in VirtualDub, I'm guessing EMC doesn't yet support DirectShow, which seems to be the standard implemented by the Hauppauge drivers.

[jhg08]

Here's an idea for you - download and run the trial version of EMC 9 and make the judgment for yourself. You may not like the program/user interface and reject it just on that.

 

I tried your advice, but EMC9 had serious problems.

 

I captured about 1 hr 45 min of video to MPEG using the Hauppauge capture program using the defaults (DVD-HQ). The captured file plays fine in WMP11.

 

When I tried to open the file in VideoWave, both CPU cores immediately went to 100% and the system became unresponsive. Ctrl-Alt-Delete took about 60 seconds to bring up Task Manager, and it showed VideoWave9.exe and VCGProxyFileManager9.exe using equal amounts of CPU (50% each i.e. 100% of one CPU core each). The system was extremely unresponsive and I had to kill both processes to recover use of my system.

 

I tried relaunching VideoWave and re-adding the MPEG. This time CPU pegged at 100% again. It started out at 50% each, but after a few minutes VCGProxyFileManager9 went to zero and VideoWave went to 100% (it's now using all of BOTH cores). At least now it's not interfering with system responsiveness, but I haven't asked it to do anything yet other than open the video file.

 

I let it run for a few minutes. It looks like it's in a tight I/O loop doing a huge amount of reading but not much else. I haven't done anything else in the VideoWave UI yet. Here's a screenshot of TaskManager:

 

 

In the time it took me to upload the screen capture the I/O count increased from 137 million to 230 million reads. It's doing about 600,000 reads per second.

 

What's going on? Is this a known bug? Is it attempting to render something in background? If so, how can it know what to render to?

[ggrussell]

Videowave/MyDVD will create a proxy files for certain file formats and sometimes must pre-convert to a format it can edit. Like m2t, m2ts and dvr-ms files can not be edited natively so they are converted on the fly before they are added to the timeline.

 

But since you are capturing to MPEG 2 DVDHQ, I wouldn't think that Videowave would need to do either one, but it's obviously doing something.

[jhg08]

But since you are capturing to MPEG 2 DVDHQ, I wouldn't think that Videowave would need to do either one, but it's obviously doing something.

 

A violation of the sofware development "principle of least surprise". It's not polite to grab both CPU cores at 100% without any indication of what's happening and with no option to intervene or throttle. At the very least it should say "I need to run a possibly long, CPU intensive process on this file -- Do you want me to proceed?"

 

What concerns me is the high Read count with no corresponding Writes. Memory wasn't going up, so it seems it's reading the data and throwing it away.

 

I like the Roxio UI and I'd really like to try EMC10, but based on the instability of just about every trial package I've downloaded (EMC9, Power Director, ULead VideoStudio, Premiere Elements, Sony Vegas and several other less-well-known packages) I'm really not willing to spend the money without a trial to make sure it works in my environment. If I'd actually paid money for any of those other products I'd be in a pretty bad mood right now. All of them have flaws ranging from significant annoyances to severe instability (crashes).

[Guest ml]

The only package I've found so far that works with the card is CyberLink PowerDirector 7. While it works, it has several annoying bugs and the editing usability leaves something to be desired. CyberLink's response to every query has been one of "Reinstall the software" or "Nobody else has reported that, so it's not a bug".

 

As for usability, there's a very nice looking zoomable timeline interface, but actually inserting mark-in and mark-out points requires going to a popup window with its own timeline and no zoom capability. If your source material is, say 2 hours long, a one-pixel shift in the cursor can be several dozen seconds so you can't insert marks with any accuracy except by noting the timecodes in the fancy zoomable timeline and manually entering them in the edit dialog.

 

I'd really like to hear from anybody that has experience with both EMC10 and PD7 and get some comments about EMC10's usability for these tasks.

 

Thanks in advance

I frequently use Cyberlink's PD 7 and one of the features that I like is it's 'Multi-trim' feature which allows you to mark in and out and using the controls at the bottom, you can advance or go back frame by frame. You do have to set some defaults manually for rendering for each production which can be annoying, but if you set up one production as a template and then do a File\Save as.... for each individual production, you can avoid that annoyance. One of the neatest features is their DirectorZone which allows users to share content that they've developed.

 

VideoWave has a similar 'mark in/out' feature using markers and there's not a big difference in this feature compared to PD.

 

Both programs have their strengths and weaknesses so it's really a matter of personal preference for editing and you need to choose the package that works best with your editing style. Personally, I think that they're very close in capabilities and ease of use.

 

You're asking technical questions about EMC 10 which should probably be directed to Roxio Sales. I think they have a 30 day money back guarantee if you buy online.

 

And remember.... these 'trial' versions are not the full version of the programs and most of the advanced editing capabilities have been disabled.