I am using the Roxio Creator 8 suite to capture a 16:9 PAL format video via a Firewire cable from a Sony DCRHC85 HandyCam. I’ve spent many hours capturing 6 hours of video and then many more weekends since editing the data. Overall I haven’t been very happy with the quality of the end result, as the video seems to have lost a lot of resolution in the editing and authoring process and I was initially blaming compression settings, etc.
During a recent editing session however, I was adjusting the length of a scene when I noticed an effect that can best be described as “ghosting” in the moving image of the captured footage. Imagine for a moment my scene of a shot taken out the side of a moving vehicle with telegraph poles and fences with vertical slats moving past. The individual frames shows these vertical structures repeated almost next to each other, so it looks like there are x2 telegraph poles (and any other starkly obvious vertical structures) repeated right next to each other. This obviously is the cause of the inferior quality of my edited material - the original captured source was bad to start with. Now that I knew what to look out for I found the same effect in all the rest of my captured footage.
I started experimenting; first of all looking at the original tape from the camera and I was relieved to find that the image on that was absolutly fine (no ghosting effect). I recaptured the footage back through the Roxio Capture program and again I see the "ghost" image slightly offset in the captured footage. I deduced that this was now likely to be caused by either: the capture program itself, the camera, or the cable.
To eliminate the camera I tried capturing using a USB cable and that resulted in an image with no ghosting. To eliminate the cable I then spent a fortune on purchasing a genuine Sony i.LINK cable. Here in Australia the cable cost me more than the Roxio software update (without the rebate)!! Anyway I had heard that these Firewire cables can cause obscure problems and seeing as the capture program was able to capture the USB source just fine I thought the software should be OK, so I was confident that the new cable would solve the problem.
WRONG!! I still get the ghosting using my new "million dollar" cable. So just to prove the ghosting is now the fault of the software I fired up Windows Movie Maker (WMM) to see what it would do. In retrospect I should have done this before buying the new cable. Anyway, surprise, surprise, it captures just fine. I’m now a bit miffed that I have x2 firewire cables, both of which are perfectly good, and I still get a foggy capture from the Roxio Capture program.
I’m also a little surprised that nobody else has discovered this problem, but perhaps like me they have been trying to tweak other settings to improve the image quality and didn’t realise there were artefacts being generated by the captured program, so after checking this forum I opened a problem with technical support. I also captured an image from both sets of captured video to demonstrate both the ghosting effect and the OK version from WMM. To date I haven't heard anything...another surprise.
In desperation I downloaded Sony's Vegas editing software, which BTW is absolutely awesome. Funny thing is I get the same ghosting effect when using that and I haven't found the right combination of settings to get a good result. So I had yet another tinker with WMM and found that by changing the Aspect Ratio in the Video Properties section of the Options dialog (found under the Tools menu) between 4:3 and 16:9 I could recreate my problem (4:3) and then fix it (16:9).
On close inspection of the ghosting frames it appears that the lines in the 16:9 source wrap around slightly when captured at 4:3, causing the next line to be offset and therefore causing the ghost image - sorry I'm not that knowledgeable with the technicalities of video and this is purely an observation. When 16:9 is selected the lines now fit and the final image is purr-fect.
I just need to know how to change settings to make the Creator 8 capture program treat the video source in the same way. I've looked but cannot find anything. Anybody got any ideas??
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alan.monument
I am using the Roxio Creator 8 suite to capture a 16:9 PAL format video via a Firewire cable from a Sony DCRHC85 HandyCam. I’ve spent many hours capturing 6 hours of video and then many more weekends since editing the data. Overall I haven’t been very happy with the quality of the end result, as the video seems to have lost a lot of resolution in the editing and authoring process and I was initially blaming compression settings, etc.
During a recent editing session however, I was adjusting the length of a scene when I noticed an effect that can best be described as “ghosting” in the moving image of the captured footage. Imagine for a moment my scene of a shot taken out the side of a moving vehicle with telegraph poles and fences with vertical slats moving past. The individual frames shows these vertical structures repeated almost next to each other, so it looks like there are x2 telegraph poles (and any other starkly obvious vertical structures) repeated right next to each other. This obviously is the cause of the inferior quality of my edited material - the original captured source was bad to start with. Now that I knew what to look out for I found the same effect in all the rest of my captured footage.
I started experimenting; first of all looking at the original tape from the camera and I was relieved to find that the image on that was absolutly fine (no ghosting effect). I recaptured the footage back through the Roxio Capture program and again I see the "ghost" image slightly offset in the captured footage. I deduced that this was now likely to be caused by either: the capture program itself, the camera, or the cable.
To eliminate the camera I tried capturing using a USB cable and that resulted in an image with no ghosting. To eliminate the cable I then spent a fortune on purchasing a genuine Sony i.LINK cable. Here in Australia the cable cost me more than the Roxio software update (without the rebate)!! Anyway I had heard that these Firewire cables can cause obscure problems and seeing as the capture program was able to capture the USB source just fine I thought the software should be OK, so I was confident that the new cable would solve the problem.
WRONG!! I still get the ghosting using my new "million dollar" cable. So just to prove the ghosting is now the fault of the software I fired up Windows Movie Maker (WMM) to see what it would do. In retrospect I should have done this before buying the new cable. Anyway, surprise, surprise, it captures just fine. I’m now a bit miffed that I have x2 firewire cables, both of which are perfectly good, and I still get a foggy capture from the Roxio Capture program.
I’m also a little surprised that nobody else has discovered this problem, but perhaps like me they have been trying to tweak other settings to improve the image quality and didn’t realise there were artefacts being generated by the captured program, so after checking this forum I opened a problem with technical support. I also captured an image from both sets of captured video to demonstrate both the ghosting effect and the OK version from WMM. To date I haven't heard anything...another surprise.
In desperation I downloaded Sony's Vegas editing software, which BTW is absolutely awesome. Funny thing is I get the same ghosting effect when using that and I haven't found the right combination of settings to get a good result. So I had yet another tinker with WMM and found that by changing the Aspect Ratio in the Video Properties section of the Options dialog (found under the Tools menu) between 4:3 and 16:9 I could recreate my problem (4:3) and then fix it (16:9).
On close inspection of the ghosting frames it appears that the lines in the 16:9 source wrap around slightly when captured at 4:3, causing the next line to be offset and therefore causing the ghost image - sorry I'm not that knowledgeable with the technicalities of video and this is purely an observation. When 16:9 is selected the lines now fit and the final image is purr-fect.
I just need to know how to change settings to make the Creator 8 capture program treat the video source in the same way. I've looked but cannot find anything. Anybody got any ideas??
Regards, Alan
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