Poor Quality

[Mattias]

Hello,

I just bought this excited to turn all my vhs cassettes to dvd and have them stored on my computer in digital file. I have a new 2011 macbook air with i7, and am using the three component hook-up through the provided usb card. I watched the videos on my large screen tv, and the picture looks really good. There is no question to the quality, it is perfect. When I captured the video onto my computer and played it back, the picture looks pixelated. It is still watchable, however it is definitely not the same quality as the original, and pretty poor. I would like to record to the same quality to give home videos as a gift and to store for safe keeping. Anyone know how to fix this problem, or is it the level of quality from the usb capture device?

(note I used the same cables to connect to the tv as the computer, and the preview on the computer looked fine, just the output was horrible. I have tried both high quality and standard)

 

Regards,

Mattias

[tsantee]

When you say you used three connectors I presume you mean the two audio and one composite video connector. Is that right? There isn't a red-green-blue component connector on the Easy VHS to DVD for Mac.

 

How are you viewing the finished video? You need to watch it at actual (or normal) size on a computer display. Otherwise it gets zoomed larger and doesn't look very good. When zoomed to fill the screen the picture looks very soft and grainy, but it should be pixelated. I don't know what would cause a pixelated capture when the video in the small display looks okay during the capture. I've found the picture to look very similar to the original although a bit darker with added contrast.

[Mattias]

Yes, I am using the red, white, yellow connectors. Even when watching not full screen, it looks pixelated, when made full screen, it becomes even worse. The thing that I do not get is that when I am watching on the tv (42"), it looks fine. When maximized on my computer screen, it looks horrible. My computer screen is only 13", much smaller than the tv. The contrast looked okay, no problems there, it just doesn't seem like high quality. Do you know anything I can do to get better quality? I was reading all the related posts on this forum, and some people are talking about elago, would this give better quality?

 

Thanks,

Mattias

[tsantee]

Yes, I am using the red, white, yellow connectors. Even when watching not full screen, it looks pixelated, when made full screen, it becomes even worse. The thing that I do not get is that when I am watching on the tv (42"), it looks fine. When maximized on my computer screen, it looks horrible. My computer screen is only 13", much smaller than the tv. The contrast looked okay, no problems there, it just doesn't seem like high quality. Do you know anything I can do to get better quality? I was reading all the related posts on this forum, and some people are talking about elago, would this give better quality?

 

Thanks,

Mattias

The Roxio device is ideal for people whose goal is to make video DVD discs from their analog videos for playing back on a TV. It is not ideal for making videos for playback on a computer. The ElGato capture device that records in h.264 is well suited for creating computer-playable video, but those would need to be re-encoded to the MPEG 2 format (used by the Roxio device) when you want to make a video DVD. Another company, BlackMagic, also makes a h.264 capture device that goes beyond the quality of the ElGato device but costs more. Yet another option is to get a standalone DVD recorder and leave the computer out of it entirely.

 

So that's the dilemma. If you prefer to watch your captured videos on a computer then get something that captures as h.264. If you want to make DVD discs you have a good product now for doing that. Complicating (or maybe helping) this is there are many devices now that can play the h.264 files from you computer directly on a TV without creating any discs. Some TVs can do even do this from an attached portable hard drive.

 

Your video being pixelated is not a common problem with the Roxio device. I'd try with a different cable connected to the Yellow plug. Make sure the Mac isn't doing anything else that is processor or hard drive intensive during the capture. Try a different video, too, just to see if this is common or uncommon.