Audio Missing From "edit Automatically", Not "edit Advanced"?

[yowser]

I finally got my VCR hooked up to the Roxio USB adapter and captured some video for the first time. My ultimate goal is to convert some tapes that cannot be replaced, e.g. of a family member.

 

I am using a Memorex VCR with 3 RCA outputs, Roxio USB adapter, Creator 2012 Pro, on a ThinkPad X220 with Win 7 (64 bit). Windows may have installed drivers, which I know was a bad thing, but it seems to be working.

 

With Roxio Media Import open, I can hit Play on the VCR and the recording plays with audio in the window. I can capture it (as an AVI [892786 KB], to which it defaulted) and play back with audio. My trouble seems to come when I try to edit the captured file.

 

First, if I say "Edit Automatically" (because I'm not worried about effects or even editing, really -- for now I just want to convert that tape to digital), I get "Create a CineMagic Movie" and it seems to insist on a style (vignette, etc.). I couldn't find any way to say "no style", is there a way?

 

For output, I tried "DVD Playback", "MPEG-2 for DVD, normal quality", and the 4m1s recording became 1m40s (this according to the "Render" window, which reported that total duration as soon as it started). The resulting .mpg has no audio and is 91197 KB, according to Windows Explorer (which also says it's 1m39s).

 

OTOH, if I say "Edit Advanced" and follow essentially the same steps, I get a 4m1s .mpg (219808 KB) with audio.

 

Is this how it's expected to behave? And for digitizing VHS tapes, is there a better approach? I'm wondering if the 13GB/hr AVI is excessivly large, and also if there's a better output format. For example, "DVD Playback" defaulted to normal quality, but I'm happy to use best quality if that will retail more of the limited quality the VHS source has, or conversely perhaps smallest file size will be good enough (still better than the VHS).

 

And maybe "Edit Video" isn't even where I want to be, maybe I just need "Drag & Drop Convert" or "Copy & Convert Video", using the AVI as source?

 

If there's a tutorial for all this, I'm happy to study it, but the only manual I could find online was a bunch of tips for specific features and I'm not there yet.

 

Thanks!

[bimicher]

I finally got my VCR hooked up to the Roxio USB adapter and captured some video for the first time. My ultimate goal is to convert some tapes that cannot be replaced, e.g. of a family member.

 

I am using a Memorex VCR with 3 RCA outputs, Roxio USB adapter, Creator 2012 Pro, on a ThinkPad X220 with Win 7 (64 bit). Windows may have installed drivers, which I know was a bad thing, but it seems to be working.

 

With Roxio Media Import open, I can hit Play on the VCR and the recording plays with audio in the window. I can capture it (as an AVI [892786 KB], to which it defaulted) and play back with audio. My trouble seems to come when I try to edit the captured file.

 

First, if I say "Edit Automatically" (because I'm not worried about effects or even editing, really -- for now I just want to convert that tape to digital), I get "Create a CineMagic Movie" and it seems to insist on a style (vignette, etc.). I couldn't find any way to say "no style", is there a way?

 

For output, I tried "DVD Playback", "MPEG-2 for DVD, normal quality", and the 4m1s recording became 1m40s (this according to the "Render" window, which reported that total duration as soon as it started). The resulting .mpg has no audio and is 91197 KB, according to Windows Explorer (which also says it's 1m39s).

 

OTOH, if I say "Edit Advanced" and follow essentially the same steps, I get a 4m1s .mpg (219808 KB) with audio.

 

Is this how it's expected to behave? And for digitizing VHS tapes, is there a better approach? I'm wondering if the 13GB/hr AVI is excessivly large, and also if there's a better output format. For example, "DVD Playback" defaulted to normal quality, but I'm happy to use best quality if that will retail more of the limited quality the VHS source has, or conversely perhaps smallest file size will be good enough (still better than the VHS).

 

And maybe "Edit Video" isn't even where I want to be, maybe I just need "Drag & Drop Convert" or "Copy & Convert Video", using the AVI as source?

 

If there's a tutorial for all this, I'm happy to study it, but the only manual I could find online was a bunch of tips for specific features and I'm not there yet.

 

Thanks!

 

The video you captured from the tape is already "digital" so there is no conversion to "digital" required.

First of all what do you want to do with the captured video? Do you want to create a video DVD playable on any DVD player? Do you simple want to archive the video clip?

 

Do not use Cinemagic for anything , I find it a useless feature causing more problems then it is worth. If you want to do any editing at all , always use "Edit - advavanced" (this also called Videowave)

[yowser]

Thanks myguggi. I take your point that after capture, the AVI file is digital. Am I right that it's about 13GB/hr using the default settings? That's a lot for lousy 6hr (SLP on this machine) VHS mode. Would a full tape recorded in SP (i.e. 2hr) still be ~78GB, or would it be 13GB/hr? Are there settings I could adjust that would reduce filesize without losing anything?

 

My initial goal was simply to capture the video tapes before they deteriorate or otherwise get damaged, then maybe later remove any commercials (if recorded off TV) or extraneous material (if recorded live) and either share the digital files or maybe burn DVDs for those without huge data allowances. Then I could also archive the initial video so I'd have the closest to original as possible. This 100GB for an 8hr tape makes me rethink that though.

 

I will stay away from CineMagic, thank you for confirming that. If I don't want to do any editing of a given AVI, does Copy & Convert Video > Convert Video > Movies > Output to DVD|VIDEO do what I want and not lose much from the original AVI? Obviously a VHS is not going to be great quality, so I don't want to lose any more!

 

For archiving the digital video, would I want WMV, MPEG-2, H.264, or MPEG-4? Under Custom Output, all four compression algorithms do seem to offer 720x480, so I think I'd want the one that retains the most of what little quality these VHS tapes have to begin with.

 

Thanks again!

[bimicher]

Thanks myguggi. I take your point that after capture, the AVI file is digital. Am I right that it's about 13GB/hr using the default settings? That's a lot for lousy 6hr (SLP on this machine) VHS mode. Would a full tape recorded in SP (i.e. 2hr) still be ~78GB, or would it be 13GB/hr? Are there settings I could adjust that would reduce filesize without losing anything?

 

My initial goal was simply to capture the video tapes before they deteriorate or otherwise get damaged, then maybe later remove any commercials (if recorded off TV) or extraneous material (if recorded live) and either share the digital files or maybe burn DVDs for those without huge data allowances. Then I could also archive the initial video so I'd have the closest to original as possible. This 100GB for an 8hr tape makes me rethink that though.

 

I will stay away from CineMagic, thank you for confirming that. If I don't want to do any editing of a given AVI, does Copy & Convert Video > Convert Video > Movies > Output to DVD|VIDEO do what I want and not lose much from the original AVI? Obviously a VHS is not going to be great quality, so I don't want to lose any more!

 

For archiving the digital video, would I want WMV, MPEG-2, H.264, or MPEG-4? Under Custom Output, all four compression algorithms do seem to offer 720x480, so I think I'd want the one that retains the most of what little quality these VHS tapes have to begin with.

 

Thanks again!

 

Since you want to retain the best quality you will want to capture to DVD-avi (720x480). The quality of a 6 or 8 hour tape will be terrible and you certainly do not want to lower the quality. If you do want another format select the mpeg (DVD) format.

The DV-avi at "best" quality will always gove about 13Gb of video for 1 hour of recorded video. There is no way around this. I would suggest not to capture a whole tape in one session but break it up into maybe 30 minute sessions. This will make it a lot easier for eventual editing later on.

 

I would suggest you get a 1 TB or larger external hard drive for archiving instead of using DVDs.

[yowser]

Thanks. I see the "Capture Settings" dropdown offers DV, DVD HQ, DVD SP, DVD LP, VCD (defaults to DV). The DV choice is AVI and says I have 2h43m (34.8GB) available, and the others are MPEG-2 with 10h5m, 19h38m, 43h6m, and 61h43m, respectively. I'm happy to use AVI to retain the quality, though that 10h5m is tempting.

 

My notebook has an SSD which is why there's only 35GB free. Could I capture directly to an external HD? I have a USB3 port and powered USB3 hub, so I could use USB3 (port's maximum data transfer rate is faster than HD's internal).

 

In terms of a strategy, I take your point that a 100GB (8hr) file might be unwieldy. Unfortunately so is the sequential access of a tape. Assuming I have more space, would it be reasonable to capture the tape, either in one chunk (if maybe 2hr SP recording) or in 30min chunks, then break it apart after? The Preview window in Roxio Media Import is frozen while the tape FFs (it may be the VCR does that) so I'm hunting blindly to guess where a show ends and the next begins -- and I'm not even capturing, I'm FFing 30min at a time to see what's on the tape. Perhaps it's worth capturing everything (in chunks) without looking at it, then access the AVI instead of putting more strain on the tape? That might even save time in the long run, since I could let the tape run for 30min at a time (assuming 30min chunks).

 

And you know the playback quality doesn't look all that terrible, at least in a fit-to-video (480px) window. And I suspect it wouldn't be too bad on a TV assuming it's not blown up to 1080px of course!

 

It's testament to how fast the world has changed (and is changing), I'm sure some of these tapes are <10yr old and recording overnight TV in SLP on a sequential recording medium was quite acceptable -- because the alternative was either not to watch it, or to spend a fortune on a limited HD-based recording device. Now we just stream everything and a Redbox seems like too much trouble. Though I did just see a new outdoor Redbox at the local gas station - they do know it gets cold in Ottawa, right!?, that machine is going to be frozen solid in a couple of months - and I've got only 40GB/mo here, so I guess DVD rental @ $1.50 doesn't look so bad. For that matter, since I also have a 24" CRT TV (and no cable) I'm happily watching SD recordings off my ancient TiVo, and these digitized VHS recordings will probably look pretty good too.

[sknis]

For archiving and saving video at a pretty good quality and at the smallest size, consider using DivX format. Video Copy and Convert will do that conversion. Learn more about the conversion and playing DixX movies at their web site. You may be able to a complete 6 hour video on one DVD. Make sure you use good quality DVDs.

 

As for Cinemagic, it is great for doing introductory videos that would show like previews on a DVD or to play the highlights of an adventure (like on YouTube).. Because of the frequent scene changes, it never had the ability to capture and play the audio.

 

I may be repeating some of the above so forgive me for any redundancy.