In Need Of Camera Help


saintdragon

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heya!

just popping in to see if i can get any help with my camcorder. I bought a camera fairly recently, a mini DV one, and the trouble im having is that when i want to send videos from the camera to computer, the quality loss terrible, for example the sounds not in sync, frame rate is choppy, and on the whole its not worth watching :(. I'm using the freeware given to with the camera to download the recordings to the computer, and i am just wondering if any of you lot know any software which may give me a better result, and the one i have now is called "ulead"...

Ive searched, but nothing, and just wondering if any of you lot can help me :)...

Any kind of help will be appreciated!

cya

EDIT: forgot to mention that when i play my recorded footage on the tv its fine, no quality loss, i just find it abit strange.
 
saintdragon posted on Jul 16 2006 at 09:27 PM said:
heya!

just popping in to see if i can get any help with my camcorder. I bought a camera fairly recently, a mini DV one, and the trouble im having is that when i want to send videos from the camera to computer, the quality loss terrible, for example the sounds not in sync, frame rate is choppy, and on the whole its not worth watching :( . I'm using the freeware given to with the camera to download the recordings to the computer, and i am just wondering if any of you lot know any software which may give me a better result, and the one i have now is called "ulead"...

Ive searched, but nothing, and just wondering if any of you lot can help me :) ...

Any kind of help will be appreciated!

cya

EDIT: forgot to mention that when i play my recorded footage on the tv its fine, no quality loss, i just find it abit strange.
3 things:

1. How are you connecting your camera to your PC. Fire wire is the best option.
2. I use Pinnacle Studio for capturing and transferring video from a DV Camera, it's a great piece of software and has a lot of editing features too!
3. With the software you're using at the moment, you may find that there's a quality option. If you have the option for DV capture, use it, that option creates huge files though but you could always convert them to MPEG later.
 
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WarmFluffyUK posted on Jul 16 2006 at 10:27 PM said:
1. How are you connecting your camera to your PC. Fire wire is the best option.
2. I use Pinnacle Studio for capturing and transferring video from a DV Camera, it's a great piece of software and has a lot of editing features too!
3. With the software you're using at the moment, you may find that there's a quality option. If you have the option for DV capture, use it, that option creates huge files though but you could always convert them to MPEG later.

1. USB2
2. will try it, a trial or something. :)
3. hmm, i dont think i could find a quality option, but i could be very wrong, will have a look around on it...

again, thanks :D
 
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Using USB is probably your biggest problem. Your computer may also be having problems processing the video as it recieves it. What is the basic spec of your computer? (RAM, CPU, Hard drive).

I can also vouch for Pinnacle Studio, it is an excellent piece of software. I've done a quick search and found a trial to download @ http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/P...Trial+Download/.
 
iignotus posted on Jul 17 2006 at 02:50 AM said:
It sounds like your computer isn't fast enough to play dvi video. What are the specs of your computer?
Actually you don't need a mega fast PC to play DVI Video, a Pentium III CPU will do it pretty much okay. You do however need a good CPU to encode MPEG in real time, i.e. if you have a capture card and you want to encode the video to MPEG as you're capturing it. Assuming that is the capture card doesn't do MPEG in hardware.

On the subject of getting the video off the camera, you shouldn't have to re-encode anything. The point of it being digital is that the software should be able to just move the file off the tape and onto the PC without any re-sampling of the video or audio. It's a single file after all! Using USB and not Firewire wouldn't effect the quality, it just means the data rate is slower so it will take longer to copy the video to the PC. Don't forget we don't want to re-encode anything at this stage, he just wants to copy the DV file to the PC. It looks like the software he's presently using is re-sampling everything, and not doing a good job of it.
 
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What is the name of the software you are using to transfer your material? It does sound like it's re-encoding your material. A computer needs to be able to sustain a 3.6MB/sec data stream to playback a DV file.
 
saintdragon posted on Jul 16 2006 at 11:15 PM said:

thats the problem, If you have a firewire port on your pc get a firewire cable and hook it up.

If i attempt to transfer film from camera to pc using USB i get exactly the same results as you, but using my friends pc with the firewire the quality is exactly how it should be.
 
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usb is shit, had problems on my camcorder aswell before, also video quality worsed when capture from usb.

firewire is best :) make big file, but can reconvert.. also quality not grainy when doing from firewire

i think other things can conflict when using usb, also usb sucks because need drivers.. with anything firewire no drivers required :D

oh maybe also if using old shitty pc can make crap.. just so you know <_<
 
thanks for the replies! the software is "ulead" as mentioned in the first post, and my pc specs are: 3500 venice processor (2.2ghz), 1 gig of ram, and a 256mb 6600 gt graphics card. which i think is good enough?

yeah, i think the computer may be re-sampling it, because there is a slight latency whilst filming directly to the pc when the camera is connected to the pc. just downloading the trial (thanks for link), and i will buy a fireware asap!

ty again!
 
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