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Capture!
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Capture!
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Video: Pinnacle Studio - Capturing Digital Video |
I. Settings
miniCD
camcorder users: you can simply transfer your video files as data using
your CDROM drive, and skip this page!
There are three categories for digital capture: full quality, MPEG quality, and preview quality. Here's a chart with the trade-offs:
| Full Quality | MPEG quality | Preview quality |
| captured files are uncompressed AVI format (full quality) | captured files are compressed (slightly lower quality) | captured files are compressed (much lower quality) |
| Uses the most hard drive space | Uses less hard drive space | Uses the least hard drive space |
| Final project can be produced with the computer alone. | Final project can be produced with the computer alone. | Full-quality final project requires the camcorder and original tape to be connected during rendering. |
| Best overall, if you have the drive space. | Very little loss in quality, but computer must do a lot of processing - more lockups and crashes. | Fine for quick projects or when storage space is limited, but final rendering requires the camcorder with the original tape to be connected, and takes longer. |
The initial screen shows available disk space. If it’s below 20% or so, think about cleaning things out. The less the space, the slower things run! Also, defrag regularly!
II. Capturing
With
"Firewire"-based systems (IEEE 1394), all camcorder controls are right there on the screen, so
capture is a breeze. Hook up the camcorder to the Firewire cable, and turn it on
to VCR. Play the video tape you intend to capture. It should show in the screen in the
upper right hand corner. You will not hear sound - but not to fear, it'll be captured anyway!
(Use the camcorder playback display to hear sound.)
It's
best to capture scene by scene, creating new files for each. It’s also a good idea to set a
file location for all of the captures which is unique to the
project - on your first capture, click on the folder icon and create a new
folder. Capture about 5 seconds of
"pad" before and after each scene - this isn't the time to
be
exact, and you'll need the extra seconds later. Enter a filename. If you call your first scene “Scene 1”
(with a
space between “Scene” and “1”), it’ll automatically call your second
capture “Scene 2”. Remember that the Studio default file location is whatever
was used last, so if someone else uses the machine in between capture sessions,
you'll need to reset the file location.
- Using the camcorder controls in Studio, locate a spot well before the scene you intend to capture, and stop.
Click the “Start Capture” button.- Choose your file location and name (see above).
- Click "Play".
- Click “Start Capture”
Capture well past the scene's end, and click “Stop capture”
(that button will be where “Start Capture” was to start with). Studio
will automatically detect scenes within each capture, and
show each as separate parts of a captured file.