I'm trying to capture video at higher resolution then 320*240 and 384*288. I'm capturing analog video from my SONY CCD-TRV108E PAL videoHi8.
I read a tutorial that the quality would be better if you captured in a higher resolution and then downsized it. I'm using a Hercules Video Action - card(both DV & analog). Before this I had a cheap hauppauge TV-card and with that I could capture in which resolution I wanted.

The software I'm using is Ulead Videostudio 7.0. When I'm setting any higher resolution then 384*288 and press the capture-button this messages appear before it captures anything:

"Failed to build a prewiew graph. Capturing failed. The file created is corrupted and unusable. It will be automatically deleted."

If I have understand the manual correctly I should be able to capture as high as 720*576.

I have a Pentium III 980Mhz
256MB Ram
120Gb HD
Hercules Video Action Capture Device

Hope you guys/girls can help me =)

I'll take a swing at this one, if no one else wants to.

I checked the specs on your Hercules card. It looks like it has hardware decoder ICs, but not encoder IC's. That may mean the actual video capture and compression is being done with PC software only. With the larger format, your PC may not be fast enough to both compress the video and display it. I know when I first started out, I used a Hauppauge WinTV PCI card and on my 1.4gHz Athlon, I couldn't go larger than 400x300 without losing frames unless I selected a low compression codec, like HUFFYUV or the Brooktree codec. With DivX, mpeg1/2 or XviD, 400x300 was all I could manage.

Later I got the WinTV PVR250. It has a hardware mpeg2 compressor IC that lets me do 720x576 with only 45% CPU loading. Most of that load is due to the software decoding needed for displaying the video while recording.

I can only suggest you try to capture with a low compression codec, like the Panasonic DV codec. DV compression is pretty simple and fast, though there is always a little distortion, since it's a lossy compressor. The resulting file will be large, on the order of 4 gigabytes for 15 minutes of video, but if your hard drive is formatted in NTSF instead of FAT32, it shouldn't be a problem.

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Fav quote - "Experience is whatcha don't get 'till ya don't need it no more."

System - Athlon 1.4GHz, Win98, Hauppauge PVR250 receiver and compressor.
Software -Magix Movie Edit Pro 10, Nero 6 + NeroVision Express, Moho 4.61, PSP 8.1, Bryce, Quicktime 6.52 pro, Goldwave 5, DVD-Lab.
Cameras - Panasonic GS9, Canon ES8400V, Canon EOS D20 and Canon A70

I would suggest using the ilink connection and kooking up to your PC using firewire.

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Thanks for the tips, but I dont think they will help me though. I have no loss when I capture, cause I cant capture at all, it aborts before it starts to capture.
And I cant connect the camera using firewire, the only output from the camera is s-video and the other round thing (R-something).

And that Panasonic DV codec just said: "cannot add this codec into the directShow capture plug-in", when I tried to capture.

But I just noticed something...I can have up to 768 wide, but just 288 in hight?? Why is that ?