Thread: video capture format?

I would guess that you have the capture settings on default which is only 50% quality level. To change this, click on the capture video option the click on the configure button and then select the video setting option. Move the sliding scale to 1.000. This makes for the best quality capture but you will start with a bigger file size. BUT this will now match the best rendered file size when you finish the project.

Some people get smaller file sizes is by using a codec like mpeg2 that compresses the data in the file. With the right settings (practice) you can do this without to much picture quality loss. In WMM choosing a .wmv should give you a similar result. BUT please under stand that WMM is very limited in the settings you can use, so you may not be able to get the best results from it.

Good luck.

The first format you capture into is DV-AVI. This format, also known as DV or “digital video” is the video compression format that your camcorder captures onto tape. Thus, when you film a video, your camcorder saves the video information onto magnetic tape as a series of “0s and 1s” in the DV-AVI format. This digital format is great, as the video is saved at an outstanding resolution of 720x480 pixels running at 30 frames per second. In other words, you are getting video that is potentially higher quality than a commercial DVD. DV-AVI is the capture and editing format of choice for all other video software programs and any video-related software will recognize and work with this format.

However, the digital video format is not without its problems … the major inconvenience being the huge file sizes. You see, DV-AVI video takes up a lot of space. Each minute of video takes up a whooping 200 megs of space on your computer's hard-drive. That means an hour tape will occupy about 13 gigabytes of hard-drive space … that’s a lot of space!


Because the format is so big, many older home computers have problem capturing and saving the video fast enough, resulting in “dropped frames” whenever the computer’s hard-drive slows down below a critical level. Fortunately, almost all computers running Windows XP are fast enough to capture DV-AVI video, so this isn’t really an issue. Still, if you don’t have much hard drive space available you’re going to run into problems. Most intermediate and advanced video users have extra hard-drives to save and backup their video projects, though this isn't necessary for the beginner.

Hi

Maybe I did not make myself clear.

What I want to know is how to copy my native video from cam to pc without having huge files but while maintaining the same original quality. Second, after I edit the video (no matter on what editing soft) I save the completed project, this is the important bit, with same quality as the original video but in a more compressed format. The best example of this would be the films downloaded from the net of DVD quality and 1:40 to 2:00 Hours long but only 700 to 1.2GB file size.
This is exactly what I want to accomplish but have no idea how.

Originally Posted by vultusprime

What I want to know is how to copy my native video from cam to pc without having huge files but while maintaining the same original quality.

The simple answer is: you don't. DV is a perfect example of a format ideal for editing. The compression used is such that frame accurate editing is possible without the need for a high standard of hardware. You could encode to a different format, but you will start to see generation loss (where you lose detail due to re-encoding) and it would be harder to edit. Your workflow for capture DV should be capture and edit in DV. Why do you need to reduce the file size?

Second, after I edit the video (no matter on what editing soft) I save the completed project, this is the important bit, with same quality as the original video but in a more compressed format. The best example of this would be the films downloaded from the net of DVD quality and 1:40 to 2:00 Hours long but only 700 to 1.2GB file size.
This is exactly what I want to accomplish but have no idea how.

You export (encode) your video using a more compressed format such as MPEG4. There will be presets in editing software which allow you to do this.

i want to reduce files size because I captured 15 min of video and after editing it it was over three times its original size.
i want to have long video files but without using hundreds of GB