Be Excellent To Each Other

I borrowed an usb device that let's me connect composite wires from the camcorder to my pc so i can convert my old tapes to digital.

Problem is, the program bundled with the device (Power Director) doesn't let me capture the screen with an enconder properly. Using the DivX option only captures sound. There's no h264 or any other option to be seen.

Not using compression makes a 10 second video weight as much as 500 mb.

What are the (preferably freeware) alternatives to this Power Director? Is it worth to download an yarred version of something like adobe premiere?

Do you not have the space to capture to raw format and then convert? Unless you're running some beast of a PC, you'll find any alternative writes the raw file to a temp file anyway, so could take up almost as much space (depending on how fast it can encode).

Thinking about it though, I'm fairly sure I used to use Windows Movie Maker.

I have one of those USB thingys and I eventually gave up on it as it was rubbish.

Don't let me influence you though!

Yeah, to be honest my long-term solution was to buy a camcorder with a hard drive in.

Well, these are all tapes from the early nineties, so i really do have to convert them.

Also, what are good programs to convert the raw files to these modern formats like h264? And are these RAW sizes sensible or it's because this program i'm using is rubbish?



What do you use now?

Unfortunately I don't.. I gave up and the tapes are still sitting on a shelf.

Format factory (free) should convert from just about anything to just about anything - it also has a really easy config where you just pick what you want the target device to be - give it a source file and it will do the rest

Handbrake. And yes, uncompressed video is huge.

Thanks for all the responses, but only now i'm noticing that i get audio desync.

Getting tired of this. It should be easier.

The easier answer is probably get hold of a DVD recorder and use that - it will dump stuff onto a disk that you can then get into your computer (thats what i did with my old media when i got rid of it but that was about 10 years ago)

I'm probably going to capture anyway and sync afterwards. The problem is that this piece of shit program gives some copyright infringment message and aborts the capture.

I'm trying to see if i can find a replacement, since windows movie maker doesn't detect my camcorder.

This is the last faff answer.

Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere and almost every other program can't capture from USB. Anyone knows any software alternative that can do this job? This is killing me.

So I'm reading somewhere that I can connect my camera to a DV Camera and then to the computer through a firewire cable. Well, this sound like magic, but if it works, i think i can find someone that i can borrow one.

I got to capture more or less properly with Virtual Dub, but now Handbrake hangs while scanning big files...

Bah. Try capturing in smaller "chunks"?

Why can't you export to an AVI with VirtualDub as well.

Well, it eventually loads the file, but it takes ages.

It will take forever to convert all this tapes to digital, but i have to do it to prove everyone that i wasn't mean to my sister. It was the other way around.

Revenge is a dish best served in small digital chunks.

I know that website!

Poor girls