Capturing Home Video From Different Sources
There are many different ways to capture home video to your PC for editing. The best method depends
on:
- The source type i.e VHS, 8mm, DV camera
- The quality of the source
- The equipment you currently own
- The intended use for the video. Are you archiving treasured videos,
or making a quick clip for YouTube ?
As a rule you will always want to capture at the best quality possible. This means you should try to
capture in the AVI format. The AVI format is a lossless format
and is the preferred format if you plan to edit the footage.
Most problems people have editing video footage can be traced to the fact they are trying to edit MPEG files.
So if you plan on editing the footage AVI is the way to go.
If you capture straight to MPEG video you should capture
at the highest possible bitrate. I like to use 9Mbs or 9000Kbs. The bitrate you choose depends on the length of
the video you are trying to create. A 1 hour video captured at 9Mbs will fit onto a DVD. If you are trying to squeeze 2 hours onto
a DVD then you will need to capture at a lower bitrate. You can try to use a bitrate calculator to determine the actual bitrate.
Once you capture in MPEG you should try to avoid re-encoding the video.
Some software will let you do simple trims and edits without re-encoding the MPEG if they are DVD compliant.
Ulead DVD MovieFactory will allow you to do simple edits and created DVD’s with out rencoding compliant MPEG footage.