where did i go wrong ? 1024 by 768 resaultion capturing
 

Okay so here is my question.

I captured a bunch of video using a DVC80 in VCR mode, that was hooked up to notebook/laptop with a 1024 by 768 res when I was capturing it looked fine (took the video out signal) but now that I am trying to capture the video on my PC using Video Vegas and the images are blurry.

Does anyone know what I am missing?

Thanks
Michael

Are you capturing via firewire?

yes i am capturing through firewire.

Are you trying to do a screen capture off your notebook image?

DV resolution is 720X480 (although the pixels are not square, which means, depending on your display device, you will lose some of that resolution).
If your audience is viewing the material on a TV with RCAs or RF, then their resolution is about 400X300 (in computer terms). You need to design stuff so it's legible at that size.

There are various screen capture programs out there (camtasia, FRAPS, etc.) that may do the job better.

Thanks for the responses,

It is not just a still image (sorry I should have been clearer.

What it is, is a walk through for a peace of software (lots of button and text) . What we did was a demo showing how to use the software and I captured it using the video out (analog) from the laptop into my camera.

When I capture the video through firewire in Vegas from my camera the image is (tuff to describe) not blurry but not in focus you cant read the text but you can see that it is there.

When we came up with the idea, we thought it would look just like what was happing on the laptop screen, but that is the issue it does not :(

Any help would rock and thanks so much for the help so far.

Michael

Change the dropdown above the preview window from "Preview" to "Good"

The issue happens durring capture and it is not the preview window. thanks for the idea through.

I have been looking around on line and i am trying to find a way to capture at 1024 by 768 in Vegas. this is the windows screen res at the time of capture so if i can recapture it at the same size then may be it will look right

any ideas?

thanks
Michael

You are capturing via firewire which means you are capturing a DV-AVI file. You can't get any better "quality" than that. In reality, "capturing" is really a mis-nomer. Instead, think of it as a "file copy" from the tape to the hard drive. NO conversion in the process at all.

Bottom line, you can't capture "1024x768" - it doesn't work that way. DV turns out to be 720x480 (for NTSC) which converts to 655x480 if you convert it to an image (because of the square vs non-square pixel issue). Resize your preview to the proper size and it should look fine.

" Resize your preview to the proper size and it should look fine."

that is it!! right on!! .. now how do i do that? i have Video Vegas 5.

In the capture program, by default it should have been fairly small (like 360x240 or something of that nature). It should just be a matter of resizing the upper area so that it's smaller. However, I still get the distinct impression that you are NOT talking about the preview window in the capture program.

If you're talking about the preview in the main program, just make the preview dialog smaller. Once again, it's really hard for me to "see" exactly what you're talking about but it's probably one of those things that could be corrected in seconds if I sat down in front of your computer.

Hey, I know this is hard to explain,


Okay I will try again. I captured video through the video out of a laptop (so an analog signal) at 1024x768 not sure what the refresh rate was.

So now I am trying to get the video from the tape to the PC. I use Video Vegas and when I capture the video the preview window shows video but it looks a little out of focus. When I am do capturing a clip, I then load it into Windows media player to see what it looks like at full screen. The video is out of focus.

Now I think the issues is in the capture settings. The way I see it is that I recorded the video at a high screen resolution from the video out on the laptop and now when I try to capture the video in Vegas it takes that high screen resolution and make it smaller. Then when I go to watch it, it is distorted because I have a high resolution screen that has been shrunken and then expanded.

I just want to know if there is a program out there that will allow me to capture the video at 1024x768 or something close.


Thanks for all the help
Keep it coming
Michael

The video on your tape is certainly NOT 1024x768. To record onto tape, you had to use a scan convertor of some sort (probably built-in) to get it down to standard video format. This is what is causing it look "out of focus". Have you tried playing back that tape to a TV?

really so it is not 1024 by 768. hmm I did not use a scan convertor (didn't know that i should). I have also not had a chance to play it back on a monitor (TV), do you know if it is going to look the same.

thanks
Michael

My guess is that when you play the tape straight to a TV you will see the exact same thing. Your computer is downconverting the image from the original 1024x768 to the proper size for the analog out. THAT is what is causing your degradation. The computer is acting as the scan convertor for you.

Amazingly enough, you *may* have gotten better results simply aiming a camera at the laptop's LCD screen!

Really so you think there is no way around this? can i just get the images without the scan convertor?

1- What is your target format?
i.e. VHS, DVD
broadcast
computer format (streaming, a data file on a CD/DVD, etc.)

This makes a big difference. With TV (which typically display interlacing), you have to avoid fine detail that causes flickering. This can seriously hurt the legibility of text and other fine detail that is very common of computer-generated images. You may also need to avoid illegal colors.

2- The problem is that computer images tend to be a lot higher resolution than video. In your case, the computer resolution is 1024X768 (using square pixels) and DV is 720X480 (which uses non-square pixels). DV can't handle the much higher resolution of the computer image. When your footage is shown on a TV or computer, you may lose even more resolution. Computers can lose resolution depending on how you want to handle the non-square pixel issue. If you want the aspect ratio to be correct, you'll get around 655X480 resolution with DV (for a computer format; you may kind of get less resolution than that). The end result is that text is hard/impossible to read if it involves ~1-pixel lines.

You can help this slightly by making text bigger. The process is different depending which operating system you are using. However, you will still have problems because computer images have so much more resolution than video.

If you want text and other fine detail to be legible, you will probably need to do zooming of some sort. The top solutions for this are likely:
A- Use screen capture software such as Camtasia. If you do a search, you will find some threads on it.
I believe Camtasia has a feature to capture video of your screen zoomed. Otherwise, I suppose you'd have to zoom from within your editing program.
B- Shoot a LCD screen. Do zooming in the camera.

Scan converters: you might as well get screen capture software?

3- What operating system are you using (on the laptop, for the program that you want to show)?

Thanks for the input,

Let me start by saying that the footage is already shot and there is about 8hours of video.
The best way to dicribe the issue is the video is like you said “The end result is that text is hard/impossible to read if it involves ~1-pixel lines.”. The software it self is a DB training meant for an in house guide to setup the software and add in using the DB features.

The formate for viewing will be mostly laptop actualy it will almost exsculsively laptop. I was hopeing to have it on DVD’s so that it can be easly distribuited.

The operating system I am using is XP Pro and the OS that will used to view the video will also be XP Pro.

The thing is I cant seem to understand why I cant just have the raw video data that was recoreded during the training and just capture. I know there is scan convertor and that this makes it so that it is formatted for NTSC but I don’t want that I just want the raw info.

Thanks for the help and if there is anything else that you could suggest please please let me know.

Thanks
Michael

1- Well first you should determine what format you want to go to:

A- Encode the file as a computer file onto a DVD. This DVD will not work in DVD players (video), but will work in computers. It may need a special codec to play back, depending what you use to encode.

Or if your company has a LAN, you could just stick the file there in a shared folder/drive.

Bottom line:
You can get full 1024X768 resolution without worrying about video issues.
These DVDs won't work in video DVD players, and may need instructions to install the right codec.

B- Go to video DVD. Effective resolution is around 600-720X480, so you need some way to make everything larger so it's legible (or zoom in at specific stuff).

If you can run the program at 800X600 or even 640X480, that may help you. It may also help to increase the text size. It's in the menus if you right-click the desktop, click the second tab, and choose large fonts.

2- The video data on your mini-DV tape (or captured into Vegas) probably won't get any better. If you can't read important text there then you may need to reshoot.

3- Let's suppose you want to pick option A in #1.
An example solution would be to use Camtasia to do your screen capture. This captures to the computer you are recording on.

To play back the video, you would need the Tech Smith codec. Users have to install it on their computer. With that codec installed, they can play back their video at full resolution (whatever you recorded in), although they may need to full screen the video.

*Not sure if the tech smith codec is easily editable, but I think it is.