does a graphic card size affect capture quality

[projector1]

Hi

i have a amd 1600xp pc
with 512mb ram
140g hd
ATI all in oe wonder 32mb card
i have a jvc digital camcorder and have capture footage from the camera via firewire.
I used windows movie maker to capture. I noticed that the playback qaulity it not as good as expected. I used the DV option (which is the best capture option). Is this down to the card only being 32mb?
thanks

 

[norty303]

the card should have no effect on the capture at all if it's by firewire.

 

[ceh4702]

There may be some settings on the camera for the number of pixes used or the resolution quality. There may also be similar settings in the software if you had some software you should have installed on your computer.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[cdogg]

Playback strains the IDE bus and CPU resources, and has only a minimal effect on the video card. Just about any card with at least 8MB of video memory is good enough for most digital playback, so I doubt it's your card.

Instead, you might want to focus on system resources.

1) What version of Windows are you running?
2) What software are you using for playback?
3) Have you tried using msconfig to minimize items at startup in order to free up resources?


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[felixc]

What AIW model do you have? ATI would give a list of minimal system features needed vs the expected video quality.
Does it make any difference if you use the ATI capture utilities? (in my system I can't record in mpeg2 with an application other than the ATI one, otherwise there are dropped frames.)
Are you capturing raw video or is it encoded?
What do you mean with lower quality? Pixelation? Lost frames?

 

[projector1]

I have tried using ulead basic 6 and the capture quality is better than what windows movie maker was displaying. After capturing it, i use tpmge to convert it into mpeg1 and then use nero to create a vcd. When i take the vcd to my vcd player the image quality is very poor, very "pixely"
i get the same results on the pc when i play it back on there.

 

[cdogg]

OK, first of all MPEG-1 is comparable to VHS-quality, but only at decently high resolutions. If you used a small resolution like 320x240 or less, you will notice loss in quality especially on a high definition monitor (though it might not look as bad on a regular TV).

The data that you are capturing from firewire is being encoded into a lesser format. To preserve as much as possible, you have to use a better format like MPEG-2 (DVD) or AVI. '

Keep in mind though that the higher you go, the more space you use. Also, VCD's are limited to MPEG-1.

This site can help:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com

~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[projector1]

thansk guys for the info. I am now going to buy a dvd writer, this will help preserve the quality when i burn the file to disk. i was outputing my edited files to vcd, but the quality is poor and the charcters are very pixelly

 

[cdogg]

Just to reiterate, MPEG-1 is good enough for TV. If you correctly set the resolution (not too low), you shouldn't see any pixels whatsoever, except maybe during fast motion.

Before I moved on to DVD-R, I used VCD's all the time and never had much of an issue with picture quality. Pixelated at times, but nothing like what you were describing.

But yeah, since DVD writers are so cheap now with media prices continuing to fall, why bother with VCD any longer?


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[ceh4702]

What resolution was the camera set on to save the video as?
Also resolution has a direct connection with the quality of the images saved and the size of the file saved. Another setting is the number of frames per second. It should not be set to 15 fps it should be 25-30 fps for full motion video.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.