A program to convert camcorder video to avi?

orpheus

I have a camcorder that uses those small vhs tapes. I want to record the video onto my computer as an avi or mov or mpeg or something. What's the best or cheapest program to use? I can connect the camcorder to my video card with an s-video cable, so the program needs to be able to use that.

Thanks ahead of time.

NailbunnyPD

DSsaler might be a good place to start. Maybe not. People raved about it when video capture and PC DVR was a big deal a few years back.

http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/

For video conversion, I have been using MediaCoder with limited success. (when you find the right output settings, it works great. Its also free.)

http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

I should note, I've not messed around with video capture in a long time. When I did, video capture apps recorded in MPEG2, which then had to be converted to something. I have no experience with DScaler, but if it can output to some video format, you should be able to use MediaCoder to convert it to avi.

shutz

You aren't telling us much about your system. That could have a lot of bearing on the solutions that are open to you.

What video card do you have? If it's an ATI, then you should already have a usable video capture app (it's usually the same app that can act as a media player.

What CPU do you have? This will help determine the maximum resolution you can capture at. If your computer uses an old Pentium 4, for instance, you might not be able to capture at full DVD resolution (720x480, in North America)

How much hard disk space do you have? And how long are the videos you're trying to capture? If you have many gigabytes of free space, like, say, over 20GB, you should try capturing in a lossless format, such as MJPEG or (even better) HuffYUV (google it, it's a codec you should be able to download for free. It's great for intermediate copies of videos until you produce your final edit, which you can then compress to DivX, H264, or MPEG-2, depending on your final goal.)

If you only have a few GBs of free space, you're better off capturing straight to MPEG-2, if your video card accelerates this (most modern video cards with TV-in have an MPEG-2 encoder built-in, but you might have to use the bundled software to access this feature.)

If you don't plan on doing any editing, and are happy with a video that's a little rough around the edges, direct MPEG-2 capture isn't too bad. But if you're going to be editing your footage (adding transitions and effects, for instance) you're better off capturing to a lossless format first. It will also let you clean up the video (for instance, overlaying thin black bars across the top and/or bottom if there are any "dirty" scanlines, to make a cleaner video, doing some noise reduction and color-correction, de-interlacing, ghost image removal (which happens a lot with analog video) etc.

Depending on your video card, its "capture device" might actually be accessible by other programs, in which case you should look at VirtualDub (google it, make sure you end up at the software's official page. This is free software.) VirtualDub isn't the most easy-to-use software, but if you can figure out how it works, you'll know a lot more about digital video and video capture and editing, as well as video formats.

Lastly, if you need more help, you should visit www.videohelp.com . There, you'll find links to thousands of useful tools (free, shareware, commercial, etc.) and some very busy forums where you should be able to find many people to help you.

orpheus

Sorry didn't think to give system specs.

Athlon XP 3000+
2gb ram
20 gb free hdd space
ATI Radeon X850

Not sure if my video card came with any utilities, I'll check though.

Quality not terribly important. I have a video of my friend goofing off that's maybe 5 min long. Just trying to get that from my camcorder to my computer in the easiest way.

Thanks for the replies so far.

bash

If your video card has an S-Video port that doesn't necessarily mean it can capture video with it. Quite a few cards have S-Video ports that are used only for video output and don't have any capture electronics in them. Are you sure your card can capture video through the S-Video port?