Capturing Amiga output direct to PC

[Kostas O]

Just bought one. Looks promising but i would never hope it would be that easy or cheap!

I received it this morning and since i was to have the hardware check for Sunday i managed to, sort of, kind of, do it!
The installation guide is crap (for windows 7 64 anyway) but found a driver that seems to work.
Sound was bad and not synced so i will have to try it with the sound card but the main thing is picture. 320x240 resolution only (no problem with that) with the bundled software (Ulead Video something). It produced huge files (didn't try software compression, will do tonight) and it was pretty decent apart from the sound issue. Black and white from an A500 would do the job as well.

Does anyone has any suggestions about the best software to use for capturing?

[Steve Camber]

The captured files will be huge if no real time compression is applied. Some knowledge of codecs and their settings is required here.

However, Windows Movie Maker is very simple to use, I'd recommend that as a start point. You probably already have it.
VirtualDub is more powerful but more technical.
I've not used the Ulead software for over 10 years. It was painful then and I assume it still is.

[Kostas O]

Movie maker doesn't capture analogue video in windows 7.
Ulead is painfull but is also the only that worked so far.

[Steve Camber]

Damn, go for the VirtualDub option!

[manicx]

Ulead has been bought by Corel. If the software is under the Ulead brand, then it is probably old. I have been buying Ulead software for some time, the VideoStudio suite. The analogue capture in Windows 7 and Vista worked perfectly up to Videostudio 10. After that, it was dropping frames in anything bigger than 320*240. I switched to two programs for capturing video from my TV/Capture device

-Cyberlink's PowerCinema 6 (however this is good if you have a TV card with ability to capture from external device (Gives the best MPEG2 capture I have ever seen)
-VirtualDub + FFDShow to capture in AVI with MJPEG compression that I found to give me the best possible compression/MB ratio similar to the MPEG2 result (about 4-5GB per hour).

We NEVER capture with anything that gives less than 8-9000 kbps otherwise the video will suck big time. Usually, we capture video uncompressed (Huffy) or with small compression (MJPEG or MPEG2) and we do the process/compression later.

[gdh82]

This is all over my head but hope you crack these technical problems and Athens KOTV goes live this sunday!

[Steve Camber]

Movie maker doesn't capture analogue video in windows 7.

This is highly annoying. It's true the new version of windows movie maker for Windows 7 has had support for analogue devices removed. It only supports digital camcorders which is no good to us retro freeks.

BUT.. the simple answer is to install the previous XP version into WIndows 7. Somebody has created a standalone release called "Portable Windows Movie Maker" which I have downloaded from here:
http://www.downloadplex.com/Windows/Aud ... 30883.html

I've just used it with my trusty analogue camcorder and Easycap USB, everything worked first time, and it does not affect the existing Windows Live Movie Maker.

[Steve1977]

Managed to get this working at Gaz's on Sunday...sort of. Sometimes it would capture and sometimes it wouldnt but that could be because we were playing about with different settings. One game did work until about 10 seconds at the end but the quality wasnt that great due to messing about with codecs. BUT...it did work
Also got the audio directly from the laptops microphone so KOBRA TV made it's first...tentative Broadcast. More to come over the many games and fun we'r gonna have with this!

[Steve Camber]

Ah, yes, no excuse now not to have live broadcasts from KOBRA house!

The best option is to use ustream.. and maybe hit that RECORD button so it saves a copy of the live broadcast... Which would have been awesome if used at the world cup to keep a permanent copy of the live broadcast, but unfortunately there was a monkey at the controls and this simple idea never actually occurred to him at the time.

[gdh82]

Ah, yes, no excuse now not to have live broadcasts from KOBRA house!

The best option is to use ustream.. and maybe hit that RECORD button so it saves a copy of the live broadcast... Which would have been awesome if used at the world cup to keep a permanent copy of the live broadcast, but unfortunately there was a monkey at the controls and this simple idea never actually occurred to him at the time.

Coming to a PC screen near you soon!

Evil has the expertise here but we were usure of the recomended codecs to use? Could you suggest any, Steve? Or maybe using ustream deals with all that?

[Steve Camber]

Ustream deals with it, and also windows movie makes it easy enough.

Messing around with codecs and bitrates takes a lot of trial and error, especially if there's nobody around to show you the ropes!

[gdh82]

Thanks Steve. Appreciate the advice - will explore further....

[Abyss]

BUT.. the simple answer is to install the previous XP version into WIndows 7. Somebody has created a standalone release called "Portable Windows Movie Maker" which I have downloaded from here:
http://www.downloadplex.com/Windows/Aud ... 30883.html

Wow, a great tip there. Thanks.