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I have many old home video tapes that I've just decided to try and convert into a digital format (no I have a DVD player). So this weekend I went out and bought what I thought i'd need to do this. My set up is as follows:
Sony Handycam Video8XR - TR315E PAL
Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 DVD creator F5U228
Pinnacle Studio 9
After alot of heartache I finally got it so I could first capture my video in colour as opposed to black and white, then so that I could actually capture the audio itself.
So i'm now ready to capture my old video, but I am stuck as to what resolution I need/should use. Now i've tried doing some reading on this over the weekend, but I'm getting rather confused. Since i'm in Australia we use the PAL system which I have read has 625 scan lines, with 576 being displayed. But what is the resolution in the other direction.
When capturing with Studio9 there are 4 settings, good, better, best and custom. The settings for the first three all use the "PICVideo MJEPG Compressor". The rest of the settings are as follows:
Good: W320 H240 frame rate 25 60%
Better: w320 h240 frame rate 25 80%
Best: w320 h240 frame rate 25 95%
There is also a custom setting where I chose a width of 720 and a height of 576 with the rest of the settings as shown in best above. I chose 576 as the height because I thought that was what PAL used. The program then chose 720 as the width.
I then recorded the same portion of video with each of the above settings and output to DVD in studio9.
Where I seem to be getting confused is that I'm not sure how the capture resolution affects what you see on the TV. For example with the first three tests I did the width and height were the same 320x240 and the output was DVD which I think is 720x576. I would have thought that the video displayed on the TV would have been smaller than the actual screen dimensions. However this was not the case. The only difference between the first three tests was the apparent grainyness of the video which I put down to the amount of compression.
However the video displayed full screen, not what I thought. Then when I did the final test which I captured at 720x576 the picture looked pretty much the same with one slight difference. The portion of video I tested with had date/time stamp on it. When viewing the first three tests I noticed that half of this was cut off at the bottom of the screen. On the final test however I noticed that it was completely visable and some distance off the bottom of the screen.
I therefore assume that it does have some affect although not as much as I had imagined. If anyone could be so kind as to shed some light I would appreciate greatly. If it's not already obvious i'm quite new to this.
Cheers
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