A Video Related Question

[baqai]

Would there be any difference in terms of quality between new digitcal camcorders which you can hookup to your computer and the old camcorders which make tape on VHS which one would than have to get converted to avi/mpeg

i am making a information kiosk and i need some video clips which i will shoot, but i can't afford those new shiny camera's and the one i am borrowing from friend makes videos on VHS, i will be importing those videos in flash mx

 

[mdcomp]

Well, I am no expert, but here is my take on it. VHS is not great to begin with, so you are recording that onto a tape and then playing it back and recording it on to the computer. So a lot of quality is probably lost in the process and it did not start out with much. I recorded onto the computer from my video camera (tapes, not digital) through the video jack on an ATI TV tuner card and the quality was horrible. Just don't expect the quality to be great. Good Luck! Depending upon your set up and encoding on the computer it could come out a lot better than mine did.

 

[baqai]

will reducing the resolution help in that case?

 

[Robin Hood]

Sorry, I don’t know which format you have so these figures are based on PAL.

Composite (VHS / 8) = 240 lines resolution
Component (SVHS / Hi8) = 400 lines resolution
Digital (MiniDV DVcam etc) = 480+ resolution

The first two systems are analogue and suffer degradation on subsequent play/recording. The third is digital and provides near perfect copies. Also Digital systems don’t suffer colour bleed in the way that analogue does.

Cables/sockets are also important. S-video is required for component and Firewire/USB for digital. E.g. – playing a Hi8 camcorder through to a regular Yellow RCA will loose the component aspect of the signal and restrict the result to that of composite.

It's always best to start with the best quality you can but the socket you use for capture on your PC is as important as the camcorder. A sleek new miniDV will bring significantly less rewards when connected to a yellow RCA socket as it would do with an S-Video.

 

[Pinky]

A sleek new miniDV will bring significantly less rewards when connected to a yellow RCA socket as it would do with an S-Video.

Nice point, and good post