SD and HD Video Capturing Information

[Ian D]

I get asked a lot on You Tube how I recorded SD quality videos in the past and currently record HD videos. I wrote up a long post on a different forum a while back, but now I'm on a forum for a site I write for I would much rather direct people here.

And so...wall of text, ACTIVATE.

What did I use for my SD videos?
Dazzle Platinum.

What do I use to record HD videos?
Hauppauge HD PVR + latest drivers/Arcsoft software + component cables

Do I need anything else to record in HD?
The min specs for the HD PVR states that you need at least a graphics card with 265mb and a dual core processor.

How much does all this cost?
A lot. Shop around for a good deal.

What recording settings?
Standard Arcsoft settings, with the MBps changed from 8 to 10 sometimes (difference doesn't seem to be that noticeable so far, test both and see what you think looks better - or just max it out at...12?). You can record better than this, but for You Tube you only need 720p as that's the best it can display currently.

What size of files would I be dealing with?
In Dazzle a few minutes of footage would be in the gigabytes, but would be rendered down to a more reasonable size afterwards (using Sony Vegas or even just Windows Movie Maker). With the HD PVR you can expect the raw footage file size to be almost identical to the finished rendered size. For around five minutes of HD footage you are looking at ROUGHLY 350mb.

What opens the .M2TS files that it captures?
I use Sony Vegas Pro version 9.0e (must be at least 8.0c or later to work) but the latest version of Studio 12 or 13 also does it.

What editing options do you use in Vegas?
Match up the video properties first of all (including the MBps rate depending on what you changed it to when you captured the footage), then change the finished render quality to 1280 x 720 and set a constant bit rate of 59.94000. For You Tube save the file as a .MP4 (Main Concept AVC/AAC) as it is the format that it works best with.

Note: you can use other files types if you want a better quality video for personal use/other sites/whatever but You Tube really needs MP4 currently.

Render times?
Depends on the file size, the audio, the settings you've used. You would be looking at around 20-50 minutes for either SD or HD depending on length. A 10 minute SD video might take 30 minutes to render and a 5 minute HD video might take 40 minutes. This is on an average PC or laptop. How good your PC is makes a difference here.

To give a newer example: I'm now on an i7 and a 5 minute HD video would take about 10 minutes tops.

The other thing that can make a different to time is elements (multiple clips, sounds, effects) and the chosen final render rate.


====
Note: To see the videos in full size for the best quality comparison, you need to go to my page and watch from there.

Test #1 (8mb rate):




Test #2 (10mb rate):



Test #2.5 (An SD video captured with Dazzle of the game used in Test 2):



Test #3 (A little while ago You Tube improved the max quality it could produce from 720p to 1080p and I was testing whether it accepted the same rendering options as before just with the res changed from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 and it seems to have worked fine, but to be honest the extra quality isn't massive for how much longer rendering could potentially take for action packed videos)





Any more questions or input on what might improve quality or just what settings you use can be posted below.

---

Additional Information


If you want to record your PSP without needing custom firmware or Remotejoy, you can use all the programs you need for PS3 and 360 footage to record that as well.

The only additional thing you need is a PSP Component cable. There's one out for the slim & lite 2000+ editions which might be a bit tricky to chase down and there also seems to be a brand new one out for PSPGO.

You must make sure that it is COMPONENT and NOT Composite. The latter is only good for streaming music and UMD movies onto your TV.

So yeah, hook the component cable from your PSP up to the in of the Hauppauge, set the PSP to display via progressive scan on another source found in display settings (and probably best to set it to 4:3 rather than 16:2 ratio).

Record as normal and then in post use your editing program however you like. I'm still toying with how to get the best balance between screensize and resolution loss. Below are some attempts. They flicker a bit, but this was due to an error in the Arcsoft drivers that has since been corrected.

Like the previous tests, these are best watched on You Tube to fully judge the quality.

Test #1 Removed.


Test #2 I zoomed it in a bit and changed the record size:




Test #3 Got some tips from someone on You Tube to use the following cropping details:

Width: 481.3
Height: 320.9
X Center: 364.7
Y Center: 240.0

I combined that with how I treat console videos with 1280 x 720 10mb/s and the 59.940000 FPS setting. Seems like the best output so far:



Just to show that the flickering in the tests was down to a driver issue which was finally solved by Hauppauge, here is a far more recent PSP capture I did: