Hi,
I am newbie, have very little knowledge about movies making.
I received the Canopus ADVC-110 on Friday evening and spent two nights playing with it :P
I tested capturing using Windows Movies Maker, Windv, CaptureFlux. I thought WMM would provide the best capture (avi) files, but to my surprise WinDV did the best job. I downloaded Ulead Studio 10 Plus, Adobe Element Premier 3.0, VirtualDub and plan to test them when I have some times this week.
My task is to transfer my Hi8 tapes to digital, to preserve my family movies. Just capture them, and store in the hard drive, and not edit or anything else now. I will do the 'production' later when I have time.
I read many threads posted here and on some other forums, but I have not found the answers for my questions below, therefore I appreciate if you guys can give me the answers and any other advices.
My question are:
1/ Which sofware can provide the best capture, in term of preserving the original quality as much as I can ? What setup should should the format be ? I can add/upgrade my hard drive(s), so the size of the capture files is not a problem. The quality is the highest priority.
2/ How come WinDV provide better capture quality than Windows Movie Maker ?
3/ I know Adobe EP3.0 and Ulead Studio 10 Plus each costs approximately $100. Are they worth the price, comparing with VirtualDub? Or just personal preferences ?
4/ Is there a guide for using the ADVC-110 somewhere? The manual does not reccommend any software to use..
5/ I use Windows Movie Maker to burn a short (10 minutes) clip to a DVD-RW and view it on my LG player. It looks good. However I believe there are other better software for encoding/compress and save the clip to DVD. What is your favorite ?
6/ My Sony Hi8 CCDTRV65 is very reliable and still running like a charm, but I know the tapes are not the best. Any reccomendation for a new camcorder: miniDV ? miniDVD ?
My setup:
Dell XPS400 Dualcore, 2GB, 250GB, 256MB w.DVI
Canopus ADVC-110
Sony Hi8 CCDTRV65 (9year-old)
Many thanks for your inputs !