Video Capture Using Moviemaker--Only Uncompressed??

[MS]

With a USB video capture device, I was trying to capture a VHS video tape
onto the computer, from my VCR through the capture device, using the latest
Windows Moviemaker..

After capturing just ten minutes or so, it came to a halt, with a message
like "no more space on hard drive".

Well, there was still several Gigabytes of space left on the HD. There was
certainly space enough for the entire movie I was trying to capture, in the
compressed .WMV format I thought it was capturing to. The capture resolution
was only 320 x 240, certainly should have been plenty of space for the
resulting .wmv movie.

It occurred to me that it was probably capturing the video as totally
uncompressed .AVI, and then would encode that capture to .wmv afterwards.

Theoretically, if one had unlimited storage space, or a gigantic hard drive,
I would think that to be the best way to do it. Capture the video totally
uncompressed, do whatever editing you want to do to it, and then compress it
as the very last step. (I know that's true with music and still photos
also.) Otherwise, one recompresses every time one saves the file, and that's
not so good.

However, although that might be the best way to do it if one has the space,
uncompressed video takes up such an incredible amount of space, that unless
one has a giant hard drive, that's not very practical. Couldn't a full
length movie with sound recorded totally uncompressed take up 20 Gigabytes
or more? Well, the HD on my notebook (my only computer) has less than 30 GB
total, and there are less than 10 GB free. So, I don't think there is any
possibility of capturing a full movie totally uncompressed.

Is that the way Windows Moviemaker always captures video--totally
uncompressed? If so, that would prevent many users from capturing long
stretches of video with it, for the reason described above.

Or, did it have something to do with my settings? Is there a way to
configure the program so that the video and audio are compressed while
capturing, rather than waiting to do the encoding until after the capture is
finished?

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

 

[PapaJohn]

I believe the capturing is to the WMV format that you specify, not to
DV-AVI. You can watch the file grow in the folder that you point to in your
Options for temporary files and/or in the final location you select. You
could see by the file size as it grows if that's the issue.

PapaJohn

 

[Gareth Howell [MS]]

To add to what Papajohn says, Movie Maker will capture the uncompressed data
and convert to wmv "as fast as it can" while you're capturing. If your
computer can't keep up with converting to wmv, the size of a temporary
uncompressed file will grow. This ensures that Movie Maker doesn't drop
frames of video while capturing (the alternative would be - if it's not
keeping up, just to throw away the frames of video - which is less
desirable).

One thing which might help you is if you defragement your hard drive. A
highly fragmented drive will spend lots of time seeking back and forth for
the fragments of the uncompressed temporary file.

-Gareth

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Thanks Gareth,

Interesting. Will the size of the captured uncompressed file go down
dynamically as the info gets moved into the WMV file? Versus staying until
the process is finished, in which case you need space for both the
uncompressed file and the WMV during capture?

PapaJohn

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Gareth,

I'd appreciate your comments about the developing web page at
www.papajohn.org

The Problem Solving... Can't Save a Movie page. Mostly I'm interested in the
section "How Movie Maker Saves a Movie". You comment here about the flow of
data into and out of a temp DV-AVI file would be the kind of thing I'm
looking for.

Thanks - comments online or to my email would work great.

PapaJohn

 

[Steve Zurlo]

Couple of notes:

1. DV-AVI uses about 200 megs of disk space per minute of video. So the
file should have only been about 2 gigs when you got the error.

2. HOWEVER: If it was actually more like 20 minutes and your hard drive is
formatted FAT32, then you may have run up against the 4 gig file size limit
for that filesystem. You cannot create a file larger than 4 gigs on a FAT32
drive. Converting to NTFS removes that limitation.

Of course this is assuming that MM2 even saves it to a temp file
uncompressed before compressing to wmv. I don't know. I always save as
DV-AVI since that is what comes out of my camera and I like to minimize
loss.

Just a thought.....

Steve Z

(Take the "n" out of "snaz" if you want to e-mail me directly.)

 

[Gareth Howell [MS]]

Yes, the size of the uncompressed file will go down dynamically as info is
moved into the wmv file. There's normally some uncompressed left when you
finish the capture wizard, hence the progress dialog - it's moving the last
of the uncompressed video into the wmv file.

-Gareth