Hi Aussieroo,

When you dump/copy/cut/drag your files to the hard drive there is no loss of definition.

Now when you edit your videos and burn them to DVD or upload them to youtube that is a different situation, you can loose some definition depending on a lot of things like bitrate, codec, compression, etc etc.....Welcome to the challenging new world of video editing My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

I'd like to piggy back on top of this question. I've had no problem capturing via USB so far. The quality hasn't changed one bit. However, I have a 2nd HD camera that uses Firewire.

During the "Capture", the preview on PD8 window is very choppy (my computer is a month old and have pretty high end specs). Upon finishing the Capture, when I play it back in PD, it is very choppy. There's a lot of pixelation, pauses, skips, etc. During playback on the LCD screen of my Canon, there's no pops, clicks, pixelation, or chops. It's very smooth.

I'm wondering if there's any settings on PD8 that I can disable to make it more smoother. Does anyone know what would cause this?

Thanks. Intel i930 (4x 2.80ghz), 12 gb Corsair Dominator DDR3 ram, 1.5gb Nvidia GTX480, Asus P6t mb, 850w XFX PSu, Windows 7 HP

Hi Tuan!
You may be more specific about what you were capturing in which format and what resolution. But there is for general that if you're trying to capture HD videos with a slowly computer, this may cause "Dropped Frames" while your computer cannot transcode in real time. You can watch if they are frame dropps while capturing, and If so could try a different format or a smaller resolution. This is a picture when you can check if they are "Dropped Frames".

There are only 10 kind of people in this world: Those who understand binary numbers and those who don't.

I guess I don't understand when you say 'trying a different format'. When I'm capturing HD files from and HD source, how can I change that? How can change the resolution? My Canon HV10 is 1080i. When I plug it in and go to Capture in PD, there's nothing in the Profile button that I can change. At this point, all I do is press Record and it starts the capturing process.

Also, my computer is almost brand new. It's definitely not a slow computer by any means. Like I said I've done a few projects so far with my other HD camcorder (Canon HF20) which uses USB rather than Firewire. All footage from this camcorder has been captured without any pops, clicks, pixelation, pauses, and skips. It has been very smooth.

There's two things I can attribute this to: First, it has to be something with the firewire card on the back of my computer. Somewhere, the transfer is not going through smoothly.

The other is the software itself. I tried capturing from Firewire with Ulead Visual Studios and it works fine. However, with the recent crashes of PD, tech support told me to delete other software so I did. So now I have to use PD for capturing from both camcorders. Intel i930 (4x 2.80ghz), 12 gb Corsair Dominator DDR3 ram, 1.5gb Nvidia GTX480, Asus P6t mb, 850w XFX PSu, Windows 7 HP

Hi,

Why even capture, why use PD at all. Simply copy your video files to a folder on your computer. Then use Splash Lite which is free for viewing all your video files, or check out the new Pro version which you can try for 30 days. Splash is a far superior viewing program so check it out as it is amazing.

http://mirillis.com/en/products/splashpro.html

With my SD cards I simply insert into a USB card slot on my computer and never have to hook up any cables. Then after the files are transferred I open the folder and simply double click on a file or thumbnail and it opens instantly in Splash which has many viewing options. Then if I want to edit, etc., I simply drag the desired files into PD.

George Dell Studio XPS 9100
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz
64 Bit Operating Sytem
12 GB DDR3 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 1248 MB Memory

Canon HF S21 & Canon HG21

I agree, Splash is the easiest and best video player I've found. The free version is satisfactory unless you want 5.1 or 7.1 sound. Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

James,

I learned about Splash from this forum last year and I agree the Lite works just as well. The only other advantage of the Pro version that is nice is that if you hold the mouse pointer anywhere on the timeline it will give you a small picture frame of that time frame and I guess there are a few other as well. I just upgraded a couple days ago as untill the 31st the Pro version is only $19.95 US.

Splash is for viewing video, PD is for editing video.

George Dell Studio XPS 9100
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz
64 Bit Operating Sytem
12 GB DDR3 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 1248 MB Memory

Canon HF S21 & Canon HG21

So how would that work with DV tapes? I can't drag those files anywhere. Intel i930 (4x 2.80ghz), 12 gb Corsair Dominator DDR3 ram, 1.5gb Nvidia GTX480, Asus P6t mb, 850w XFX PSu, Windows 7 HP

No tapes do have to be captured and saved as a digital files first such as MPEG, MPG, WMV, etc. You do have depending upon the capture program used several options with regards to how you want them saved, so they can then be viewed and edited as digital files. Dell Studio XPS 9100
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 960 @ 3.20GHz
64 Bit Operating Sytem
12 GB DDR3 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 1248 MB Memory

Canon HF S21 & Canon HG21