Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Capture video with notebook?

Apr 13, 2005 1:28AM PDT

Hi,

I tried to capture sony camcorder video to a sony notebook at the best quality with adobe premiere and got lots of frame losses. I guess it's because the hard drive on my notebook is too slow (4200 RPM?). Someone told me you have to use a 7200 RPM hard drive to avoid such problem. Is that true? I mean, most notebooks these days have either 4200 RPM or at best 5400 RPM hard drives. Does that mean we can only capture video to desktops not laptops?

Did anybody successfully capture good quality video (720x480) to any notebook?

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Comparing notes.
Apr 13, 2005 1:41AM PDT

A rather dull Acer ter-600 which has a P3-600 MHz CPU, 256MB RAM but I did upgrade to a 5400 40G hard disk (79 bucks!) was able to capture from firewire with Virtual Dub without any undue issues or noticeable frame drops.

It also runs Windows 2000 SP4, tweaked with Black Viper's help (see google.com) and has zero spyware. The wifi is turned off and the ethernet is disabled so you don't get that 5 minute OS vapor lock issue. The preview screen is not maximised to to not press my luck.

Sorry, my Premiere version is far too old to try this one.

Bob

- Collapse -
Interesting!
Apr 13, 2005 3:03AM PDT

So, that means notebook is not a deadend for video capture as long as you get a 5400 hard drive (7200 is not necessary?). This brings back the marketing issue: almost every sony camcorder and notebook comes with beautifully printed brochure that has sony camcorder i.Linked to sony notebook even though those notebooks, like mine, only have 4200 hard drives. What an illusion they try to sell?

Similarly, most DVD burners these days are double-layers. But I have never seen any double layer blank DVD disk. Just like I got a camcorder with, theoretically, more than 720x480 resolution. But hardly possible to capture that resolution to my PC, let alone burn a high resolution DVD and play it on my NTSC TV.

Thanks.

- Collapse -
I doubt it's the drive RPMs. Here's why.
Apr 13, 2005 3:23AM PDT

Little known to many is my involvement with CCTV and hard disk recording. 4200 is not the bottleneck. I find too many other factors to be the issue. From spyware to that ethernet port that needs a disable to trying to capture and view full screen and the list goes on and on.

I revealed what I used, but your list is far too short for me to comment.

-> Did you optimize the OS? (Hint: Black Viper and google.com)

-> Is there a disconnected ethernet? Hint: frame drop!

-> Since when is DVD hi-rez? It's still NTSC and that's not what you are capturing at.

Bob

- Collapse -
Any mac will do it
Apr 13, 2005 7:10AM PDT

Any fairly recent Mac laptop, even the inexpensive iBook, will import video without problems with the included software.