Capturing Quality on PC?

[DLLN]

I have a Panasonic PV-GS180 dv camcorder and I love it. The video it takes is really nice looking and with a 2.3 mega pixel camera it takes pretty good looking still pictures as well. One problem I'm having is when I capture the video on my computer the quality seems extremely grainy and poor, yet if i connect the camera to my TV through RCA jacks the quality is perfect(even on my terrible tube TV lol). So I'm wondering what I can do to keep that clean quality when I capture video on the computer. I have tired converting the captured video to avi. and MPEG but it doesn't seem much better.

Any help would be great!

Thanks,
Dillon

[Skyman]

how exactly are you capturing the video? and whay are the specifications of your computer. There could be a number of things causing poor quality capture, indeed the video may be capturing ok, but the files are too large for your computer to play them back in real time successfully.
Things to check:
Capture type: are you capturing via fire wire, rca or some other source?

Hard disk speed: normally whilst you are capturing your video the computer will tell you if any frames have been dropped (not captured) one of the reasons for this is that your hard drive cannot write the files fast enough to keep up with the flow of the video. This is more common with older computers or with hi definition video (as the files are a lot larger)

General computer speed: can your computer and software keep up with high levels of sustained data transfer?

one thing that is tricky to determine is if the capture is ok but the playback is not.

[mwfanelli2]

I have a Panasonic PV-GS180 dv camcorder and I love it. The video it takes is really nice looking and with a 2.3 mega pixel camera it takes pretty good looking still pictures as well. One problem I'm having is when I capture the video on my computer the quality seems extremely grainy and poor, yet if i connect the camera to my TV through RCA jacks the quality is perfect(even on my terrible tube TV lol). So I'm wondering what I can do to keep that clean quality when I capture video on the computer. I have tired converting the captured video to avi. and MPEG but it doesn't seem much better.

Any help would be great!

Just a thought: the resolution of your computer is much higher than an analog TV set. You may be seeing the images they way they really are rather than the low-resolution analog version (poor man's noise reduction?).

[DLLN]

Thanks for the help guys! I figured out a way to capture really nice quality video so i'm happy lol