where do I go from here?

I am trying to backup and old family home video for my parents. I have am using a Sony VAIO. Using the Windows Media Edition software i was able to capture the video. The problem is the format that it makes the file. It has the extention .drv-ms. This file plays in my medis player files, but i can't open it in VirtualDub or any other video editors as of yet. I would like to re-encode it and put it on a VCD. The 26-ish minute file is about 1.4 GB. If anyone has any suggestions about how i can change this into something that i know how to work with your help would be appreciated, thanks.

Well telling us you have a Sony Viao only tells us you have either a desktop or laptop manufactured by Sony. Which does not tell us much. About the only thing I can infer from that is that there "will" be some sort of proprietary hardware on board that will make something dificult. So lets start from the beginning. How are you getting the video on the PC? Do you have a video capture card? Or are you using a DV camera and downloading it via firewire? If the latter is the case didn't your camera come with some sort of software? It is only natural that with Microsoft software that they are going to make it hard to export/convert to a non Microsoft format.

I used the capture card/tv tuner that came installed with the computer. I used the windows Media Center software to capture the video. The Media Center software is set up with the capture card to gear it to capturing live TV or sceduling things to be captured at a later date, like TiVo i guess. I hooked my VCR to the cable input on the PC opened the media center and turned my computer to channel 3 and hit record. I believe it has something to do with it being a wierd windows format. I tried to open it in VirtualDub, but i get the error about not being able to open ASF files because of the copyright stuff. When i tried to open it in an older version of VirtualDub that had the AFS support i got a different error saying it didn't recognize something about the format. Any other program i try to open it it, other than media players, say that they don't support or can't recognize the format.

simple solution: install avisynth, use directshowsource("c:\blah.drv-ms") and see if this helps you. perhaps it's a high-bitrate lossy format (like MJPEG or DV) wrapped in an ASF style container. that i think would explain the errors you're getting. opening in avisynth and encoding from there should solve your problems, unless there's Variable Frame Rate crap going on, then you're up the creek and will need an encoding app that supports VFR and knows what to do with the sound (this is highly unlikely, so you should be fine). [edit] oh, and for future captures, you might want to experiment with different capture programs (maybe the capture utility in VirtualDub even), and see if they allow you to capture in more edit-friendly formats, like DV and MJPEG (or HuffYuv, if you've got the space). these formats are more friendly than an ASF wrapped random lossy codec...

I've learned -- only quite recently, through another thread -- that Sony Viao uses a proprietary technique called "Gigapocket" for analog capture. See for details. Gigapocket technology has not been discussed in Doom9's forum, so the specific technical aspects of analog capture via Sony Viao are unknown to me (or, most likely, anyone else here). I recommend following Mug Funky's excellent suggestions. Please let us know what you learn from experimenting with them.

By the way, it's pretty amazing how Sony tries to lock you up with their propertiary formats. I own their new Minidisc recorder. It's mostly used for live microphone recordings (I don't record, but I'm doing some technical parts of things). Now, guess what - I can transfer digital files to my PC via usb, but I can't recode them to any sane format. Moreover, any attempt to do so would be - luckly, only in the USA - an attempt to break a copyright protection, and therefore would be illegal. The fact that *I OWN* the copyright in question doesn't matter. It's funny if the word "copyright" means "you don't have the right to copy"... Of course the old rule "if it can be played, it can be copied" does apply, which simply means that I have more work to do, while anyone actually breaking the law would not be stopped anyways. Sorry for being off topic, Radek

From the description I get the impression a Vayo program called 'MovieShaker'should be able to convert gigapocket to something else. From the screenshots it uses all installed codecs, in which case converting to huffy or something like that would at least limit the amount of damage caused by recompression.

I tried Mug Funky's suggestion and created AVS file. When I open it in VirtaulDub i get an error saying-- Avisynth open failure: DirectShowSource: I can't determine the frame rate of the video; you must use the "fps" parameter is this the Variable Frame Rate crap I was warned about? If so is there anything else I can do now?

You can change the line to read:directshowsource("c:\blah.drv-ms",fps=29.97) for NTSC, ordirectshowsource("c:\blah.drv-ms",fps=25) for PAL. That assumes that you've captured at one of those framerates, which we don't really know. I would give Arachnotron's recommended "MovieShaker" a try as well. If that works, then joecrab will be interested in it as a solution. I'll PM him to let him know about this thread.

adding the FPS parameter to the AVS file worked great. I can now get the video in virtual dub. What i am lacking now is audio. Do i need to put something in my AVS file specificly for audio or is there some other problem?