Recording (not streaming) from very old Hi8 tapes through Easycap

[shares]

I use Easycap as a video input device through the USB. I am not sure how Easycap drivers convert the analogue s-video into digital. The properties on the video capture device say "PAL_I", 625 lines.

OBS has no problems in recording except it messes things up with its "canvas" size being much larger than the actual captured video, and it then records a video file on disk with a large black background.

In OBS settings, I can modify the "canvas" size to be smaller, say 1280x720, but it is still too large, resulting in black areas surrounding the actual video.

I would like the recording to be as uncompressed/unmodified as is possible, eg a very large .avi file. I suspect Easycap has performed some sampling on the incoming analogue video - I am just guessing here - does it even tell OBS what resolution/FPS the source stream is?

Is there any way to tell OBS to record an unmodified video using the resolution of the captured stream without performing any other operations ?

Many thanks for all your help.

 

[FerretBomb]

If you right-click the video capture device source for the Easycap in the Sources list, then click "Resize Output (Source Size)", it will automatically size the canvas to whatever the Easycap is providing.
If there are still black bars, you can either add a Crop filter by right-clicking the source and selecting 'Filters' and adding one, or hold the ALT key down and drag the resizing handles to do a 'quick crop'. You should then be able to do the first thing again to size the canvas properly (I believe it works with quick-crops) and only record the incoming video.

You should also double-click the Video Capture Device source and hit the 'configure video' and 'configure crossbar' buttons, to see if you can change the settings on the Easycap itself to capture/output in a format matching what's coming from the tape (unless the Hi8 IS in PAL, then disregard).

 

[shares]

PS: I have just found it, you need to right-click on the captured preview and do "Preview Scaling --> Canvas". That now creates a video file of 720x576 which is also shown as the device's resolution.

PS2: NO, it was another option as mentioned above! I had just forgotten about it while messing with the preview and cropping.

Yes the Hi8 is PAL-I.

Many thanks