Help me capture/convert/edit tv show

[Jeraden]

After trying many times by myself, I'm completely confused by all the different formats, programs, process, etc, needed to achieve what I want to do. Here is my goal, quality is my main concern as well as convenience:

Capture a 1 hour television show. Edit out commercials. Encode it to Divx to fit on a single 650MB cd.

I recently installed XP so do not have any file size limitations. I have a Radeon AIW card.

I think I want to capture @ 640x480 with huffyuv (how big of a file will this make?) I currently have 24 gigs of space on a drive for recording. After this, I have no idea how best to edit commercials and convert it - too many programs out there to think about. Please help!

[RaleighNC]

Well no one has given feed back, so I'll give it a shot.

First you need load the huffyuv codec (may have to reboot). The open mmc and set your digital vcr to the res, codec type, birate and motion estimator(me). I don't record in avi so I'm not sure about the bitrate and me. If you start dropping frames, you need to lower your me setting.

Once you have the vid, you can use an avi editor like vdub.

[Vejita-sama]

http://www.geocities.com/lukesvideo

[Jeraden]

Thanks guys. Vejita, that is the most in-depth start to finish guide I've ever seen, very nice! Is it just by choice that you are finishing up by frameserving to windows media encoder instead of encoding directly in virtualdub where you are doing all the video processing?

I think the approach I'll take is capture @ 640x480 using Huffyuv in either virtualdub or ATI MMC. MMC doesn't let you specify options for huffyuv, but the defaults are fine, so I don't think it matters which program is used. I might go for virtualdub here since it seems to give better statistics while its capturing. If I want one hour, I think I calculated that it will take about 25 gigs or so, which is a tad more than I have available. I think I'm going to go buy a bigger HD just in case and if I ever want to capture a 2 hour movie... so a 60gig HD at least.

After thats captured, open it in virtualdub, set the proper compression (one of the divx codecs, will have to play around to find the best one), apply at least the deinterlace filter, perhaps some more and crop the annoying line off the top. Then go in and delete out the segments with commercials. Then use a bitrate calculator to figure out what bitrate to use to end up with close to a 650mb file based on the length after commercials are removed. Then just start compressing!

Sound right?

[RaleighNC]

Sound right.

I've never converted a file that big. Hope you have a fast cpu.

Please post the time it took you to make that divx file.

Good Luck.

[Cart Wheel]

Jeraden,

That's my video guide you looked at. Thanks a bunch for the compliments!

Anyways, you can encode to whatever format you want; RealMedia and Windows Media are just a couple of suggestions. I'll probably add instructions for encoding to DivX 4 (with VirtualDub) when:
A) I get enough time
B) They release the updated DivX 4 codec that doesn't cause certain computers (including mine) to crash.

It sounds like you have a good plan for capturing/encoding. From the little testing I've done, I like the DivX 4 codec.

Recently, I haven't been visiting this forum too much (due to a lack of free time), but you can leave questions on my message board at my site if you want to.

-Cart/Luke
http://www.geocities.com/lukesvideo/index.html