Capturing basketball games from VHS 2 SVCD

[soma_dis]

I have been trying to capture some old basketball videos I have on VHS, and burn them as SVCDs (PAL).
I have a Pinnacle PCTV Pro capture card, I know its a crap card compared to what else is on the market, but it was the best I could get. Anyways, i've been capturing with VirtualDub, with PICVideo MJPEG codec, the captures seem fine, no dropped frames etc, i then frameserve the captured file to TMPG, and try to encode the file, now i've tryed all different settings, CBR, CQ, 2 Pass VBR, all tryed multiple times with different bitrates, i thought that might be my problem, but i still get crap quality (by crap quality i mean it looks very blocky, i know blocky aint a word, but thats how i'd describe it) when there is a close up on a fast movement, its basketball so obviously theres alot of that.

So, if anyone has any suggestions, TMPG settings that work good for encoding sports videos, or can recommend Virtualdub filters that could help, or even a completely different process if it would work better

I would really appreciate it

Thanks

[bottle-necked]

soma_dis,

What little i've read about the Pinnacle PCTV Pro it was saying that it might not capture very well when using programs other than what came with the card. I dont know since I've never owned one, but normal procedure would be to test the same capture format (on a simple 1-2 minute clip) with several programs and compare the results. Then use the program that did the best capture.

One of the problems with some capture software is the simple fact they might not have a 'template' for the type of video file you are trying to create. If this is the case then you will need to create your own. This can be pretty flustrating, but actually is a fairly simple process. I suggest you follow the 'standard' guidelines.

I thought I had the PAL setting for SVCD but at this early moment I can't seem to find it. Sorry..... I'm asleep I guess.

Good luck.