capturing TV through digital camcorder...1/2 resolution

[AarontheRipper]

I've been doing a lot of capturing off of TV lately, but have been disappointed with the quality of my reencodes because to get a 2 hour program on a DVD, I have to use a bitrate around 4000. I'd like to capture at 1/2 resolution so that I can use a higher bitrate and hopefully get better picture quality. Is there a capture program that will allow me to do that? I have VideoStudio, and a couple of other programs that have the ability to capture, but haven't been able to. Could someone offer some assistance?

[EricB]

Aaron,

If you try MainConcept 1.4 I believe it will capture at 352x480. Actually the "capture" is DV, but it will on-the-fly encode to 1/2 horizontal resolution.

[bugster]

AFAIK, when capturing from any DV device, be it a camcorder on pass through or a dedicated capture device, you are limited to full D1 resolution capture (720*480/576). After capture you can encode to mpeg in 1/2 D1 and that should solve your quality issues, or at least help.