WinTV-D to SVCD

[mattman]

Hello, brand-spankin' newbie here.

Like the subject says, I'd like to capture w/ my WinTV-D card and eventually make an SVCD. I know that the standard for SVCD is 480x480, however I can't capture at this size. If I capture at full screen 640x480 uncompressed, and downsize it when I encode to MPEG-2, will quality suffer?

Is there a registry hack that I can use to capture at SVCD specs?

-Matt

[websurfer907]

I have a WinTV card (not D) but I can capture 480x480. If it works the same is mine, you can change it to 480x480 by clicking the "Cust" (For Customize) in the format window.

Also, I don't think anybody can capture at 640x480 uncompressed, a hard drive doesn't exist that is fast enough. You have to use a compression codec like Huffyuv (I think thats what its called) or Picvideo's MJPEG codec.

[tacosalad]

In answer to the first question: capturing at 640x480 and downsizing to 480x480 should yield an excellent picture--just be sure to use a high-quality resizing algorithm. (In VirtualDub, use the resize filter with the "Precise Bicubic" setting.)

The WinTV-D card might not be capable of unusual capture sizes for DTV captures. Who knows? Again, if you're using VirtualDub, go to "Capture Avi" and choose Custom Format from the Video menu. That should tell you if custom sizes are possible.

As for whether a hard drive could handle uncompressed 640x480, I think it's feasible with difficulty. At 640 pixels per line, a lossless capture would require YUV 4:1:1 (not 4:2:2) averaging only 12 bits per pixel. That's 13.8 MB/sec, which is ambitious but certainly feasible.

But that's just for argument's sake. I agree with the thought: use a compression codec like Huffyuv or PicVideo.