capture size too big

[arnie22112000]

I have a leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP capture card. I am trying to capture old VHS tapes but the file size becomes to big. It records them in an MPEG. I can't seem to change the settings on the PVR program. How can I get my capture's to be small size and good quality? I have movies I've downloaded that are all in the 700MB range (.avi) and are very good quality. How is this done?

[DV Jones]

Most people capture the video uncompressed or using lossless codecs and then use a program like VirtualDub and compress them to DivX or Xvid. This is a very time consuming process but it's the only way to get really nice looking DivX movies. There are a number of programs that capture directly to DivX but don't expect even half the quality at the same bitrate when you try and do it realtime.

I have opted for a PVR card with a hardware MPEG2 encoder. These types of cards provide wonderful high quality realtime captures in MPEG1 and 2, however you cannot capture in anything but MPEG1/2 if you opt for one of these cards. These cards only work with special PVR applications.

[arnie22112000]

I try using VitualDub with my newly made MPEG and I get an error message: MPEG Import Filter: Pack Synchronization Error

[akbor75]

very important is the source quality: if you create an avi from a dvd or from a vhs tape makes MUCH difference.