Capturing AVI in virtual Dub and processing file

[tana]

Hi, I have finally gotten virtual dub to capture tv at 640x480 without too much frame loss on my system using an ATI TV WONDER, and the quality seems to be better than what I can get out of PowerVCR II, but the resulting file or files are huge. When I was using PowerVCR II, I captured to mpeg2 at the highest quality and it only required about 4GB for 1 hour of video, but using Virtual Dub and capturing to AVI with Huffyuy compression, the resulting file is around 24GB, signficantly larger than mpeg2. I'm just curious as to what steps people go through next to process the video for archiving. Do you cut out commercials first, then convert to say dvd format (mpeg2) or perhaps VCD, or Divx, or do you convert first to VCD, Divx, and then cut out the commercials and merge the segmented files together? I would assume cutting the commercials out then converting and merging be done in that order since to takes so long to convert, well at least in divx. I'm not sure how long it takes to convert 43minutes of video commercial free into mpeg2. I want to convert to divx. If anyone wants to put in their 2cents or advise, I'd appreciate it.


Thanks.
Tana

[Poplar]

Capturing AVI is only the first part of the job, now you need to do the post processing. There are several options: DivX, VCD, SVCD. Since I don't do DivX, can't help you with that. This is what I do:

AVI-->Frame Serving through VDub or Avisynth-->CCE 2.50 SP-->SVCD

Depending on the quality of your source and capture, you choose what filters you want to use to encoding your mpeg-2 stream. On a fast system you can achieve the speed of around 0.6 realtime. Again, it also depends on how many passes you want to do. 40-45 minutes of video can fit in one CD with excellent quality. Editing out commercials is time-consuming because you also have to process audio and keep them in synch with video. The whole process is not very difficult, but it requires a lot of experience and trial and error.

Good luck