ok, so should I be lazy and even try capturing to mpg1 first

[meandhers]

or should I capture to AVI? I am pretty happy with my caps in virtualdub, especially since I only plopped down $20 for my STB on ebay.
just wondering how do the proggies do tha capture to mpg1, and which is the best?

Thanks

[aguillon]

It s a pretty wide question to be honest. Some programs (like DVD Workshop) can capture directly to MPEG by using prop MPEG codecs and using your CPU to compress the video in real time.

The bottomline is, if your PC is not state of the art, you ll drop frames or end up with lousy quality MPEGs. In that case, it s better to either have a MPEG-capable capture card, or capture to AVI first (less compression) and convert to MPEG later using a separate encoder like TMPGEnc, Panasonic or Xing Encoder, CCE.

[meandhers]

right, im already capping to AVI, I just want to save the hr or 2 if possible. I have a 1600+ XP AMD/256DDR/XP, not quite state of the art, but it's pretty quick....Is it worth checking out? Also in the tools, I followed the links to WINVCR and they dont have a d/l section that I saw...