new to this forum with a few simple questions.

[Wheelman]

Hi, im fairly new to burning vcds, but have done a few before. I am going to build myself a new computer later this month (my first one ) and was just wondering what are some basic system specs you would reccomend for me to get the greatest and most reliable performance when ripping dvds to vcd, and making vcds out of my image collections and mpgs. I am looking at either a athlon or pentium processor, definately ddr ram, how much ram and processing speed, maybe some recommendations on what to look for in my system, including things like dvd and cd burner drives, keep in mind i am a kid on a budget too.

thanks in advance

[dmonty]

If you are on a budget then I would recommend the following...

Processor: AMD XP (Get the best you can afford)
Memory: Min. 256mb of PC2700 DDR but I would recommend 512
MB: Look for a board with the VIA KT333 chipset. Recommend Asus, Soyo, Abit, Gigabyte, MSI, EPOX
Video: depends on your needs. For games: Gforce 3 would be the min. For AV/TV ATI All in wonder Radeon
Audio: Since your on a budget look for a MB that includes audio. Else get an Sound Blaster Audigy.
HDD: Since you will be working with video get the biggest HDD you can afford. Recommend a Western Digital 120 GB. If you are interested in RAID most of the MBs listed above have a RAID version.

[Wheelman]

what os would be more stable for this purpose, or would that matter? I can put either win xp or win 2k.

[dmonty]

I use and HIGHLY recommend XP.

[Wheelman]

do all the free software you need to rip dvds work okay with xp?

[dmonty]

I have used the following apps....

DVD2AVI
XMPEG
IFOEDIT
SMARTRIPPER
TMPGEnc
Ligoos
SpruceUp
NERO
Primo DVD

[athrak]

I wouldn't be caught dead using WinXP

several games have problems with it, it has high overheads, and Windows 2000 just seems to run better.

I'd recommend Windows 2000, or if you must use Windows XP, try to find a Releace Candidate version of it about. The final is terribly unstable, it'll break all of your programs, and just plain ewwwwww!

As stated before, an Athlon processor works out the cheapest, and they usually give better performance than P4 chips, I'm using a Soltek board at the moment, no problems with it..

if you want to do a lot of video editing, don't bother with expensive capture cards.. don't get anything over $100.. as I can capture at 720x576 in mpeg-2 format, with a bitrate of 6megabits.... from my satellite TV service.

it makes very nice DVD quality captures, although you really need a 7200 drive to get that sort of performance.

Hope a little bit here helps

[vitualis]

WinXP seems to run most programs well and is definitely more stable than the Win9x/ME line of OSes.

If you do have compatibility issues (you hopefully sholdn't with XP), Win98SE is probably the next best option.

As for video encoding, I wouldn't necessarily look past a P4 system. They are not really more expensive than the top end Athlon systems anymore and in some areas (e.g., video encoding), the P4s probably do perform better than the Athlon.

A quick search of the net and this forum will give you a wide variety of views so I suggest you do some personal research first.

Also, a 7,200 rpm drive is good to have, but not "necessary".

Regards.