to MPEG-1 or not

[alphacentauri]

Right now I'm successfully capturing MPEG-1 with my ATI AIW 7500 card and the video is (640x480)6,0mb/s, audio 44,100Hz 16bit stereo. The file size is about 2Gb/45min. I've converted it into a DivX(5.02) avi file with Mpeg Layer-3 audio (96kbps). But is this pointless? Would I achieve a better quality leaving it to mpeg? But how can I achieve the same file size (the final divx avi file is about 350Mb) because the captured mpeg is about 2Gb and obviously won't fit into a single cd. I've got Nero 5.7 at my disposal as well as VirtualDub, FlaskMPEG, and I've got GKnot but I haven't been able to get a successful conversion with that. With Divx I've used the 2-pass method. I'd like to be able to fit 2 350Mb files into a single cd and make it into a vcd, can this be done?

[CeVe]

Well, let me first state one thing, vcd's have a unique format, files must be MPEG-1, 352x288, 25 fps and encoded at 1150 kbps for PAL (352x240, 29.97 fps for NTSC) othervise it is not a vcd. using this encoding you can fit 74 min of video on a 650 MB CD.
I.e. you can not put divX files on a CD and get a VCD.

If you want to have 90 min. of video on one CD you can encode it to DivX, and put on a CD. Though you will then be able to play it from your computer, not a DVD player in your living room.

Everytime you compress video, some quality is lost so recompressing should always be avoided or kept to a minimum. In my opnion you can recompress a MPEG file to DivX or Windows Media once without noticeable loss, provided high bitrates are used.

Personally I grab films using my TV-card in MPEG-1 320x240, 25 fps at 1024 kbps. That's all I'm capable to do with a P II 350 MHz. This way I can grab approx. 3½ hrs. within the 2 GB limit. then I convert it to Windows media at the highest bitrate so it will still fit on one CD, typically 700-900 kbps, that works fine for me.

Hope it was answer to your question.

CeVe