ATI AIW Radeon 7500 & Capture

[kuphryn]

Hi.

I am considering buy an ATI AIW Radeon 7500 with capture capability. Basically, I will use it to capture vhs movies and movies from directv into vcd and then burn it.

I would like to know what is the best way to capture + encode with the best quality including what program I will need and technique. Secondly, how much diskspace will I need and how long does it usually take to capture a 2 hour movie from capture intil burn time.

Thanks,
Kuphryn

[Sulik]

If you want the absolute best quality, you'll have to pay for it with extra time capturing AVI first, then using multipass non realtime encoder like CCE or TMPGENC.

A close second is to simply use MMC to capture straight to MPEG, with almost as good quality (except for very low bitrates), and real-time.

As far as disk space is concerned, there is no limit: basically, the higher the bitrate, the more disk space you need. If you want virtually losssless quality, go for MPEG at 15Mbps (a bit over 100MB per minute), although you can get DVD quality at 8Mbps (60MB/minute).

[kuphryn]

Okay. Thanks.

I have heard about MMC and real-time capture. Is the quality good enough to watch it on a standalone DVD player?

Kuphryn

[BJ_M]

if you think vcd quality is good - yes ..

if you want near dvd quality - no

[ats65]

The quality of SVCD is pretty good but it won't let you capture a movie with Macrovision protection unless you have something like a SIMA color corrector.

[MOVIEGEEK]

kuphryn,
I use ATI AIW Radeon and Stinky's 7.5/7.6 regtool(in"Tools").I bought it for the same reason you mentioned I wanted to capture a compliant mpeg.$200US sounds expensive,but when you add up a WinTV,etc. capturecard,PowerVCRII and TMPGEnc not to mention 4-8
hours to encode per movie it makes good sense.

[Sulik]

The answer to the question regarding quality is that yes you can get DVD-quality with real-time capture.

VCD/SVCD are low quality regardless of the encoder used simply because of the bitrate restriction (though some encoders are worse than others).

For best DVD quality, you'll need a decent CPU (P4 or Athlon XP is the best), so you can do IBBP @ 6-8Mbps without dropping frames.

[christdoss]

You can get this AIW Radeon 7500 64mb AGP for around $133 at walmart.com or you can get different version of ATI AIW Radeon at reasonable price on erwincomp.com. Both are highly rated in Yahoo Shopping.