Virtualdub AVI capture

[koekenbakker]

As I'm trying to get best quality divx, I've used the VCDhelp instructions for capturing real time divx. I've hooked up my DVD player with composit cable to my Pinnacle
PCTV pro card and put the capture rate to 800-something in order to put a 100 minutes DVD to a 700mb CD-Rom.
Quality of the picture (specially close ups) are excellent, but when playing the captured AVI with Windows media player, scenes with camera movement still are not smooth enough. Will it be better if I capture in Huffyuv or RGB24 and convert it to the Divx format as mentioned above and MP3? Is it a possibility to capture first in very high bitrate divx and afterwards convert to lower bitrate?

[Dman65]

You may want to try going to http://www.divx.com to get some information on what you are trying to do. Your best bet is really to get a DVD drive for your computer and use a "ripping" program to get the actual data file off of the DVD and then encode that with divx. This way you will have zero noise introduction and won't have to worry about the capture process at all.

[koekenbakker]

Thanks for the reply, Dman65.
I know that a direct rip will probably be best, but I am just curious about the possibilities of capture/encoding in
avi (Also for recording of other sources like VCR)
Regards, Michel

[Dman65]

I don't think capturing in one DivX rate and then re-encoding at a different rate will yield very good results personally. I think that would introduce way too much noise.

I use the Microsoft MPEG4v2 codec with the VCR program that I wrote and really have to run at about 3600 and 90 sharpness to get what I consider a decent capture for viewing on my 46" TV. With the inclusion of sound this usually produces a 450Mbyte file for an hour long capture.

Which Divx codec are you using? From what I have read the version 4 that is currently being beta tested is no where as good or as fast as the original that was "converted" off of Microsoft's work.

I read an article on one of the DivX sites that seemed to indicate that encoding higher resolution images actually did not bring any added benefit to the sharpness or quality of the picture. I can't vouch for this personally because I have never tried to offline decode a 640x480 capture and my system could never encode that resolution real time.

[koekenbakker]

Hello Dman65
I am using the divx 3 codec. I have downloaded the new one and did not have the time to use it. However now I am afraid that it is not the capture that is not OK, but maybe something with the software in my PC (P3/733/12. Is that Microsoft codec included in Virtualdub standard download? Did you say you've written your own VCR-programme? Are you going to share it?

[Cart Wheel]

You will probably get better quality if you capture with Huffyuv in YUY2 or UYVY and compress it further after capture. You can also try to use some of VirtualDub's filters (e.g. Smart Smooth and Temporal Smoother) to improve the image quality.

MS MPEG-4 V2 comes with Windows Media Tools 4.1:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/winmediatech40/Install/4.1/WIN98/EN-US/wmtools.exe
However, DivX4 (which is not hack of Microsoft's codecs like the original DivX) should provide better quality. Unfortunately, I hear it may still have a few color problems, but those will probably be fixed rather soon.

-Cart
http://www.geocities.com/lukesvideo/index.html