Huge file sizes in VirtualDub

[CommanderXJL]

I'm capturing from laser disk into virtual dub for DVD transfer, so I'm using 720x480 and 48khz stereo for sound. The problem is my files size for the captured AVI is 1 Gig per minute of video? What the hell am I doing wrong? I'm also getting some sound crackling a little in my final AVI, was wondering what was causing that

[furball6969]

Why don't you start by telling us what your setup is. At the very least I need to know what capture card you are using; what audio board you are using; what motherboard, etc. Also whether or not you have a DV camera and a firewire connection to your PC and what codecs you are familiar with for capturing as well as the settings used.

[CommanderXJL]

Asus motherboard, Athlon XP 1800, ATI All In Wonder, Soundblaster PCI 512 soundcard, Firewire Port but DV camera will not allow passthrough or record from analog source. I installed Huffyyuv in VirtualDub, now 5 minutes of video at 720x480 is slightly over 2 gig, I can almost handle that I have 60 gig of space on one of my drives. Am I on the right track?

[furball6969]

Why not just use the TV app that came with the AIW and capture 720x480 mpeg2, then demux and resample audio to 48khz then build your DVD layout with your preferred DVD authoring app?

[CommanderXJL]

Please explain that more!! If you think that is a better answer, tell me more about it PLEASE!! Your saying capture Laser disk with that TV app, demux the sound which I guess would be 44k and resample to 48, then author?

[CommanderXJL]

I don't think that idea is gonna work, the tv app won't even launch if you don't have tv hooked up, which I don't

[sterno]

2GB for 5 minutes is about what I would expect for HuffyUV at 720x480@30fps. You might try capturing to MJPEG if you can, that seems to be the other common high-quality capture codec. Also remember that if your free space is split across more than one drive you can do a segmented capture in VirtualDub.

If you want the best quality, you need a lot of disk space for your capture. Things like MPEG make a smaller file by throwing away part of the data, so you want to start out with something that's higher quality than what your final format will be.

[furball6969]

I don't think that idea is gonna work, the tv app won't even launch if you don't have tv hooked up, which I don't

That doesn't sound right, you don't need a TV hooked up to capture video into your PC so something else must be causing it not to run.

It's pretty straight forward; capture your video - and I was assuming that your TV app is recording audio at 44.1Khz, if it will do 48Khz then all the better, one less step for you to do later - demux the two streams with your favourite prog - I use M2-edit, then use Goldwave to resample the audio to 48Khz if needed. Now load the files into your authoring program and make your DVD.

[furball6969]

If you want the best quality, you need a lot of disk space for your capture. Things like MPEG make a smaller file by throwing away part of the data, so you want to start out with something that's higher quality than what your final format will be.

If the final format will be Mpeg2 and he has an Mpeg2 hardware/sw encoder why would it be better to capture to another format and then transcode to mpeg2? Granted the AIW is not the worlds highest quality producer of Mpeg2 but for the difference in quality vs. difference in time make your production another route it's easier just to cap straight to mpeg2.

However, if you must use another codec, I would think that a DV codec would be the best choice and space requirements are only about 13GB per hour.

[sterno]

If the final format will be Mpeg2 and he has an Mpeg2 hardware/sw encoder why would it be better to capture to another format and then transcode to mpeg2? Granted the AIW is not the worlds highest quality producer of Mpeg2 but for the difference in quality vs. difference in time make your production another route it's easier just to cap straight to mpeg2.

I have found that analog capture generally gives a better final product than capture with a hardware MPEG2 encoder. The difference in quality is noticable even with SVCDs on my cheap 27in TV. Most of my capture is actually done with a hardware MPEG2 card at 6000k and converted to SVCD at 2000k or VCD, I capture at a higher quality than the final format and it is noticably better than capture direct to SVCD. Real-time software MPEG encoding (which the All-in-Wonder used the last time I checked, but I haven't looked at ATI's more recent cards) generally produces worse results than the consumer-level hardware encoders like the one I use.

A multipass VBR encoder will usually give better quality than either hardware or software real-time encoding. I'm assuming that the original poster is converting from laserdisc to DVD because both are capable of very high quality but laserdisc players are rare and expensive while a perfectly good DVD player costs $75 at Wal-Mart.

[CommanderXJL]

Well, let me say this. I have no problem with extra work, I want the best quality I can get. I've got my video coming out almost perfect, just a slight blurr during movement, and for some reason when I capture with Virtualdub at 48k I get some popping in the sound. I followed the guide here to get me this far http://members.cox.net/skatezila/guide.htm If anyone has a formula they use with Virtualdub that gives them good 48k sound and good video with no motion trouble let me know. I found that if I use the TMPG settings they say to use on this link I get close, but when things move I see a little blur. I know the sound popping a little isn't the fault of TMPG, because I've encoded with it for years and never had that. I guess if anyone has some settings to try let me know. But since I am capturing from laser disk for dvd I want 720x480 at 48k. I am so close if I could just get the popping out of the sound and the video a little smoother. Maybe virtualdub has problems capturing sound at 48k?

[furball6969]

I hate to tell you this but I had a similar problem with my A7V and SB live Platinum 5.1. I'm not sure if moving the card to another slot solved the problem or not but I know it doesn't crackle with my MSI board. Maybe try to disable IRQ sharing for the slot that the audio card is in.

Good luck.

[CommanderXJL]

furball, please read the new post I made about this sound problem, I've done some tests and I'm starting to think its this ATI 7500 card!

[Gazorgan]

Actually, I hit 14 GB/hour capturing in Huffyuz and mono sound at 480x360. At 720x480 and stereo, you can easily be at over 30 GB/hour, and that's at YUV2 compression. Your hardware isn't keeping up, that's part fo the problem.

MJPEG is your solution, or capture in SVCD at some high bitarate. Realistically, that will give you 'good enough' resolution from a laser disk source.