Shrinking MPEG 2 Video Capture to fit on SVCD

[billqs]

Hi!

I'm still pretty clueless about Video Conversion and have read reams of advice, most of which conflicts with each other.

My goal is to shrink a one hour video capture made last night (2.6G) to fit onto an SVCD.

I bought the AverStereo TV Tuner Card and am using the provided software I set the setting for highest quality 640 by 480 vid cap which yielded a high 5516 bitrate for transfer.

The recording occured fine. I can see no problems in the capture. I have TMPEGnc and was thinking that might be the best way to shrink the file by making it VBR and lowering the effective bitrate. It located the file, but would not process it when I attempted to run the program.

Is this the best way to translate it? Or are there better capture standards I should be using to begin with.

Thanks for helping me out. I really enjoy this forum.

Bill S.

[MpegEncoder]

SVCD is 480x480, you might want to start with that. Also, instead of re-encoding (which is always a huge quality hit), why don't turn down the bit rate on the capture?

Still, getting 1 hour of SVCD is a tight fit.

[billqs]

Thanks for the reply!

What would you suggest as a good bitrate for an on-the-fly capture. While I didn't see a 480x480 option in the Avermedia VCR settings, it's entirely possible I can get it to work under customized settings.

I would dearly love to edit the commercials out before I burn. Can I do that easily with TMPEGnc? Will setting the above to SVCD standards make this easier?

Thanks for all your help!

Bill

[telemike]

I have the AVEr stereo card too. Buy WinDVR2 ($15 by buying an upgrade). The MPEG encoder is much better than what comes with the card. It can capture to SVCD settings too. Just adjust bitrate to to fit 1 hour capture to cd-r.