MPEG-1 (VCD) capture programs?

[kenzhu]

I have been searching for real-time DV to VCD (MPEG-1) capture programs. So far I have only found WinDVD Recorder, whose trial version only allows 5 mins of recording and it's damn expensive. Is there any other shareware/freeware that does a decent job? It'll be the best if the program also enables video editing like adding titles and effects to the MPEG files captured (something like Mainconcept EVE, but it doesn't capture MPEG directly). Thanks in advance.

[MrMungus]

I have been searching for real-time DV to VCD (MPEG-1) capture programs. So far I have only found WinDVD Recorder, whose trial version only allows 5 mins of recording and it's damn expensive. Is there any other shareware/freeware that does a decent job? It'll be the best if the program also enables video editing like adding titles and effects to the MPEG files captured (something like Mainconcept EVE, but it doesn't capture MPEG directly). Thanks in advance.

Have you tried WinDVR? It has VCD format capture...and is highly customizable.

As far as editing goes, I think the current advice is that if you want to do the kinds of edits you're talking about, you'd want to capture to DV AVI, edit, then export to VCD, etc. You can use VirtualDub (free) for the editing.

[kenzhu]

Thanks for reply. Now a I realized that Mainconcept MPEG encoder 1.4.1 also does MPEG real time capture.

My constraint is that I only have 13G of free harddisk space which is barely enough for capture of one mini-DV tape. If I edit the DV file directly, I would run out of space when I save it back to DV format. So what I need is something like Mainconcept EVE which edits DV and outputs to VCD format. Unfortunately, EVE 1.2 's MPEG encoder seems to have quality problems. The compression causes some blurness. I think I will try converting from DV to MPEG with TMPGENC Plus or Mainconcept 1.4.1 first and then edit the MPEG file. Any other suggestions?

[curryman]

there are progs that will edit mpeg but it was designed as a final output standard,
you'd be better off getting a larger hard drive if funds allow, they are quite cheap now and huge in size compared to only a couple of years ago.

[MrMungus]

Thanks for reply. Now a I realized that Mainconcept MPEG encoder 1.4.1 also does MPEG real time capture.

My constraint is that I only have 13G of free harddisk space which is barely enough for capture of one mini-DV tape. If I edit the DV file directly, I would run out of space when I save it back to DV format. So what I need is something like Mainconcept EVE which edits DV and outputs to VCD format. Unfortunately, EVE 1.2 's MPEG encoder seems to have quality problems. The compression causes some blurness. I think I will try converting from DV to MPEG with TMPGENC Plus or Mainconcept 1.4.1 first and then edit the MPEG file. Any other suggestions?

I wouldn't plan on editing MPEG...it's possible but not as easy as editing an AVI. It would be a lot easier to just get a larger hard drive...and hard drives are pretty cheap nowadays...