VideoH CD USB. Capture preview and VCDs are pixelated.

[bongomagic]

OK I'm new to video capture so this could be realy obvious. I have a PAL analogue VHS-C camcorder and am trying to convert to VCD for playback on my TV through a DVD player. However, although everything installed ok and the tiny capture preview screen looks like everything is working if I maximise the preview screen then it goes horribly pixelated. Once the video is captured via my USB 1.1 external Adaptec 1.1 card I take it that I have an AVI file stored. Correct? Now then, when I click 'get video' from the option within SONIC MY DVD (the bundled and somewhat cut-down software) and preview it here, the same pixelation occurs. When I burn it to VCD and play back on my TV guess what? Yep! it's pixelated again. I've tried evey conceivable option (I think). I have noticed that the rather basic Adaptec capture software has a compression slider but it's greyed out!!?. Can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong because as it stands this is absolutely useless - unless you supposed to be satisfied with playing the burned VCDs in a minimised tiny window on the PC.

Thanks for looking at this.

[MrMungus]

OK I'm new to video capture so this could be realy obvious. I have a PAL analogue VHS-C camcorder and am trying to convert to VCD for playback on my TV through a DVD player. However, although everything installed ok and the tiny capture preview screen looks like everything is working if I maximise the preview screen then it goes horribly pixelated. Once the video is captured via my USB 1.1 external Adaptec 1.1 card I take it that I have an AVI file stored. Correct? Now then, when I click 'get video' from the option within SONIC MY DVD (the bundled and somewhat cut-down software) and preview it here, the same pixelation occurs. When I burn it to VCD and play back on my TV guess what? Yep! it's pixelated again. I've tried evey conceivable option (I think). I have noticed that the rather basic Adaptec capture software has a compression slider but it's greyed out!!?. Can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong because as it stands this is absolutely useless - unless you supposed to be satisfied with playing the burned VCDs in a minimised tiny window on the PC.

Thanks for looking at this.

I hope I read your question right...

If you maximize an MPEG file that is encoded at a smaller size, it's just naturally going to be pixelated.