Help!! This is driving me INASANE!

[Phil2k]

Ok, I have two MAJOR problems with my capturing/converting/burning and its driving me insane as I have spent some big money trying to get decent equipment.

Problem number 1:

On any capture that I do, on viewing the MPEG capture with Windows Multi-Media Player, after 5 minutes I get the following message pop up on my screen…

Good Cracking! Yeah?
Ya may always find a new version
To crack at :
http://www.elecard.com

What the hell is that $hit and how do I get rid of it for good?!?!?

Problem number 2:

Using my Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-350 Capture card that cost me quite a few bucks, I capture live boxing off television in the highest possible quality (“DVD Extra Long Play”). Now at this point it’s worth noting that this still isn’t as good as I had hoped it would be considering how much $$ I spent, but is just about tolerable. Anyway, the MPEG files that I produce are big, very big, a 12 round round fight will typically produce an MPEG over 1gig in size, and I need to compress these files and get them off my beleaguered hard drive. But when I go to covert these files to VCD format something goes horribly wrong and when I view the VCD on any DVD player whenever there is movement on the screen the picture is like horizontally distorted with lines that are at their most present when there is lots of movement on screen (very hard to describe). And it doesn’t matter whether I use Nero (which came with my Sony CD/RW) or Ulead Movie Factory which came with my Hauppauge capture card). I have managed to convert some movies that I DL’d from eMule from AVI format to VCD without this picture distortion, why won’t it convert my captured MPEGS? This is driving me insane!

All help appreciated.

[mmasw]

1st....as to your crack message....you must have a hacked/cracked version of the Elecard codec on your system. They do try to protect their proprietary codecs you know

2nd.....you say your capture setting is DVD long play and yet you're using those captured files to create VCD???

well...dvd is an MPG-2 codec. VCD is and MPG-1 codec. If you're trying to put MPG-2 video on a VCD you are screwing up. big time

you need to 'go to school' on some fundamentals. Plenty of information in the links in the column on the left side of this page

[mmasw]

in the highest possible quality (“DVD Extra Long Play”).

and by the way....those two statements contradict each other. 'Highest possible quality' would probably have a bitrate of around 8000-9000kbs

whereas dvd elp could be as low as 2000kbs

[northcat_8]

the MPEG files that I produce are big, very big, a 12 round round fight will typically produce an MPEG over 1gig in size

That's really not that big. But you need to realize you are trying to take it down to VCD quality and that's what you are going to get...distorted, pixelated picture.

Size wise - you have to re-encode the mpg file to a lower bit rate to get the size low enough to fit on a 700 MB CD-R.

As far as the picture goes and why it happens with your captured video. I am by no means an expert but you are capturing to a compressed format and then you have to compress it more to get it to fit. Where as with the AVI files (depending on their codec) are larger and not as compressed when you make VCD's out of them. It's like a copy of a copy by the 3rd generation the copy is not nearly as good as the original.

Suggestions-
Capture to a different format if you can. DV-AVI if possible...and if you do you will see what large file size is all about. 15 minutes of video is approx. 4 GB. So a 2 hour fight will be 16 GB in size.

You say you spent a truck load of money...but yet you didn't buy a DVD-RW drive ?? ??

Another suggestion is try to keep your capture file size under 700 MB. That way you don't have re-encode the captured video. For something like a boxing match, make 12 clips. Clips of just those 3 minutes per round. Just a suggestion.

Also the nero that came with you cd burner is the OEM version of Nero. Probably Nero Express. Get the full version of Nero if you can.

Like I said, I am by no means an expert but that's my thoughts on it anyway.