What Codec ?

[Fatboy]

Using Svideo input on capture card with good quailty source, end result will be on vcd format. Using VDub to capture.

Q. Capture in avi then convert or go straight to a mpeg codec. If mpeg will yeild better results, then is it wise to go straight to mpg2 and encode or direct to mpg1. Next (sorry long question) which codec, using pic-video mpg1 now seams ok but could be better.

Q. When Encodeing a dvd to mpg1 why is file size smaller than if I captured it (lengh of source the same).
ps I'm not capturing DVD's its mainly for pre/post editing of unauthered films.

Cheers for any help !

[Chris X]

No, Dont convert 2 SVCD then downsample 2 VCD, that is worse, I dont think TMPGenc can even do that. If u want VCD, do it directly 2 VCD, no double conversions, only degrades the image quality even more

[Stansell]

My best quality has been capturing to AVI and then converting to whatver end format.

If you have the space, use HuffYUV lossless codec for the inital capture. If space is limited, try PicMJPG codec but without too much compression.

The nice thing about capturing to segmented AVI is that you can set up a frameserver using virtual dub and do frame level editing. Frameserve to TMPGenc and "edit" by setting the start and end source range and batch encode each segments. Not as quick as direct capture to MPEG, but less of a pain then splitting MPEG files.

[kinneera]

If you want a single file after editing, do the cutting in VirtualDub instead of TMPGEnc before you frameserve it.

[Fatboy]

Thanks for the advice I'll give it a go.

Cheers