Capturing or TV Ripping?

[ione]

Hi, Need your help. I have seen torrents that come in 700 MB avi filesize (either xvid or divx compression) and some call it TV-ripping. I am curious. How do they make these High Quality avi's from TV shows? (Compression is no problem for me). But is it possible to do it with a DV camcorder to produce digital quality? I have firewire if that helps. Need your help..as our choir will be featured on a show tomorrow night and I would like to capture that in AVI format. Unfortunately a DVD recorder is expensive from where I live. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[pchan]

I am assuming that you have a DV camcorder and your TV has a S-video out. Just connect your TV s-video out to your camcorder's S-video. Record it with comcorder. Once done with your recording, transfer the video to PC via firewire using Windows Movie Maker or VirtualDub. You then will have an AVI file. This file is in DV format. You will need softwares to edit and encode your video to either DIVX or XVID. For simple editing, use VirtualDub and get a DIVX/XVID encoder from the Tool section of this forum. Get a copy of a guide from the guide section. This is a classic guide from Baldrick https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=244151

[ione]

Thank you, pchan. That was helpful.

[guns1inger]

Most come from HDTV broadcasts, either via cable or FTA, captured directly as digital video, then resized and compressed. This gives them much better source than you will get from s-video to DV.

[ione]

Oh that's why.. I notice the difference... My video output was a bit grainy while those of HDTV broadcasts were so fine!! May I ask, what is FTA? sorry i am new to this. Does all HDTV come with a recorder? If not, does the recorder or both TV and recorder have to be "high definition" in order to have digital video?

What software works best with editing commercials? I know virtualdub is very popular but the "fade" effect is very limiting.

Thanks for your response guns1inger. As always, you're you've been very helpful.