is MPEG-1 better than AVI???

[quickfamily]

Hi,

I recently used a friend's Dazzle DVC with parallel interface port to capture MPEG-1 from my camcorder. The quality was 90% OK but sometimes it looked a little blocky. I decided to buy a Pinnacle studio AV package as this goes to MJPEG which is less compressed and therefore should be better. With the Studio 7 software included came a sample .avi file. The quality of this file is awful. It is almost unwatchable it is so blocky. I ran the raw avi file through windows media player on two different computers and it was terrible on both. I rendered it onto VCD using both the Studio 7 software and using Ulead Video studio. It was virtually unwatchable. As this is the sample file used by Pinnacle to show off their software I ask the question, is MPEG-1 better than AVI?

Thanks

Andy

[Sefy]

It's a hard to answer question, you gotta take several things into account:
Source material
Purpose
Encoder Quality
Source Material - If your source is a DVD or a HDTV for example, most chanced your captured file will be of amazing quality as well

Purpose - If your purpose is to Archive your movie, then AVI is th way to go, recommanded would be using a MJPEG codec like Huffyuv or PicVideo as they maintain the high quality and reduce the file size considerably.
However, if your purpose is to make for example a VCD, then you must go the MPEG way, but again, if your Source Material was high quality, then so will the encoded file be, VCD's can look pretty amazing! it all depends on the source.

Encoder Quality - Quality of th encoded file depends heavily on the encoded file, the best quality i've seen was with Panasonic for MPEG1, TMPGEnc comes second, and LSX i wouldn't even consider as an encoder, it's so pathetic it's no wonder everyone gives it for free.