best quality video for 30min/60min/90min/120min shows

[calrankin]

I have a 700mhz celeron system with 256 meg of ram a teac cd-w54e writer an ati all in wonder 128 video card (pci) i have 6 gigs of free hd space....what can i do to capture video without losing frames for the above mentioned lengths...i want maximum quality when i play back on my Apex AD-1200 stand alone player. i have MMC 7.6 and tmpegenc 2.53...also i have a problem when i convert files, it puts about 1/16 of the left side of the picture on the right side.
please help
thanks

[flaninacupboard]

i'm replying because i have a minute free, you apparently don't. 4 gigs will capture an hour of video in mjpeg at quality 19. try capping at quality 19, and if it looks good enough, fine. if it doesn't then you need to use quality 20, but you'll need a bigger hard drive. 120 minutes will probably need quality 15 or so, but you're starting to compromise on your final picture.
in short, find out for yourself what looks good, and what doesn't. there's persistently raging debates on here about which is higher "quality" and the only thing ever certain is that everyone disagrees.