Finally! A Decent VCD How, you say? Read Me :)

[Plant_Guy]

Hello,

First off, let me say thanks to all the knowledgeable people on this forum, because without certain tips, I could not have done it in such an efficient manner. My apologies to the experienced users who already know what I am about to share My configuration:

Athlon XP 1600+
512MBSDRAM
60GB Crappy HD
WinXP Home
AverTV Stereo Card -> $49.00!

Here goes! I use the software that comes with the card for capture. I capture in this mode: 352x240 at 6x VCD bit rate, which is 6912K using MPEG1. I do this because uncompressed AVI is simply ridiculous given my config. I believe this works out to about 50 or so MB/min - 3GB/hr disk space, which is perfectly acceptable. This step is necessary because the VCD capture format in real time looks truly dreadful. Six times VCD bit rate is necessary to survive the re-encoding process intact. Try capturing at 2x VCD resolution and use this method, and compare so you can see what I mean. I take this file, and using TMPEGenc with the noise reduction (crappy cable signal) and sharpen options selected, do a conversion to VCD format. On my machine, it takes approx. 2.25hr per hour of video. Use nero to burn to CD, and voila! My wife saw a disc I made from the Star Trek marathon on Sci-Fi yesterday, and said it looked quite a bit better than the same episode I taped with my VCR! The benefit of this approach is that I did not pay for anything other than my tuner card $49.00 and a copy of nero ($10.00)OEM! I hope this was useful.

TomG. - aka Plant_Guy

[kitty]

Tom - I saw the AverTV card at the local Circuit City - can it do higher capture rates well? MPEG2 possibly? My machine is not bad (see specs above).

Thanks, Da Kitty

[Plant_Guy]

Nice setup kitty

I've tried the 640x480 setting without seeing any frame drops, and my CPU is nowhere near full load, so yes, you can capture at DVD res., and mpeg2 with your rig (Ithink). The reason I capture to mpeg1 standard is that TMPEGenc barfs when I try to open a high bitrate mpeg2 formatted stream. Why this is, I do not know. Also, I might point out that for whatever the reason, the AverTV software uses much more CPU horsepower with the mpeg2 codec. When I compare the output from this card in mpeg2 and mpeg1 at high bitrates, I perceive no real difference in quality, so I use the mpeg1 format. Hope this helps.

TomG. - aka Plant_Guy

[calamari]

Do your videos have any a/v sync problems? I have the AverTV Stereo card and I am trying to decide whether it's the TV card that is causing the sync issues I am having.

Thanks,
calamari

[Plant_Guy]

I just captured the HBO special on the sept11 events, and there are no sync problems.

TomG. - aka Plant_Guy

[kitty]

Thanks Tom for the info.