help: using windows video maker to save my camcorder movies

[tvandang]

hi everyone who can help me,

i was able to capture my camcorder video to save the file to the-only-allow format *.wmv using windows video maker

here are the settings:

if i use 320x240 pixels for setting video for broad NTSC(768 kbps), 30 frames per second, and make a 10 seconds movie, the file will be about 1MB. this means that there will be about 1.9 hours of movie on a 700MB CD. this is good but the movie is small and ok quality.

but if i use 720x480 for setting DV-AVI(25 Mbps), for 30 frames per second, it would be around 39 MB for 10 seconds. for 700 MB CD, it would be around 3 minutes of movies. the quality is clear and better than the previous setting but not enough movie to fit on a CD. not good

is there any softwares out there other than windows video maker that would compress the movies alot more and still have excellent quality?

i am totally new to this and curious about how to take my camcorder movies to fit it on a 700 MB cd for families to see and also to manipulate the film using some applications to create a movie. your help will be totally appreciated.

thanks!

tvandang@hotmail.com

[macleod]

first things first. delete (just kidding) the windows movie maker software. You are getting ready to embark on a journey with no end, the perfect video capture. I am assuming that you have been reading various posts and been following stuff on here before signin on to become a member. That will give you some idea of what it takes to get to the perfect capture. Oh yea, there is no such thing as a perfect capture. NOt trying to be a mood killer, but give you a dose of reality (wish someone had done the same for me when I got into it). You are going to get close to perfect, but there will always be a piece of blockiness in aunt sues beehive hairdo that you want to change. Or why does it fit on 3 cd's, shouldnt it fit on only one, etc. etc. etc.

Ok, now for answering your question (not really). There are a billion software companies out there that make video captures for various scenarios. There are a billion companies out there for conversion, etc. etc. etc. The possibilities go on and on....

Me personally, I have experimented with most of the capture programs out there. I use powervcrII to to TV/analog captures at 352x480. It gies a good picture, except during high motion scenes. I can fit a Star Trek TNG episode on 1 CD. For home movie captures, my latest thing is using picvideo codec with iuvcr. That gives me good picture during high motion scenes and after compressing it using TMPGENC, I can then burn it to CVD format and play on the dvd player. Thos are my settings for now. As soon as I post this, there may/may not be others that will tell you my settings are crap and theirs are better.

My suggestion is to read the newbie guides, buy lots of CD's and plan on burning the midnight oil for the next year or so.

[Tommyknocker]

This table may help you decide if there is a better format other .WMV you can use that meets your criteria. Good Luck!

http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcd.htm#comp