Confused about encoding.

[RaleighNC]

I've got information overload and need a little help sorting it out.

I've read somewhere a good way to TV capture with AIW/128 is to use the 352x480 setting. So I do that.

I've read somewhere the higher the bitrate the better. Since VCD is 1.15kbits, I would go 3.00kbits, then convert later. Did that.

After I edit/cut/merge, the mpegs looks and sounds great, but it's a 1GB file. So I encode the file to VCD spec (or with one of the hacked templates), the audio is bad.

Read post about extracting the audio to a wav file and encode with video only mpeg using TMPGenc. I using beta-g.

Now the video has macroblocks, but the sound is great.

What can I do now?? Should I take my 1GB mpeg and try encoding as SVCD or XSVCD?? Record as MPEG-2 and convert to VCD?? Hack the ATI VCD spec??

What are the soften macroblock setting TMPGenc?? The higher the better??

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help!!!

[ktnwin]

Well, there are a couple ways:
1) re-encode your AVI file using TMPGEnc (V12a) using the VCD template. If your AVI file has high quality, the VCD will look pretty good. Or encode to SVCD (using SVCD template), the resulting SVCD should look even better

2) re-encode your AVI file as XVCD (352x240) using higher bit rate (2500 max because most DVD player cannot go beyond that).

In both cases, do not re-encode the 1GB file. Start from the AVI file instead.

[RaleighNC]

My source/capture file is mpeg. Should I record from the AIW/128 as avi??