Please advise to how I can get the best quality captures out

[ellandry]

Celeron II 566 @ 952mhz
192 megs PC133
Abit BE6 rev 1.01 latest bios
Western Digital 20 gig UDMA-66 5400rpm
IBM Deskstar 45 gig 75GXP 7200rpm UDMA-100 (running at 66)
WinTV Theater pci
SBlive Value
6x Toshiba DVD-rom
Philips CD-RW 8x/4x/32x

All running on Win2k with SP2

[tweakybird]

Virtualdub seems to be the ideal capture software (and it's free). I like capturing at 640x480 with PicVideo MJPEG codec (set at 18-19 quality) and encoding with Tmpgenc freeware or the faster, harder to find cracked, CCE SP 2.5 to make an XSVCD with 640x480 resolution at ~2500kbps. As long as I don't try to cram more than 40 minutes on an 700MB CD there's almost no motion blockiness. I have PIII 733Mhz, 384MB RAM, Matrox 60G 7200rpm, Askey TVIEW99 with SVHS input. I learned that the HD must be set to DMA mode in device manager and S-video is the best quality video input, composite is standard, and coaxal is worst.

_________________
The last civilization will not be another civilization. It will be that long stretch of realization to which all other civilizations have pointed.- A. Miller

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: tweakybird on 2001-07-20 20:32:31 ]</font>

[ellandry]

well i would love to use s-video fo input but my sony camcorder does not have it and neither does my VCR, both composite. I do have a svhs camcorder with s-video out but its broken. What about capturing from cable TV. anyway to gt rid of that grainy look?

[tweakybird]

That "grainy" look increases as you get away from s-video but won't get bad until you're using coaxal from VCRs and local cable TV. I used to think coaxal might be as good because it seems like the wires are so insulated, but it was pointed out at this forum that because both the video and the audio signals are using the same (coaxal) cord the quality of both are diminished. Composite is probably fine for any type of broadcast video (except HDTV). I have a DirecTV system so I can watch and record digital cable programming via S-video, but if I were recording TV from coaxal output from a cable box I would use a lower capture resolution like the VCD 352x240 with Virtualdub's custom format and gain the advantage of fitting 80 minutes of video on an 80 minute CDR. It's all really flexible but takes a couple of weeks to find the best capture settings for your setup.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: tweakybird on 2001-07-20 22:37:52 ]</font>

[tweakybird]

Just a thought- if you're refering the the grainy texture that appears in internet video downloads and clips, that's a bitrate issue. Internet streams seem to use about 300kbps at most, which is abyssmal. Capture bitrates in Virtualdub are more than 10000kbps depending on your connection, so the capture will be free of that internet media look. Encoding at 1150 for VCD and at least 1800 for SVCD will prevent the streaming video look also. In fact, it would be really difficult to get that grain with the software here and a standard capture card even if you were trying to (you'd have to encode at 300kbps, but hey: you could put 4 hours on a CDR!)

[ellandry]

Well I am using coxial from cable box, maybe that is why my captures look so bad. how else would I capture cable TV and get good quality

i know im new but im just not very happy with my captures so far ith my setup

[zzyzzx]

Your cable signal sucks. Nothing you can do about that except complain (which probably won't work).