Ulead Videostudio and Mpeg capture quality

[Anonymous65]

I'm curious if anybody has done some testing with the quality (fast/slow) settings in the real-time mpeg capture codec in Videostudio 6. With a 1.5 GHz CPU, I can only use a quality setting of 8 out of 15 without dropping frames. Setting a higher quality setting will drop frames. But, how big difference is there in the quality between 1 and 15? The default is 3, pretty low setting. I'm wondering if a setting of 15 will have much effect on the quality when capturing 720x480 mpeg-2. Also, if anybody has a 2.2 or 2.4 GHz CPU, how high can you go without dropping frames? This setting has nothing to do with how fast the hard drive is, but only how much processing power you have to chew the mpeg-2 data.

[Anonymous65]

Finally, I'm having luck with Ulead Videostudio 6. To really use Videostudio, you need an ATI capture card (or DV firewire). A general BT8x8 PCI capture card is not a very good option because of missing overlay mode.

With the Ulead Videostudio 6 I can now capture good quality VCD, SVCD and DVD video in real-time mpeg, AND cut and trim the video without any problems with sound being out of sync. I did a 3 hour capture, and had no problems with sound sync.

Because of all the shortcomings of the ATI MMC, I would suggest you use Ulead Videostudio 6 instead. It does capture compliant streams that can be edited and have the sound in sync. Nero does not complain about any of the files recorded by Videostudio 6. Videostudio also records 48Khz audio for full DVD compatability.

[Anonymous65]

Here is a link with captures from PV231, PV256, Ulead Videostudio 6 and how it looks using real-time captures.

http://steve.kittelsen.com/ulead/

[D_Knife]

Hmm ,very interesting results with Videostudio, what CPU are you using with that capture?

A general BT8x8 PCI capture card is not a very good option because of missing overlay mode

While the missing overlay is not good will it actually work? and give a captured video?

[Anonymous65]

I'm using a P4 running at 1.5 GHz. As soon as the price drops a bit, I'll go for a 2.2 Ghz P4.

If you have no overlay support, Ulead will not allow you to capture above x240 vertical resolution. If you have WinTV, you can force DIB DRAW mode, and capture up to 720x480. ATI with onboard capture (All in Wonder) has automatically overlay in all modes.