MPEG ---> AVI help

[Phil2k]

Hello all,

Newbie here, I had a good look through the guides section (very nice site by the way). Anyway, I’m new to the whole media file creation/conversion thing and I have a few questions. Recently I purchased a very nice capture card (Hauppauge WinTV2000 PVR350) to help me digitalize my large collection of boxing fights that are on VHS and capture future fights on live TV. I set my card up to capture in "Extra Long Play DVD" (this is the highest quality one can capture in I believe). The capture quality is great, but the file size is monstrous. Here is the full file info for my first capture (James Toney vs Evander Holyfield):

File Format: PAL DVD
File Size: 1,328,244 KB
Duration: 2999,600 seconds
Video Type: MPEG-2 Video, Field B
Total Frames: 74,990 Frame(s)
Attributes: 24 Bits, 720 x 576
Frame Rate: 25,000 Frames/Sec
Data Rate: Variable bit rate (Max 4400 kbps)
Audio Type: MPEG Audio Layer 2 Files
Total Samples: 143,980,800 Samples
Attributes: 48000 Hz, 16bit, stereo
Layer: 2
Bit Rate: 384 kbps

I’d like to compress the file right down but retain all the original quality, I’d like to convert it to an XviD or DivX AVI file, could someone point me to a newbie guide telling me how to do this? Also make some recommendations as to the best and most user-friendly software I might need to do this.

Thanks

[Ejoc]

VirtualDub Mod / VirtualDub Mpeg

Open it up, set the video compression to what you want divx, save as AVI.

[Phil2k]

Thanks, Ejoc, one question... Are both of those programs needed or are they simply substitutes for each other?

[ImaWeTodd]

they simply substitutes for each other

I read this in their descriptions in the tools section.

[jolo]

Phil2k,

I am a big boxing fan !! I'd love to watch those fights with you.

I have found by far the easiest and most reliable thing to do it to use Dr. Divx, which you can get at divx.com.

You can download a free demo and for the most part, I select home theater and do not put any limitations on size, I want quality. The largest movie I backed up too about 1.5GB, it was well over 2.5 hours and the quality on the playback was great !! I used just tell it high quality, home theater, do a two -pass no size limit, where the output should go and tell it to encode.

I have a Lite-on stand alone DVD player that supports Divx which helps. But the storage favter is so big and I don't have to worry about all the little problems that can happen converting to DVDs.

I hated Dr. Divx until they came out with version 1.03 which fixed all of the bugs that I can tell. But it is not very fast. I have about it taking people 11 hours in 7 hours
It ocnsistently takes me about four hours for the two pass to complete. Also there is a handy batch feature that has been helpful.

I have a AMD 2400 plus XP processor, 512DDR Ram and an A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with a nForce2 chip set. Also, use XP Home.

Optorite DVD burner +-R

[Phil2k]

Thanks for that, Jolo! I'll try that out now. I managed to get VirtualDubMod working, it was pretty straight forward, sadly though the resulting Xvid AVI was pretty poor in quality and quite far removed from the original MPEG that I have, it was very pixilated? (really blocky). I'm guessing it is to do with the resolution settings or something. Will try Dr DivX now and see what that's like.