Advise needed pleeeez

[dooglebugle]

Hi all,
I am a complete novice at this capturing/burning malarky.
I purchased a USB type video capture cable ( stop laughing ).
The software that came with it is Ulead Videostudio 8.
I wanted to back up my old analogue camcorder tapes onto DVD.
I have burnt a few DVD's, not brilliant, but OK as a back up.
I have read several threads on this forum, and other sites, all totally confusing to me, my basic question is.....
When I capture a 90min VHS tape in a AVI format, I get a file of approx 15.5 GB, when I encode this ( Using TMPGEnc ) this produces a mpeg of 1.4 GB.
is there someway that I can encode the AVI to a bigger MPEG file that will fit on a DVD. Also will it be a better quality MPEG?
The amount of captured frames from the 90 mins = 138,400
and dropped frames = 1676. is this good or should it drop a lot less frames ??
Thanks in advance
M

[housepig]

when you encode to mpeg-2 with TMPG, you can manually adjust the bitrate. higher bitrate = better quality = larger file.

as for dropped frames, you may be limited with a USB capture device. I have a cheap Aver EZ DVDmaker capture card, and if I drop 1 frame per 90 minutes, that's a lot. (capturing 720x480, 29.97fps, MJPEG codec .avi)

but yes, I would call 1600+ dropped frames too much.

[thecoalman]

When I capture a 90min VHS tape in a AVI format, I get a file of approx 15.5 GB, when I encode this ( Using TMPGEnc ) this produces a mpeg of 1.4 GB.
is there someway that I can encode the AVI to a bigger MPEG file that will fit on a DVD. Also will it be a better quality MPEG?

I'm not familiar with TMPGEnc but there should be settings somwhere to adjust the quality of the capture. Ulead VS will have the settings when you get to the burn menu, I'm pretty sure there's templates for different qualitys.

The amount of captured frames from the 90 mins = 138,400
and dropped frames = 1676. is this good or should it drop a lot less frames ??

Before worrying about the quality of the mpg I would be more concerned about this. That's nearly a minute of video. As housepig stated 1 frame is too much for him, same here. That will affect the quality of your final product more than anything else. Most likely your problem is your capture device. USB devices are notorious for dropping frames, apparently this doesn't affect newer ones that use the USB 2.0 standard.