mpeg-1 with low-end cpu

[pixel-cacher]

Please give me your recommendations. I have a P233 MMX with an old WinTV capture card. My goals:
- capture video from vhs tapes to vcd with no visible quality loss.
- avoid hours of post-capture conversion.
- low cost

From what I've read, it looks like maybe I should use one of the ATI AIW cards. I won't have the cpu to do too much.

Options I'm looking at:

1) ATI AIW 128 16 (I don't need gaming). ATI "Specs " say a P200MMX can do 352x240 mpeg-2, I frames only. This I've found for around $110 US.

2) ATI TV Wonder. ATI "Specs" say it will do real-time hardware mpeg-1 compression at 352x240. I have a compatible video card (S3 Virge DX). About $64 US.

3) I've tried caputuring in avi format in Virtual Dub with my old WinTV card using the PICVideo MJPEG and huffyuv codecs, but in order to achieve 29.97 fps the quality is too low, and anyway it looks like the post-caputure conversion is very time consuming.

Please comment on these options or suggest others. Thanks, this forum is really great.

[Dman65]

If you are wanting hardware based MPEG then I don't think AIW is the way you want to go. From what I understand they do not have any hardware MPEG compression on them.

If you are wanting to capture MPEG directly with a 233 I would think you will need something along the lines of a Dazzle Video Creator I or a Creative Labs Movie Maker if you are trying to stay at the low prices. I have heard mixed reviews on both of these products and have never used either so I can't really recommend them. I did just win an E-bay auction last night for an older Video Creator I, so I should be playing with it by the weekend I hope.

[jdatec]

I have been using Dazzle DVC1 for mpeg-1 capture for a couple of years now. Works great on low-end such as 166 Mhz to my now 366 Mhz laptop. The Mpegs are good quality, no drop-outs, accutare color. Only now starting to make Video CD's and discovering the best settings for VCD capture. This website says no encoding necessary for video CD so will try that tonite.

[statuspending]

if you don't mind, do tell a little bit more about the quality of your captures with the dvc1.

is this the parallel port one?

hmmm

[Dman65]

I have not been terribly impressed with the DVC parallel. I am going back to trying to get MPEG4 to work real time which is working well with my new Pentium III 500 processor and MB.

Don't even consider making VCD with direct capture as it is awful.

I don't mean to be cruel, but I really would not recommend it after playing with it.

[jdatec]

This weekend I did some captures at 2000 and 2500 bps using Dazzle DVC1 parallel port model. I viewed the results on a new 36" RCA and just saw too many defects on the conversion that must come from the Dazzle software. High contrast edges had artifacts all over the place. I don't believe the TMPgenc encoding put them there. Is DVCII any better? Or maybe my 366-Mhz CPU is the culprit - hard to believe? The samples shown on this site are hard to duplicate with my setup.

[AntnyMD]

The Dazzle DVC1 has a VCD template which makes quite possibly the worst standard VCD-ready MPEGs on the planet. If you do not use a template, and just max out your quality settings, you can get something useful, sometimes even really good.

I have off and on tried to recompress these "maxed out quality" captures from Dazzle DVC1, but the quality of the recompressions never satisfied. I think though that had more to do with my inexperience with TMPGEnc at the time I did that. I've been thinking lately of revisiting my Dazzle (its been trashed in a corner for about eight months now) and playing around with what I get. I'd really like to capture TV in stereo (my WinTVGo card is mono) and some home videos I have of Vanishing Son.