Best way to get from Analogue 8mm to VideoCD on CDR

[8mm]

Hi there,

I have read around this forum for a bit and now feel able to ask my question properly.

I have a Sony 8mm Analogue Camcorder that produces pretty good footage when played straight back thru my TV via the composite jack plugs (no s-video output).

I want to put my footage onto CDR as VideoCD (not SVCD or XVCD or any other like DivX) so I can play it on my DVD standalone.

I will want to cut 'n' paste scenes together and add background music so will require the captured footage to be editable.

Please can you suggest the best capture device or card, editing suite and encoder to achieve this aim (I already have Nero to burn with).

I am not too worried about the cost so am not limited to shareware / freeware.

Thanks
8mm

[Vidbox]

First look for a Tv/Capture card that includes Mpeg output. In your case at least Mpeg-1 with at least an apperture size of 352x240. Most TV/capture care have AVI capabilities. Not all cards support all appertures on all systems. For example: ATI TV-Wonders will not give as large a recording apperture on a Athlon system as it will on a Intel system (it's got to be the SSE(2)).

Also look to see if the parameters (bit rate, rate control CBR and VBR, along with the aspect ratio, as well as the recording apperture size) can be changed. Being able to control these things as the time of recording will save you hours in conversion times; even days.

The quality of the recording appears to be set on how well motion is handled at a given bit rate in the different codecs (the stability of the compression of each codec).

While the WMF codecs broadens the scope of possibilities, the Brooktree drivers see to be more stable at VCD capture sizes.

[vitualis]

8mm,

If you want your video in an editable format, I strongly suggest capturing to AVI first.

As I see it, you have several (different) options:

1. TV Capture card. This is obviously the cheapest options. However, with the right settings, and using the right software AVI codecs (e.g., PicVideo MJPEG or HuffyUV), you should be able to capture at full vertical resolution (i.e., 352x480/576) easily, even with modest hardware. Encoding to MPEG (after editing) can be done with one of the software MPEG encoders. Both TMPGEnc and the Panasonic MPEG Encoder can yield excellent results.

2. Capture card with hardware MJPEG compression. These cards are a step above a simple TV capture card. An example of this is the DC10+. This is an excellent card for the price (if you live in the US) and you can capture very high quality video indeed. One of the main reasons why the video quality is higher is the superior analogue to digital converter on this board (in fact, same as the DC30). There are also some video cards with inbuilt MJPEG compression as well.

You can also get a card with hardware MPEG compression (MPEG-1 or MPEG-2). Although these may be more convenient (you can capture directly to VCD compliant MPEG), the quality usually isn't as good as an AVI capture --> software MPEG encoder. Also, post-capture editing is also more difficult.

As like the MJPEG cards, hardware MPEG compression cards range from the cheap and nasty, to the very good and very expensive.

BTW, I would advice you to avoid the USB capture devices without some form of hardware compression as they do not work well.

Regards.