Optimum Capture Settings

[greengate69]

I am looking to capture TV or video such that a typical film (e.g. 2 hours) will fit on a CD (not a VCD). I am off on my travels soon and have limited hard disk space so am looking to take some watching material on CDs to view via Windows Media Player. I know a DivX DVD RIP will typically fit on a CD, but if I want to CAPTURE(for example) 2 hours of TV/Video, and compress it so the end product will be <= 700 Mbit, could anyone suggest the best capture application (Vdub), codec and settings. Thanks in advance.

[FiEND]

easily done, here is what I do.

1. You capture TV @ 352*240 in virtualdub with huffyuv & stereo PCM CD Quality
2. Encode it with virtualdub (removing commercials) into divx 3.11 low motion 352*240 with the filter "Temporal Smoother" (noise filter) @ setting 1 or 2. The divx settings @ 650, 5 keyframe, 100% sharp. The audio you can convert to 44khz/96kbit mp3

the end result is 240MB divx for a 42 minute show - 3 very good quality shows per 700MB cd.

both audio and video must be on full compress to use filters and convert to mp3. on my celery 600 it takes about 2 hours to encode each show.

everyone who has commented on my captures when I have posted to usenet has had great comments so give it a try.

[wingstar1]

Fiend,

What usenet post? can you email me so i can see what the quality is like? I know huffyuv2.1 is great for capture but at 650 datarate? hmmm....

[greengate69]

FIEND

Many thanks for this information - its exactly what I needed.

[FiEND]

yea I am currently posting survivor in alt.binaries.multimedia starting around midnight MST | 2AM EST.

I post under the not-so-alias Alister Fiend and the header is titled "Survivor Africa x03..."

I will email you a link to a sample no prob.

usenet = newsgroups as above, sorry misread

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: FiEND on 2001-10-23 11:35:32 ]</font>

[wingstar1]

Fiend,

Your method is superb! I try it out and it was excellent. 2 hours ~ 450Mb. Thanks.

[snowmoon]

You can improve quality too by using the new 4.02 Divx codec. It's built in 2pass encoding works like a charm. Here is what I have done recently to get 90 minutes/disk @ 640x480

Capture with vdub 640x480 Huffyuv or PicVideo MJPEG
- enable noise reduction 6-8 ticks

Edit and cut out commercials
set video codec to divx 4.02 2-pass, first pass + deinterlace + 960kbs
set audio to no audio
save avi output.avi + save as job for later processing

set audio to full processing mode
set audio code mp3 96kbps
set video codec divx 2pass, second pass save avi output.avi + save as job for later processing

file/batch processing
run batch

I ended up with a >300MB file with top quality 640x480 sharp and detailed. Only two eps per disk though.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: snowmoon on 2001-10-23 13:33:07 ]</font>

[FiEND]

great, glad you like it

the key is the noise filter, reducing (smoothing) out the noise really helps with the end video quality and allows for lower bitrate when encoding. I sometimes go higher than 650, but really I don't see much of a difference since it is TV.

currently I am trying the iuVCR program which allows me to capture above xxx*240 lines (capping now at 352*480) - so far I have seen a little difference with 1 encoding. The file was about 20MB smaller in the end as well. I am encoding another and if this rings true again, I can boost the bitrate to 700 and maintain 3 per CD. 700 helps slightly with heavy scene changes.

Also going to try faster noise filtering when reducing the size to 352*240, see if I can speed up the 6fps I am getting when encoding.

BTW, most capture cards stretch the 352 from 320 - if you dont mind the 'look' of 320*240 you will also see a quality increase. as for me, I prefer the 352*240 non-stretched look, especially when I watch via TV out.

[FiEND]

snowmoon, thanks for the tip - I have played with divx4.x a little, but not alot of luck so far - I will try it out later tonight.

one thing though, if you are using the built in noise reduction in virtualDUB (during capture) you will see ghosting in the final encoding, say when a person moves across the screen you will see a ghosted shadow of his movements. That is why I switched to noise filtering after capture with Temporal Smoother, it doesnt leave a ghost but takes quite a lot longer.

[snowmoon]

Nope, none...

The default is too high, that's why I turn down the threshold to 6-8 ticks from the default of 16. Works like a charm and no need for post processing.

I also find capturing with RGB help with the ghosting effect.

[wingstar1]

This is what i'm doing live. I capture at 416x480 in virtual dub. crop 8 on each side of the horizontal (hate black bars) and 12 at the bottom in the vertical. live reduction bicubic, so now i have 400x234. Live resize the frame to either 400x272 or 352x240. Then encode it with DivX-VKI using 1s/kf at 1500-1600Kbps at 100% quality. I usually end up with 950Mb for 2.1hours. Then I applied Fiends' method and reduce it back to 450Mb(750) or 650Mb(1500).

[FiEND]

I was using 10 ticks on the filter and got some serious ghosting, pershnaps it was rectumfied around 1.4.5 or later in Vdub, will have to give it a shot because, gasp, my encodes are now up to 3 hours or so testing out 480 lines. live noise reduction would drop that in half again.

[avidivx]

I am also trying to record survivor. I am currently using these mpg1 settings but the files are about 600 meg.
1.24 meg/sec bit rate
352x240

When I try to record with the divx 4 codec it drops only about 2% of the frames but the audio does not keep up with the video. I am using a 950 Athlon with 256 ram and a 7200 rpm hard drive. Is there anything I can do to keep the audio and video in sync.

[wingstar1]

avidivx,

Huh? what r u using for hardware input? and what is your capture ultility? mpeg1?