Howdy,

I have a Matrox G200TV that I want to use to record some TV shows (and VHS tapes for the kids, repeated viewing wears them out quickly). I have no problem with recording the source material at whatever resolution I want, and I can use VDub to edit out commercials, but I need to know what format I should encode it to to go to VCD. I don't think I need to go to VCD, since I'm recording off air,VCD is probably sufficent quality, and I don't want to exceed one CD per 1 hour episode (minus commercials).

I have been using DivX 4, just because it seems to do a good job of makeing small files, but I gather that I can't use that for making VCDs?

So, what resolution should I record at initally? Something close to or at the target res I presume?

What codec should I use? I tried out TMPGEnc, but I don't really want to have to start using half a dozen differet programs for this, I'd like to stay with VDub, start to finish.

Once I have the compressed file suitable for the VCD, what do I have to do to make the disk? I have Easy CD Creator 5 Basic, which does not know how to make VCDs. I tried VCDEasy, but it doesn't recognized my player. I took the ISO it creates and dumped it to the disk with Easy CD, but it wouldn't play. I presume the error was more with my video (produced with TMPGEnc) than with the CD.

So far I've tried half a dozen times to make a playable VCD (using a CDR), but nothing has worked yet. I tried encoding a DVD by using DVDDecrypt->DVD2AVI->TMPGEnc->VCDEasy(ISO)->EasyCD, but that failed. I used the standard VCD template in TMPGEnc, so I'm not sure what else I can do. How can I determine if the VCD I am making is compliant?

Thanks
EM