Converting Between Different MPEG1 Bitrates

[energy80s]

Is there an easy way of converting a 6mbps 480x288 MPEG1 capture to 1.15mbps 352x288 MPEG1 capture? At present I am converting the high bitrate capture to an AVI file and then re-encoding that to 1.15mbps (VCD 2.0) with TMPEG, but this takes ages. Is there a simpler way?

[Anonymous65]

No, there is no other way of doing it. But you could save some time by capturing at 352x288 instead of 480x288. Resizing takes more time when encoding, while it gives a litte bit better quality. If you oversample because of quality, then 640 or 704 would be best.

[Nelson37]

Use Vdub or Avisynth to frameserve the mpg file instead of converting to AVI, also try CCE for speed

[Anonymous65]

I didn't read your message good enough. There is no need to go to AVI. Tmpeg can read the mpeg-1 file directly and make a VCD file out of it. Going to AVI is a waste of time.

[energy80s]

Thanks for the reply, I'll try using TMPEGenc directly on the file. And the reason I'm capturing at 480x288 is that is the default size (at 6mbps) for the ATI "good" quality capture in MMC 7.1. I've noticed that there is a dramatic difference in quality between direct 352x288 captures and "re-mastered" 480x288 captures, so that's why I'm using the higher bitrate setting.

Oh and I've never been able to get Virtual Dub to recognise the ATI AIW card as a capture device for AVI files - even after installed the VFW wrapper files!! So that's why I'm stuck with the dodgy ATI software!

[energy80s]

OK, I've tried to use TMPEGenc to directly encode a 1.15 stream from a 6meg stream but the picture "jumps" slightly every few seconds as if it is dropping frames. Any idea as to what is going on?