Capture file size - Is this right ?

[Panther96]

I'm trying to transfer some Hi 8mm Camcorder footage to DVD, from a Sharp Viewcam through a Lifeview Platinum TV Capture card using S-video.

I'm using Fly 2000 TV software, capturing at 576x480 resolution, 25FPS, using HuffyUV compression codec and CD quality sound setting. The problem I'm having is that the file size is coming out at approx 400mb per 1 minute of footage !! I've tried using ffdshow codec and I can get the file size down but the quality suffers

Is this to be expected ? or am I missing something ?

And finally, I was looking at converting to mpg with TMPGEnc 2.5 and then using TMPGEnc DVD Author, is this a good way to go ? I think I can get about 90minutes of resonable quality footage on a 4.7Gb DVD-R

I've heard some people say they use VirtualDub to capture, but it doesn't seem to like my capture card

[steveryan]

Are you sure you are using Huffy?, it sounds like it's being captured uncompressed. Why are you capturing at 576x480 if your source is PAL? Try 720x576 or 352x576.

[Panther96]

Yep definately using Huffy, got it set to BEST quality and it's compressing by around 40%

Input and output sources are both PAL.

Wouldn't 720 x 576 take up even more space ?

[winifreid]

Yep, huffy will make some huge files with that setting. It'll be even bigger at 720x480. You could use picvideo to get a much smaller file with little loss in quality.

[Panther96]

Why when I capture a movie from my Camcorder at 576x480 using huffyuv codec a 45minute clip comes out as 13Gb avi file with stereo sound, but then converts to a 2.2Gb mpg when using TMPEnc at a bitrate of 6000.

Yet

I downloaded a 700mb XVid avi (63 minutes long) ripped from a DVD which then converts to a 2Gb mpg using a bitrate of only 2600 and that's with 6 channel sound!!

and yet the quality from the DVD rip is as good (probably better) than the capture.

Am I missing something here why the big difference in avi file size, and the big difference in bitrate that results in similar size mpg's

[Nelson37]

Original capture size about right.

The avi question - too many variables, different resolution, playing time, etc. To make such a comparison you must understand that the bitrate you specify is not necessarily what you get.

You did not specify VBR or CBR, for one thing. Xvids will tend to be a bit smoothed, making for more efficent use of bitrate, though they also may have excessive artifacts, leading to the opposite problem.

Brightness/darkness of video has big effect, you are comparing apples and oranges.

Its kinda like saying it takes me longer to get to work than my cousin, and my car is faster, why is that? No simple answer, and not enough info.