Questions about getting started

[martinholubar]

I would like to create Vcd's from some video tape movies to play in my DVD player. I am brand new to this and have two questions:

1. Can I do it with my current system:
AMD K6/2 500 MHz
VIA Chipset
128 Megs RAM
40 Gig HD
ATI Rage 3D Video (built in)
Yamaha sound card

2. If it is possible, which video capture cards/software should I consider?

[disturbed1]

1. Just fine. You'll need some time to do the encoding. Expect anywhere from 8-12hours to encode 1 hour of video.

2. This has vast options. The main things to consider is the Source of the footage you want to capture (TV, VCR, DV, etc), and budget.

Pinnacle makes a good entry level capture card (Studio DC 10) for ~$75. As do many other manufactures.

The best advise I give you is,

Read, Read, Read, and Read some more. Follow the guides and comparisons to the left.

And buy a few CD-RW.

Welcome to the club

[martinholubar]

Thanks for the info! I failed to mention that I am running Windows 2000. Will this be a problem?

[ngnr]

Win2K should work just fine as long as the card you pick has Win2k drivers. There is a capture card comparison on the bar to the left or click here http://www.vcdhelp.com/capturecards.php

Good luck!

[drandles]

Where is this 8 hrs for encoding coming from. I hook my VHS recorder to my $39.95 TV Wonder VE card and create MPG files from Music videos - real time. Three minutes forty five seconds for 3:45 seconds of video. I then use EasyCD Creator 5 Platinum to create a VCD with 16 videos in about 15 minutes.



Dale

[Dave B]

You're talking about real time MPEG1 encoding.

This is performed with either a capture board with the necessary MPEG encoder chips on board, or by running a software MPEG encoder alongside the capture program.

As your capture card only cost $40, I'll presume you are doing the latter. Whilst real-time MPEG encoding is convenient, most people find that their computer just doesn't have the time to encode the video to a reasonable quality and size for the capture.

Better results are almost always acheived by capturing to AVI first (MJPEG and HUFFYUV are two codecs particularly suited to this) and then performing a long encode with TMPGEnc afterwards. This method however has the nasty habit of tying your computer up for hours on end

[drandles]

OK. How do I go about capturing to an .AVI file.



Dale

[Dave B]

Theres a great step by step guide on this site.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/mjpeg.htm