3HRS of video,18gig to spare, which Codec would you use?

[lfe]

I have 3hrs of video to capture from VHS, and have only 18-19gig of HD space to spare, which codec would you recommend to capture with?

my end result might be to burn on a dvd or as divx/xvid also onto a dvd.

Also I've looked in virtual vcr and there is no mpeg2 encoder to choose from, even though i have winfast pvr, and tmpgenc trial, and Ulead videostudio, which all have a mpeg2 encoder, shouldnt virtual vcr detect one of those encoders?

Im using winxpsp2, winfast tv200xp deluxe capture card.


thanks for any help.

[lumis]

do you have to capture and encode all 3 hours at once? or can you do it in smaller pieces?

[lfe]

atleast 2hrs at a time, as i want to re-tape over it. Is there any other lossless or almost lossless format that doesnt take up so much space, that i can use instead?

Also can i capture direct to mpeg2 with virtual vcr, as it doesnt have any in the drop down list.

[deckard8]

XviD - max bitrate - all other options off.

Quality of capture - same as source (on 17" monitor).
2 hours of capture uses up about 12gb of hd space.

[lfe]

12gb for 2hrs with xvid? wouldnt i be better off just capturing to mpeg2 and burn to dvd? and i'd probably be able to capture more than 2hrs dvd quality on 12gb.

also is it possible to capture mpeg2 with virtual vcr?

[harley2ride]

Get more HD Space!!!!

[jtoolman2000]

You can't have quality and also encode to a small file size.

You should be able to encode those three hours to fit in a DVD/R as a divx or xvid. Whether the quality will suffer, only testing can answer that.

[W_Eagle]

There is another option. Capture as avi using Pegasus PICVideo encoder. For highest quality with reasonable file size I use quality of 19 (when 20 is highest possible quality mark). This will give you too large file size. Lower the quality, try 18, 17 or 16 -- and see which one will give you adequate file size. You can use Pegasus PICVideo with Virtual VCR as well as with VirtualDub. Both maintain audio/video sync with decent capture card and sound card, having updated drivers. Now, lowering the quality in PICVideo may cause artifacts. One easy and efficient way to minimize artifacts is to capture at 1/2 resolution (1/2D1 resolution): 315*480 (NTSC) or 315*576 (PAL). This is also legal DVD resolution. Since your source is VHS tape, the source output itself isn't much more than 1/2D1 resolution. The capture avi file encode to MPEG2 DVD compliant stream. Out of the tools you mentioned, TMPEGEnc is best. I think their 2.xx version is freeware now -- and it encodes as good, or almost as good, as version 3 XPress. Both versions encodes DVD compliant MP2 audio stream along with the video. When encoding MPEG2 with 1/2D1 resolution, you need 1/2 the bitrate to get the same quality as full D1 resolution with double bitrate. Of course, you'll have to have harddisk space for both avi and MPEG2. Probably 2 hours will be your best choice. Also, if you have 2 hard disks, you can encode the MPEG2 stream into another hard disk, with less free space.
All in all, getting a larger hard disk is a sound advice.