Capture in AVI or Mpeg2

[didikai]

I have been capturing from VHS tapes via Pinnacle Studio 9.3. I have captured the file as AVI, then rendered the file through Pinnacle as an Mpeg2, and then burned with Nero.

Now for some reason Pinnacle won't let me edit and render the AVI files I capture

If I capture with Pinnacle as an Mpeg2 file is there any loss in quality?
And are there any other negatives in capturing this way

Thanks

[redwudz]

For AVI, it depends what form of AVI you are asking about? AVI is just the generic container name. The codec used and it's settings are what's important. Even MPEG-2 can have several formats as far as framerate, pixels, audio, etc.

I'm not trying to change the subject.

If you cap in MPG-2 at DVD specifications, that's good. Takes a fair amount of CPU power, but saves encoding time later.

AVI caps, if done with a codec like Huffy is very good quality, but takes a lot of space. And then you have to encode it. The result should be better quality than the MPEG-2 capture because you can encode it with higher settings and you have more control over the result. And with a codec like Huffy, editing is easier than MPEG-2. Another option is PicVideo. Takes up less space than Huffy, not as good quality, but probably better than a MPEG-2 capture, after you encode the PicVideo to MPEG-2.

I guess if I wanted fast and easy, I would opt for the MPEG-2 capture.
If I wanted quality and control and needed to do a lot of editing, I would use a AVI codec, then encode to MPEG-2.

[didikai]

I guess if I wanted fast and easy, I would opt for the MPEG-2 capture.
If I wanted quality and control and needed to do a lot of editing, I would use a AVI codec, then encode to MPEG-2.

Many thanks for the swift reply.
And for making the answer simple and easy for me to make a decision on.