Capture settings

[stewnbev]

I posted this question on the Newbie / General discussions portion, but I guess this where it belongs.

I have an older AverTV card, and have made a couple of DVD's that don't have the best video quality. The video seems grainy, it's not horrible, but I would like it to be better. I am using an older VCR (not sure if that would affect it), and go through standard coax to the capture card. I use the best quality setting, image size = 640x240, video bit rate = 2800 Kbits/s, audio bit rate = 224 Kbits/s, with MPEG-II format. I burn to DVD with Sonic MyDVD. Are these settings good??? Or, can you think of another reason for the grainy video??

[redwudz]

Please let us move topics instead of posting a duplicate yourself. All you have to do is ask a moderator. I deleted your old topic as we don't permit duplicate posts here. Thanks.

Moderator redwudz

[stewnbev]

Ok... Sorry.

[redwudz]

OK.
For MPEG-2 for DVD, that video bitrate is really too low. I would try to capture at I/2 D1 (See 'What is' DVD to the upper left.) You need to get that bitrate up to at least double that, and 1/2 D1 should do that. For NTSC video, that would be 352 x 480 for a DVD standard and hopefully a bitrate above 4K. That's about the resolution of VHS, so you may not see much difference in the capture but you should in the final product. You could drop the audio bitrate to 192 if that helps, with little or no lose in quality.

AverTV is on the lower quality side of encoding to MPEG-2, but with 1/2 D1 and a little fine tuning, it should improve a fair bit.

[stewnbev]

Thank you so much for replying back. I will give your advice a try. Can I ask if you have a inexpensive option for another Capture Card. I have been thinking about getting a new one. I recently had to replace my PC, and now have one with Media Center. I have still been able to record, even though Media Center won't recognize the Capture Card. I'm really sure what Media Center will even do for me, but since I have it I thought I should use it. Please let me know if have any Card recomendations that will make this VHS-DVD recording go smoothly. I wil let you know how your suggestion turns out.

[stewnbev]

Ok, I may be doing something wrong
I can't seem to get the settings that you mentioned. From what I can tell I'm using NTSC settings, but I can't get the 352x480 setting. Or, I just haven't figured it out. Playing with the settings, I was able to get 640x480 and a video bit rate of 5600. Is that good I haven't tried to record yet.