Other Codecs W/Studio 9

[Quadzilla]

Hi All,
I'm somewhat of a newbie to all this. I used to have a DC 30 capture card that I was using for transferring VHS to DVD R. I Was running Win 2K and it was hard to get the DC 30 working right at first but when I did the thing was great. I've since got rid of the DC 30 when I was given Studio 9 & Pinnacle Capture card as a gift. I've noticed to Studio 9 doesn't seem as flexible as the software for the DC 30 was. I was using VirtDub & TmpGenc & others. I think I can load new codecs that will offer more flexibilty for Studio but don't know how. The manual only says others can be used but not how to load them. Can y'all tell me how to do this and recommend a few good ones? I'm doing basic capture & editing.

Also, can you recommend a good cap card for around $200ish? thanks.

[edDV]

The DC30 captured to MJPEG using hardware encoding. So I assume you were editing MJPEG in Virtualdub?

The Pinnacle capture card is probably just a simple Connexant chipset without any hardware encoding. Normally you would capture uncompressed, edit, then encode to DVD MPeg2 or Divx/Xvid or something else. Some capture with software encoding to MPeg.

MJPEG isn't used much anymore. Newer capture devices capture to DV format (ADVC, Pyro, Datavideo, etc.), MPeg2 (Hauppauge PVR series is reccommended), or various MPeg4.

DV is best for editing since it is less compressed and contains all frames. MPeg2 needs a specialized editor or needs to be decompressed for editing. MPeg4 always neeeds cecompression (lossy).

For DV - ADVC-110 This is the best price I have seen
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?A=details&kw=CAADVC110&is=REG&Q=&O=pro...ist&sku=349146

For MPeg2
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=3017802&search=hauppauge+pvr+usb2