Capturing video... confused about some of the settings

[Cyber Akuma]

I have a Dazzle DVD recorder, I ONLY installed the drivers, not the included software.

I want to capture gameplay footage from my consoles (Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox360, etc) and my handhelds (PSP, etc).

I typically use VirtualDub to capture, first of all, is there a better and free alternative to this for CAPTURING?

Second, I used to capture uncompressed, but now I use huffyuv, is this a good idea or should I be using something else? I want to capture in the highest quality available then worry about encoding it after the capture is complete.

What framerate should I use? Is 60FPS enough? Is it overkill? I remember hearing that the sampling rate has to be at least double the actual rate of the signal in order to sample it without losing much quality.... though that may have just been audio.

And I have no idea what these settings such as capture pin, preview pin, corssbars, etc are or what to choose.

Finally, I am probably just going to record 1-5 minute clips, max maybe 8-10 min, I set aside 1.5 gigs of my ram as a ramdrive for this, will this be enough for just the capturing part? Would the 5400RPM drive in my laptop be fast enough to capture and I don't need the ramdisk? If not, how about 7200RPM?

Is there any way to crop the capturing area or do I have to do this after capturing?

Would it even be possible to deinterlace while capturing or would it be best to do the deinterlating during the encoding?

Thanks

[Cyber Akuma]

Anyone?

[jagabo]

If VirtualDub is working for you I don't think you'll find anything better.

HuffYUV is fine. All capture cards capture in the YUV colorspace, usually with 4:2:2 subsampling (typically YUY2) because that is closest to the analog video. Compressing that with HuffYUV is lossless.

I don't know your card but if you are capturing s-video or composite video you want to capture at 29.97 fps interlaced. The "2x the frequency" rule applies to the 3.58 MHz scan rate, not the frame rate. Capture at 720x480 and you'll have all the detail that composite or s-video can carry.

Your 5400 RPM drive should be adequate for HuffYUV compressed capture.

Deinterlacing and cropping are likely to cause dropped frames and A/V sync problems. Do them later if necessary.