What is the best compressor to use???

[BobAchgill]

What is the best compressor (quality) to use???
I am screen capturing using CamStudio and I edit it with VirtualDub. If fddshow then what codec?

I would like the results to play in Windows Media player and be able to be used to author a DVD with TMPGEnc.

Tks!
Bob

[jman98]

WMP is a piece of garbage. STOP RIGHT NOW using this as a criteria of goodness. I'm serious. If you're married to WMP, then I can't do anything to help you. WMP sometimes won't play files that it should just because it's crap. If you want something to use for playback testing, use VLC. It's free. It works. WMP doesn't work often.

If you want to author a DVD then you need to save as MPEG-2 if you can.

[BobAchgill]

OK. I tried the MPEG 2 compressor for fddshow when I was screen capturing. The audio was fine but the video was not there. It must be that the MPeg2 does not do well with not standard dimensions.

Bob

[jagabo]

You should capture using a suitable realtime codec like HuffYUV then run a slower recompression with a high compression codec like x264. WMP will play just about anything if you have the right file reader/splitter and codecs installed.

[jman98]

WMP will play just about anything if you have the right file reader/splitter and codecs installed.

This is why WMP is a piece of crap. Honestly jagabo, how many newbies do you think are really going to know to do that? And it has not at all been my experience that WMP will play "just about anything". I have had it even fail to play WMV videos that were not DRMed.

BobAchgill - I really know nothing about the tools you are using. That was only a suggestion to try to help you. Maybe you need to save in HuffyYUV as jagabo suggests because of the way CamStudio works. You can re-encode HuffyYUV to MPEG-2 using something like HCenc and AviSynth, so you certainly can get from HuffyYUV to DVD compliant video.

[BobAchgill]

Hmmm? VirtualDub does not like Huffyuv. See error below.


Any other choices? In ten years when I want to edit this archived video again... what codec will still be supported? In this discussion I think we have ruled out MPEG-2 for archival since ...

1. I can not screen capture directly to it due to my off standard screen capture dimension requirement messes with MPEG-2
2. MPEG-2 is lower quality than other choices??

VirtualDub Error
Couldn't locate decompressor for format 'HFYU' (Huffyuv)
VirtualDub requires a Video for Windows (VFW) compatible codec to decompress video. DirectShow codecs, such as those used by Windows Media Player, are not suitable.

[hech54]

Hmmm? VirtualDub does not like Huffyuv.

I use it all of the time.

[jagabo]

Hmmm? VirtualDub does not like Huffyuv.

I use it all of the time.

Me too. Are you using 64 bit Windows? If so, 64 bit programs need 64 bit codecs, 32 bit programs need 32 bit codecs. I haven't seen a 64 bit build of HuffYUV but you can use a 64 bit build of ffdshow.

Another realtime codec is UT Video Codec. If you have a multicore processor you might be able to use Lagarith. HuffYUV is more likely to be available for whatever system you'll be using in 10 years than those two.