What kind of Frame Rate Can I expect?

[Eyepop]

I currently have the following system:
AMD Athlon 750Mhz
384Mb PC133
ASUS K7V
ATI AIW RADEON 7500
MAXTOR 27Gb 7200 RPM

For some reason I cannot capture with any sort of reasonable quality or frame rate with my system are there compatibility issues which I am not aware of? My drive is defraged and I have plenty of space(15Gb)

I have been to lukes video as well as followed various guides which relate to tweaking the quality of the image(even the tweaking on lukesvideo). I am looking to capture my home videos from VHS tape and burn them to VCD. I have successfully converted video from avi to VCD burned and watched it but I have been unable to achieve a image quality which comes even close to the origional.

Lastly, I cannot figure out why Virtual Dub does not recognize my video card when I go to the 'Capture avi...' only '0 Microsoft WDM Image Capture (Win32)' shows as being present, however, the device manager indicates that the card is working properly. Any suggestions to this mess would be greatly appreciated before I return this video card.

[Poplar]

Your system should be just fast enough to capture Huffyuv at 29.976 fps, although your hard drive is on the small side, which doesn't matter too much if you plan to capture 30 minutes at one time.

You cannot obtain the original quality of your VHS tape, but you can get it very close, depending on format you use and post-processing. With VCD, I am afraid that you will not even be close to retaining the original quality. I recommend SVCD, which can get really close.

I am not sure about your last problem. Perhaps VDub only supports VFW driver?

[Eyepop]

Alright I may not be able to get my origional VHS quality using VCD you say but....why then when I convert a really good rip of a movie(origionally DVD quality screener) to VCD and play it on my DVD player is the quality comparable or perhaps even better than a VHS tape?

Also, the quality of my VHS tapes is not top notch as the tapes I am copying are old but should I decide to change to an SVCD format are all players which are listed as VCD compatible SVCD compatible?

[flaninacupboard]

quality, when it comes to mpeg, is totally subjective. to be honest, if your end use is mpeg1, don't capture in huffyuv, use mjpeg, it saves a whole load of disk space, and is easier on your system because there's less numbers having to be written to your hard drive. i'd suggest you cap your vhs tapes in showshifter at 352*480(ntsc) or 352*576(pal) make sure you tell the mjpeg codec to capture as two fields. run this through virtual dub with an adaptive deinterlacer, probably the noise filter and resize to 352X240(ntsc) or 352&288(pal). now, work out different bitrate settings, i.e. 80 mins on a disc is 1150 kilobits per second for video. encode a portion of the film with high motion, sit a few feet away from your pc, and play it. too blocky? try setting it with a bit rate of 1585kbps, whihch is an hour a disc? still too blocky, try 2188 whihc will give you only 45 minutes, but if its a 90 minute film, a two disc set is fine.

[Tommy]

Alright I may not be able to get my origional VHS quality using VCD you say but....why then when I convert a really good rip of a movie(origionally DVD quality screener) to VCD and play it on my DVD player is the quality comparable or perhaps even better than a VHS tape?

It's the source. You really can't compare the quality of your VHS tape capture and a mpg ripped from a DVD. The DVD is much better. Basically it garbage in - garbage out.

[Eyepop]

Tommy>>I understand that if there is to be a difference in the quality of the sources then the final product will be of lesser quality. My point is this: If when I convert a high quality rip(DVD) to VCD the end quality is still quite good. However, when I capture(which appears very good in mediaplayer) and convert the difference in quality seems to be very noticable. The reason I find this particularly odd is because I'm using the exact same technique to copy movies from the net as I am to try and convert captured movies from my ATI AIW.