Need highest quality Codec possible: Please READ!

[ubers0ldat]

i need to capture tv at it's highest quality. Which codec should i use? Huffyluv doesn't even come close the quality i need, PICvideo is somewhat what i need. i have a pInnacle PCTV pro, under win2k pro

I have:
P3 1 ghz
Geforce2 MX440
384 SD ram

win2k pro

ALSO: does the soundcard make a difference in sound quality?

[Stansell]

Are you sure HuffYUV is not as good as you want? It is lossless after all and should preserve the quality of your capture.

However, it does not playback real-time very well and so if you are judging the quality based on what you see when you try playing back the AVI file, you are not actually seeing the captured quality.

You didn't say what your final format was to be. Try converting some of the HuffYUV capture to MPEG2 and I think you will be very happy with the quality.

I've used it to capture some laserdiscs at 720 x 480 for conversion to DVD and the quality is excellent.

[Nelson37]

I have done MULTIPLE tests on this, and I must agree with the capture god, Huffy gives the best quality. I think the MJPEG codec gives you a slight smoothing effect, and huffy seems to magnify interlacing effects on AVI playback, but not after encoding. I personally cap 12Mbit/s MPG2 as the space advantage outweighs any quality difference (I can't see any).

I am also interested in your sound card question, particularly as to capturing surround sound. Just changed from on-board AC97 to SBlive, initial impression maybe slight improvement, have not captured and encoded yet. Hey capture god, any thoughts?

[ubers0ldat]

Hey, thanks for responding.

Ive heard a lot about HuffyLuv, but i can't seem to see any quality coming from it. If i don't see it how will it turn out good after i convert it to Mpeg-2? and what do you mean its higher quality when not in real time mode?

My final format needs to be mpeg-1/2 or even AVI. I need teh best quality.

Sound quality: when i capture i get this grainy sound in the background. What's the best audio compression i should capture in? im using virtual dub.

Thanks fellas

[WizyWyg]

You want highest quality?
UNCOMPRESSED

[ubers0ldat]

i've even tried that and still no good. when i first open Virtual Dub, and go to file > capture AVI

it says: capture device not detected

then:

looking for all available drivers

Then it initializes the TV. i can only choose teh standard VCD resolutoin, anything higher and i get an error saying: video input not detected.

Please help. what's standard res. for SVCD?

[Timelord]

480 x480 NTSC OR 480X576(pal) but you could also use 352x480(576) as any dvd player that can play svcds will play it no probs

[Stansell]

Hey, thanks for responding.

Ive heard a lot about HuffyLuv, but i can't seem to see any quality coming from it. If i don't see it how will it turn out good after i convert it to Mpeg-2? and what do you mean its higher quality when not in real time mode?

My final format needs to be mpeg-1/2 or even AVI. I need teh best quality.

Sound quality: when i capture i get this grainy sound in the background. What's the best audio compression i should capture in? im using virtual dub.

Thanks fellas

What we are saying is that if you convert HuffYUV to MPEG, the quality will be excellent (trust us), but you can't see that quality by playing the file directly (real-time).

HuffYUV is designed for fast lossless compression when capturing, but not designed for fast decompression during playback. When you try to play it back real-time using an AVI player, the AVI player has to drop frames and do other things to keep the video playing real time and in sync with the audio.

But if you use the HUFFYuv AVI as your source for another program such as TMPGEnc that can read the file at a slower than real-time rate, it will not have to drop any frames and such and will get all the video data in the AVI file. The the quality will be great.

Because HuffYUV it is a lossless codec, the compression does not degrade the original video signal captured from your video card.

MPEG is in a way the opposite of HUFFYUV. MPEG can decompress quickly and plays back real-time great, but it is harder to compress in real-time (if you want quality). That's why capturing with HuffYUV and then converting to MPEG is so great. You can capture real-time without loosing quality, and then convert to MPEG slowly for the best quality MPEG file.

As far as sound goes, make sure you have your audio set to capture at 44.1Khz / 16 bit stereo (CD Quality) for vcd (or 48Khz / 16 bit stereo for DVD)

Sounds like your capture card may be capturing at a lower sample rate.

I don't have a lot of other advice as far as sound cards go. I use a Sound Blaster Live MP3 from a few years back and it sounds fine. I had to do some testing to make sure I was capturing at the same volume as the source.

[Stansell]

Just thinking back over your question though, perhaps we were side-tracked in defending HuffYUV.

If your goal is to capture video and then immediatly play it back in high quality without converting it to another format first then I recommend the PIC MJPEG codec. It compresses and decompresses quickly.

It's one drawback is that it is lossy codec, so I don't recommend it for converting to other formats if you want the absolute highest quality. If you want to convert the video, go with HuffYUV.