Capturing and Compression

[ROBO1964]

I have being testing various software for capturing video. I have found some interesting findings and want to find out from the experts what the facts are.

I have been trying several freeware products and some work well. But some lose audio/video sync if you use compression but are fine when recording with no compression. The reason I was looking at these is because I have a "professional" editing software package and it also captures and allows you to set all settings but the capture must be uncompressed. After you can encode it with compression of whatever you want. I found this odd as everything else has a gigantic list of selections and settings so why not capture.

After my tests I started to wonder. Is capturing video and doing real time compression like real time encoding. It works but not as good in terms of quality?

That would explain why a "professional" product wouldn't have that till after the capturing was done.

Opinions?

[Poplar]

Compression reduces quality and requires fast CPUs. To get highest quality, you should always capture uncompressed or with lossless Huffy with about 1:2 compression. Then you can do your post-processing and editing. I think this is the best way to go around with low-end system most of us have. I don't know much about how pros do with their expensive and powerful systems. Maybe they do post-processing in real time or hardware encoding in real time.

[ROBO1964]

Well the software I have does a great job of capture and I can render in avi format with Huffy compression after the capture but it doesn't have any option to capture in any form of compressed video while you capture.

I was just wondering why?

The program has a gazillion options on every function except that 1 item. There must be a reason.