VirtualDub headache

[stokefan]

Hi,

Im trying to capture music performances from a PAL VHS, the format of the end file im not bothered about, but currently im capturing as uncompressed AVI in v-dub, and then converting to MPEG in TMPG-enc, is this a good way to go about it? I reckon there's a better way of doing it, usinga differnt capture codec for e.g.

Are there any that stand out, quality wise that you reccommend? Thanks.

[Craig Tucker]

Use huffyuf as a compression codec, will reduce you AVI file size but it is lossless so you will see no degredation in quality.

[stokefan]

thanks mate, do u mean Huffy UV codec though? Also, would you still convert to MPEG after capturing in Huffy or just keep the file as it is?

[Craig Tucker]

Yes huffyuv sorry slip of the finger. Depends what you want to do with the file. Even with the huffyuv codec it will still be very large. If i were only ever going to play it on a my PC I would probrably compress it with a DIVX codec (however to play it on another PC it would need to have the codec installed). This way you can reduce the size considerably with no visible quality loss. If you ever want to play it on a DVD player (or have compatibility with all pc's(mpeg1, mpeg2 needs codec installed)), either as VCD,SVCD or DVD then you have to convert the file to mpg. Use TMPGEnc for encoding to mpg.

[edsmith77]

Craig,
After all of the reading I have done on this site, I just could not come to grips with the use or why DIVX even existed. That is until your last post when it finally came clear. Thanks.
I would presume then that it is possible to recover the original AVI from the DIVX by some reverse osmosis process or program, if in the future DVD was the desired format.

Thanks,
Ed

[Craig Tucker]

If in the future DVD compatability was required you could indeed convert the divx file to mpg, which could still look very good if the divx was encoded well. Although you can never go back to the original AVI with huffyuv compression. During the compression to divx process data is lost and cannot be recovered, its just that the data which is discarded makes very little difference to the appearance of the video file. Basically each encoding process will incur a loss (albeit minor if done well) in quality.