Improving VHS/TV capture on ATI 8500DV

[skabio]

Hello all. I am having some problems getting good results while capturing my VHS or the TV. First my specs:

P4 2.0ghz
Giga board
512MB ram
2 - 80GB WD hardrives

Anyhow. I have tried capturing in every format avi/mpeg/mpeg2/vcr and I seem to get the same results either way. I have had some frame loss but thats not the problem. All of the files when viewed at full screen are pretty blocky. Does anyone know the best format to capture in or a way to improve the results. The main reason I capture is to make VCD's. Is there a really good codec to use with AVI format? Is there a way to add codecs to the list that I can use? I mainly capture using the ATI tv capture but I've also used Ulead. Is there a better program for better results? Maybe the card just sucks? Sorry about all the info. Thanks in advance for any help.

[Sulik]

VCD is going to be blocky no matter what capture card you use. The blocking artifacts come from MPEG compression (due to high quantization), and can't be avoided unless you increase the bitrate, thus losing VCD compatibility.

Not every encoder is created equal, so you may get slightly better results from one encoder to the other, but 1Mbps MPEG1 isn't going to look very good no matter what you do.

My suggestion would be to use DVD resolutions and bitrates. Something like 352/480x480 IBBP at 5Mbps should have very little artifacts.

[skabio]

Thank you so much. I tried mpeg1 with 640X480 with 5 mb/s and it looks so much better. I even converts over to VCD with fairly nice resolution. I think the key is the 5 mb/s. Now to play with it just a little bit more. Thanks for the help.

[skabio]

One small problem now is that the files get off sinc when I convert them to VCD that and the quality turns to shit. Worse than when I captured straight to VCD. Any suggestions?