Codec Recommendations please!

[Will Hay]

I'm at the stage of capturing with virtualdub to what I guess is uncompressed .avi, converting to mpeg2 (pal vcd) with virtualdub and authoring with Ulead Movie Factory to output to a cd-r.
My movies are mostly of my newborn son, family etc., generally around ten to fifteen minutes each clip and on the whole I'm pretty happy with the results.
My questions are:
1) I can't seem to set my capture file any bigger than 352 x 288 (these may be slightly incorrect, I forget!), when I try anything bigger (ie. 576 x whatever, sorry my memory is terrible!) I lose a *significant* amount of frames and find it unwatchable.
Would this be because of my computer specification?
Would a second hard drive (only for capture) and a bigger processor (my board will only take a 1.3) see a significant increase in capture quality?
2) I guess I'm using the standard codec's that come with the capture card, would I see a significant increase in quality by installing a different, third party codec?
3) May be a silly question but is it important to enable dvd zoom, max etc. when capturing?
Many thanks,
Will
-
Win 98se
G400
Rainbow Runner-G
AMD 800 Athlon
IBM 7200rpm 40gb hdd
512mb PC100 SDRam

[Peter B]

I have a Marvel G200, which came after the RR I belive, but from what I can tell the procedures are similar. I would recommed the following

Win98se or WinMe (works for me)
Seperate HDD for capture (makes a big differnce in dropped frames)
Capture using AVI_IO (allows seemless capture of mutliple 2/4GB files without dropping frames to FAT32 hard drives - used in Win98/Me)
Codec HuffYUV (you may need the Flying Dutchmans patch that can be located on this site) - definately the best quality you can get, BIG files though (another reason for a second HDD and AVI_IO)
Avoid VIA chipsets (too late if you have one I guess) and SoundBlaster sound cards
Recommed runing files through some filters in Virtual Dub such as smart noise reduction, levels etc you should be able to find some threads on this topic which will expain it. Then frame serve to TMPenc for VCD MPEG encoding

I belive your processor is fast enough, it will be the hard drive and VIA chipset issues that will cause the drops, place you hard drive on the second IDE channel as well, and try and avoid having the CD-Rom on there as also.

There are also many tips for "enhancing" capture with win98 as it's defaults are not designed for video, DMA settings, hard drive caches etc, have a search on google for video capture and win98 etc there are many sites with capture tips, have a look at www.vdchelp.com as well.

There are many experienced people here that will provide many other tips, search through the forum as well, almost every question you could ask has been asked before and answered.

Good luck, this is just the begining...

[Will Hay]

Oh dear!

Oh dear, Soundlaster Live 1024 *and* Via Chipset!
lol!
Thanks for the post Peter, much appreciated and very helpful.
Understand the second hard drive benefit, and now you mention it putting it on the second ISE channel sounds like common sense although I'll need to add a cd-rom as a slave unfortunatley .as I have two drives, a cd-burner and dvd-rom.
You're the second person to recommend AVI_IO over Virtualdub, I'll give that a go, thanks.
Are the filters in virtualdub already installed?
I seem to remember seeing something in there about noise reduction but in my novice state thought I'd take one step at a time!
As for vcdhelp.com I wouldn't be where I am now without it and happily donated a small amount as a thank you.
Many thanks,
Will

[keithm]

You could also try the Picvideo codec, at a quality setting of 19 it's about 3 meg a second and the quality is very good: nit as good as huffyuy but it uses a lot less space. There is a demo and to buy it's $18

[Peter B]

Look for "dynamic noise reduction" by steve don & avery lee (virtual dub developer) it is a plug in

http://www.geocities.com/shawnroy03/virtualdub_filters.html

Also useful is smart deinterlace by donald graft

http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/index.html

Levels is already included
Here some "other" versions of virtual dub as well

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/virtualdub.html

Why you should use them is covered in other threads, seacrh this forum and how to use them is included in the help files

If you make SVCDs you should try to capture at least 352x576 (for PAL as used in the UK) or 340x480 for NTSC (I am not sure about the 340, but the 480 is correct)

[Brian Ellis]

Peter

I recommend capture at max (usually 704 x 576 PAL x40 NTSC with Marvel), if possible, even for VCD or VHS. For SVCD, 480 width is the minimum, but editing will be far easier with better results on transitions and overlays at 704. You may be able to get away with 352 width for VCD or VHS, but the results will still not be very good.

[Peter B]

Yes Brian, I would agree, I only mentioned the half resolution for Will as he has only been able to achieve 352x288. I had a PIII 500 with a VIA chipset and the max it would go to before dropping masses of frames was 352x576 (note I had another PC with a slower processor without a VIA m/board and could capture at 704x576!)