(somewhat OT) video capture tips.

[c]

First of all, if this is off topic please direct me to a more suitable
place to ask about this.

I'm about to start capturing, with my AIW 7500, a whole lot of stuff I
have on tape. TV shows and other stuff that I've recorded over the
years. I'm looking for the software with the best compression out there,
one that will let me create video files with the highest quality for the
smallest possible file size.

Do you guys have any suggestions as to which software to use? Are there
any sites out there for newbies that want to start caping their stuff? I
tried Google, but only a long list of useless sites came out.
Thanks for any help.

 

[J. Clarke]

First of all, if this is off topic please direct me to a more suitable
place to ask about this.

I'm about to start capturing, with my AIW 7500, a whole lot of stuff I
have on tape. TV shows and other stuff that I've recorded over the
years. I'm looking for the software with the best compression out there,
one that will let me create video files with the highest quality for the
smallest possible file size.

"Highest compression" conflicts with "smallest possible file size". You can
have one or the other but not both.

MPEG-2 is the industry standard. MPEG-4, the most common implementation of
which is "Divx" <http://www.divx.com/>, gives the same quality with better
compression. Both of those are "lossy" which means that you shouldn't do
things with the files that require that they be recompressed multiple
times. For the highest quality you need lossless compression--the most
popular codec for that seems to be is "Huffyuv"
<http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv.html>, but it's not
all that useful--file sizes are typically 40 or more times what MPEG-4
provides and only about half the size of uncompressed files.

Do you guys have any suggestions as to which software to use? Are there
any sites out there for newbies that want to start caping their stuff? I
tried Google, but only a long list of useless sites came out.
Thanks for any help.

You might find <http://www.avsforum.com> and <http://www.dvrhelp.com> to be
useful.

 

[C]

thanks!

"Highest compression" conflicts with "smallest possible file size". You can
have one or the other but not both.

MPEG-2 is the industry standard. MPEG-4, the most common implementation of
which is "Divx" <http://www.divx.com/>, gives the same quality with better
compression. Both of those are "lossy" which means that you shouldn't do
things with the files that require that they be recompressed multiple
times. For the highest quality you need lossless compression--the most
popular codec for that seems to be is "Huffyuv"
<http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv.html>, but it's not
all that useful--file sizes are typically 40 or more times what MPEG-4
provides and only about half the size of uncompressed files.


You might find <http://www.avsforum.com> and <http://www.dvrhelp.com> to be
useful.