video capturing

[barneygumble742]

hi,

i taped a program from tv that's 25 mins long. i would like to get it put on a cd.

my components:
800 intel @ 133 fsb, 512 mb, 20 gig 7200, ati all in wonder 128 pro video capture (old card and composite viewing recently failed so i'm using the coax connection on the card for input).

is it possible to get this tv show on the cd using my hardware or is it wishfull thinking? if possible, what software do i need? the only software i have that's good is a pinnacle product. i forgot its name but i remember the box said that it won like 10 emmys or something.

thanks

[Aedan]

If you can get the signal into the PC, and record it digitally, then you can do whatever you like afterwards. I'm presuming you have a CD-writer

Basically, you need to capture to MPEG 1 or MPEG 2, which will allow you to write a VCD or SVCD. There's plenty of information on the net about this, including software that shouldn't cost.

[barneygumble742]

will the quality be preserved?

i've tried it before on mpeg 1 and mpeg 2 but the maximum size i could get was 320x240 (or something close to that).

[Aedan]

VCD is pretty limited qualitywise, as it's bitrate is too low to avoid obvious artifacts on the screen. The VCD resolution of 320x240 is about what VHS cassettes manage. (Yeah, VHS sucks in so many ways.) VCD's data rate is about 150Kbyte/sec.

SVCD uses MPEG2 (which is also the standard used for digital TV broadcast and DVDs). SVCD's NTSC resolution is 480x480, which is superior to VHS. A SVCD's maximum datarate is about 350KBytes/sec. Note, it *IS* possible to use higher bitrates, but it's no longer SVCD compatible. This means that DVD players that can play SVCD will have no issues with it, but standalone SVCD only players won't be able to play it.

If you're only going to play it back on a computer, then you have a wider choice, such as MPEG4. This will limit you to playback ONLY on computer however - this might be fine to you.

In any case, as you're doing it on computer, you can capture using a lossless compression (Such as HuffYUV). This would allow you to experiment with different compression types to see how the final would come out. Obviously you'd only want to encode a short section when you're experimenting!