need help: an idiots how-to capturing

[dZeus]

I've bought a Pinnacle PCTV Pro not long ago, and I can use it to capture from tv.

Now since I am a total beginner to capturing, I don't know jack about it. I've looked around on the web a bit, and this is what I've come up with until now:

- capture with VirtualDub using internal capturing in stead of AVIcap?
- capture at 512x384 (any higher drops frames?), YUY2, 25FPS (PAL) ?
- best codec used for capturing: PICVideo MJPEG ? what settings should I use for the codec? currently I've only set the quality to 19 (on a scale of 1 to 20)
- Audio should be set to PCM, 44.1KHz, 16bit stereo?

Can anyone give me some advice if the above things are all optimum settings? I want to capture at the highest resolution prissible without dropping frames. Does anyone have any experience with virtualdub? are there any settings I should change?

The best settings afterwards is to recompress the video file to DivX low-motion, 1500Kbps, smoother and blur filter, MP3 at 128Kbps? However, I can only select MP3 up to 56Kbps 22KHz from within virtualdub???? what's up with that?

Please help me, since my last 3 posts in this section of the forum were all unanswered! I know there are some real capturing experts out there!

[dZeus]

oh yeah, forgot to post my system specs that are applicable to capturing:

SB Live! value, Pinnacle Studio PCTV Pro, Adaptec 2940UW, IBM UltraStar U2W DDRS-34560D (7200rpm, 4.5GB), Win2k Pro

Update:
After defragmenting my hdd, and closing all the programs I don't need while capturing, I can capture at 640x480 without dropping frames, with the same codec settings as described above.

The strange thing however, is that when I set the capture res. to full pal (768x576), I only get a HDD stream of about 2500KBps, and a PCU utilisation of about 50 - 60%, while it drops frames? very odd!

Oh, and I think the MS media tools somehow overwritten the defaul MP3 codec, so that I can't use it any more for higher bitrates! grrr... I'll uninstall the tools, to see what will happen... I am afraid it won't fox it. Does anyone know how to fix it in another way?

[This message has been edited by dZeus (edited 19 July 2000).]

[dZeus]

well... I've installed the latest Radium MP3 codec, and now I can use all the different bitrates again...

I've also tried the 'lossless' HuffYuf 2 codec, but I drop frames when I set it to 'fastest compression' at 512x384: Probably because of the datarate. I drop about 1 frame every 50 - 80 frames; the datarate is 4500KBps, but CPU utlisation is only 30%... maybe the datarate that is too much for my SCSI HDD setup? or is there a way to increase HDD performance?