Matrox remote, Virtualdub or what to capture?

[Will Hay]

Hello.
I've managed to get hold of a Rainbow Runner G for my G400 (I bought from ebay in the us therefore don't get any TV, it's not PAL but NTSC) but as I only need it for capture it's fine and was a bargain.
I was using the Matrox for capture under Win98se and although was reletively happy with the results wonder if by using third party software could improve the digital file output.
I'm only recording clips of ten minutes or so (taken of my son with a camcorder) so don't have the restriction of cramming it all on a 700mb cd-r.
Could people recommend another capture package, and more importantly a codec which might give better results?
I figure I'm using the codecs installed by matrox, but I'm not even sure I even know what a codec actually is
Also, would a second hard drive, purely for capture, be a benefit?
Many thanks,
Will
--
AMD Athlon 800
512mb PC100 RAM
30GB IBM Deskstar
G400 Matrox
RR-G Matrox

[Will Hay]

I should add I'm now using Win XP, not Win98se.
I use TPGEnc to convert from .avi to .mpeg and then Ulead Movie Factory to output to vcd/cd-r for my family to watch on the dvd player.
Will

[stevenscott]

Not sure if you are interested, but I really like taking my videos and converting them to Divx. I can get some decent looking movies, up to an hour packed into about 30 MB size, and still good video and sound. If you want to archive for the best quality though stick with VCD, MPEG. I doubt many people can use the pure AVI as the size is way to big. And takes up way to much storage. There are plenty of threads archived here in these forums on what to do. Also wil bring up more info on Codecs, both free and paid. Best of all, most of these packages are free, and there are plenty of Demos to check them out and see what you like the best. Divx also can be made with slowerd processors. of course newer and faster would wil be much faster.
Do a search in the forum for these keywords and ehck out the info and links in the posts.

[Will Hay]

Thanks for the post.
I started out with the DivX route, I created tonnes of movies and watched them either on my laptop, desktop or using the TV-Out facility.
I've since moved onto vcd as I prefer the quality and need to watch them on my standalone dvd player in the living room.
Plus, I've now mastered the menu creation process (Ulead Movie Factory) and am quite proud, being a novice, of what I've achieved.
I'm now looking to increase the quality and need recommendations for a good codec.
Thanks again,
Will

[Luigi Brambilla]

Hi Will,
I've done some VCD as are you doing.
My little experience regarding tools and codecs can suggest you the following:
I capture using VirtualDub in 1GB chunks (easy to handle for editing afterwords).
I connect the Matrox Codec set to 352x288 fot VCD destination and 352x576 for SuperVcd.
You have a relatevely fast PC, so you can test the capture using an external codec. I suggest you the Intel Indeo 5 (it has a fast compress feature, so you can have few lost frames). Download it from the Ligos site. It is free,
Another choice is using PIC codec, which has a better compression quality respect the Matrox one. Unbelieveble but this one creates smaller files at the same resolution, respect Matrox.
Once you have saved these AVI files, use TMPGEnc (the best choice for MPEG-2 to create SVCD) or found somewhere the Panasonic encoder for the best class MPEG-1.

After the compression arrange your clip in Ulead Movie factory or just simply use Nero Menu to create a startup page in your Multimedia CD.

Hope this helps you.

Ciao

Luigi

[Will Hay]

Hello,
I will try the Intel Indeo codec, many thanks.
I think we're at a similar stage in video creation you and me!
One other thing, I tried using TMPGEnc for svcd and received an error message that it had expired,yet vcd works fine.
Can I install a new svcd template?
Thanks again,
Will