Newbie lookng to improve caps

[funsoul]

Hi Folks!
Well...finally made it here via a link on DesktopWorld's site. For some reason was never able to get to www.murc.ws.

OK...would love any assistance in getting better results.

Was using avi-i/o to do captures (using mjpeg) but something changed and now avi-i/o and virtualdub give me tons of framedrops. The PC-VCR remote gives 0 drops.

Then...am importing to Premiere (the weird version 5.5) for editing. Then export avi using i263 codec set to best quality.

For going from avi>mpg, have been using Panasonic's encoder but am now playing with LSX as well.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

My setup is:
98se (should I move to winME?)
pIII 500e
256meg RAM
2 27.2gig eide's
g400tv

THANKS!!!!
-funsoul

[Dr Mordrid]

For best MPG's;

1. set up YUY2 captures using Flying Dutchmans YUY2 utility (download page)

2. capture using AVI_IO to either YUY2 or the HuffYUV codec. Get it at;

http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html .

I capture to either 352x240 or 352x480 (NTSC)

3. compress to MPEG using the Panasonic MPEG-1 encoder. In the Advanced Setups page turn all the video filters to their max settings, Motion Compensation to Full PEL and the Color Tone Correction to TV.

Dr. Mordrid

[Sciascia]

Doc--
Have you tried the TMPGEnc? It looks great with the HuffYUV codec. Actually almost any MPEG encoder looks good with it, but I think that the TMPGEnc looks a little better than the Panasonic, which has been the standard for so long. By the way what is the HUffYUV codec? I imagine it is a software compressor (DUHH..), but the CPU utilization is very low. Is that because it uses YUY2 of the Matrox board and compresses that? Do they plan t fix the PD problem, as I had to revert to v1.52 and that hosed up one of my favorite games, GPL? Or do you think that they just wanted to disable that hiden feature for God only know's why?

[funsoul]

Thanks Dr. Mordrid!

Will clear space and try to run some tests over the weekend. Read elsewhere that to use the YUY2 utility, will have to uninstall the newest matrox drivers and load one of the older versions. Will give it a go.

Will also try out the HuffYUV codec. Read in another thread that it consumes huge amounts of space but will definitely try it! (am referring to comments from Flying Dutchman about his procedure)

What size (in meg/min) are your final movies?

In general, want to do 2 types of things so would welcome suggestions. The first is vcd compliant stuff...about 10.1meg/min. This sounds like you've covered it in your response. Is this right?

The second thing I'd like to do is put out non vcd compliant mpgs. Want to stick to the 352x240 frame size but would like to get them down around 5meg/minute (or less). Have been getting about 5.3meg/min with the following settings in the Panasonic encoder:
datarate: 600
audio: 32KHz, mono
video: 24fps

As a lot of what I cap isn't really so audio intensive, started using the LSX encoder because it can output at rates below 32KHz.

Thanks much for your time and guidance!
cya!
-funsoul

[dchip]

Sciascia, have you looked at the latest version of Panasonic encoder? They've added some RGB sliders and a quick way to see what the changed settings will look like on your MPEG. So when you get that occasional AVI that looks just a little too magenta or cyan you can tinker with it in Panasonic and hopefully get something more eye-pleasing.

I wish there were some gamma or brightness/contrast settings too but I imagine such an encoder would take a week to compress a 20 minute AVI. By the time it finished you would have forgotten what the he** you intended to do with the clip.