On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 01:42:58 -0400, Roy Baldwin
<Roy.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>My PC has firewire.
>My cVCR or VCR compact has nothing - I guess maybe RCA jacks.
>
>I was wondering though if it were important what the home movies
>were converted to.
Depends on how you want to play them back. DVD/SVCD is
MPEG2, so if that is the goal then convert to MPEG2.
>So of the vid converters are showing MPG 2, 3
>or 4, some show Divx.
Divx has smaller filesizes and/or better quality per same
filesize (in other words, better compression ratio), but is
far less versatile. Some TV set-top players support Divx
now and more will in the future but I'll guess the
percentage of those that do is still low, around 10% for new
models and almost no older players. Many players that can
do Divx also can do MPEG4, but MPEG2 is by far the most
compatible. Don't know what you mean by "vid converters"
though, basically a captured file can be converted to any
format for which you have a codec installed, has little to
nothing to do with which capture card you buy, except that
the software bundle coming with the card might include and
automatically install those codecs for you instead of your
having to download and install one separate, which is no big
deal unless it's also a commercial codec requiring
licensing/payment.
>I don't care about the file size. I would
>like to get the max quality out of the convertion.
Low-res analog video footage may look horrible already on a
PC, even if max quality is retained. I mean that the
initial quality may be poor enough that differences in
converting may not matter that much. Even so, try to (re)
compress the video only once. That is, if capturing it to a
compressed format, do so to the final destination format.
If you want to edit the video first, save it to a lossless
format while capturing then later recompress to final
format. Again this is drifting into a broad expanse of info
too great to be covered in a few newsgroup posts, there are
a lot of video editing primers on the 'net to help there.
> I guess some
>lossy compress will ultimately have to be used but I would at a
>minium like to qet the best quality converter (within price
>reason) that I can.
Any playback device will be set up to use a lossey
compression. Even so you can choose a bitrate that
maximizes the quality for any particular format, providing
the playback devices support the higher bitrate too.
>Does Divx give a better picture than MPG2 or 3 or 4?
Divx IS MPEG4, but most often also has MP3 audio. After
some practice you should be able to choose either Divx or
MPEG2 and get similar results for your purpose, with Divx
being smaller filesize but MPEG2 far more compatible.
>Or would it be like comparing Jpg to Gif to Bmp with would be a
>"depends."
It can depend, whether you can SEE the difference, but
MPEG2, 4, Divx, are all lossey compression formats. GIF and
JPEG are too, while BMP is not lossey. YOu can capture to a
lossless format, which is preferred if you wish to edit it,
but then later will need convert to MPEG2, 4, Divx, or
whatever the playback device supports. Lossless formats
take up MUCH more space to store. Expect dozens of GB space
for an hour of lossless video.
> Like I think Bmp takes up a huge amount of space
>disproportional to improved quality of a pic.
It is true that you may not be able to see the difference,
but it could make a lot more difference if editing, needing
to REcompress a file or work in several stages where file is
saved, reopened, saved again. Each REsave of a lossey
format reduces quality much more than the first save...
your compression artifacts themselves start causing
artifacts too.
>I think that Gif
>gives a great pic at a fair sacrafice of space and I think Jpg
>gives a very good pic at a very minimal use of space. Is MPGxxx
>vs Divx like that? Or is one just better?
It can depend on the software too, I've seen some horrific
GIF conversions but GIF can be pretty good for causal
viewing a preservation of fine details even if the color is
off/pixelated. This is not the case with MPEG2/4/Divx
though, always the fine details are lost, how much depending
on how low the bitrate.
It may help to capture uncompressed or with a lossless codec
and the view the capture to get a baseline, see how it
looks. Then you can try different bitrates and codecs
(formats) to see how much they impact the end result,
keeping in mind that even the initial video may look poor on
a PC but much better on a TV. Even though you claim
filesize doesn't matter, in practice there is often an upper
limit, and given that upper limit Divx will result in better
quality, but far lower compatibility... you can't even play
back divx on another PC without installing the codec first,
but likewise you can't play back MPEG2 without a DVD
software player or other Windows/etc media player hacks.
This is all getting pretty far off topic though... Since
you only have analog output on your current gear you can get
any typical PCI capture card with an S-Video input (pretty
standard feature) and then use an adapter to convert from
the RCA jacks to the S-Video plug... the adapter may come
with the capture card or can be purchased separately.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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