Need Encoding Help

[chapsticky]

Hi, I'm a n00b.
I just bought Hauppauge WinTV, and I'm trying to learn how to encode. First of all, the quality on my normal TV is great, but when I hook it into the computer, it's crap. I thought it was the tuner, but I asked someone and they said that Hauppauge is good, so I'm not quite sure what to do about that. I downloaded the DivX Pro codec to encode with and tried to encode with the software that came with the program, but I don't thing it's actually encoding with DivX even though the little logo shows up on the things I've "encoded", as a 30 second file is about 7 megs and I know DivX can do way better than that. Is there different software I should be using to encode? The one it came with keeps crashing, anyway, even though I've got plenty of resources. And is there anyway to fix the quality? I'd really appreciate any suggestions you may have. Thanks so much, and have a great day!

[alcskid]

As you must know first is that your Hauppauge WinTV will only capable to produce movie at max resolution 352x288. If you force it to a higher resolution it will be very choppy and bad quality.
If you want a higher source than you must buy Digital Cable TV or Digital Satellite enabled card with MPEG2 realtime encoder chip ready.

Simple software that can do capturing video was VirtualDub !
So far I never crashed using it !

[chapsticky]

Hi
What's a higher resolution card I could get? Thanks!

[alcskid]

There are so many brands out there. I can't mention it at this forum. But the most important thing if you want to buy Video Capture card was " Is there MPEG2 or Higher realtime encoder chip with it ?". The newest video capture card already implement MPEG4 encoder chip on it.

If you transfer digital video from DV cam via Firewire, it will get more higher res.

[shiny#3]

It looks that alcskid misunderstood
the question!!!
a realtime mpeg2 encoder chip on your tv card does not speed up divx encoding!!

you can only capture in mpeg 2 and then reencode it to divx!!!! with such a card!

the encoding and capture quality with DIVX is mostly limited by your CPU speed.

and of course the compression ratio depends on the encoder setting!!
(configure codec to 800 - 900 kbit/s
for good quality... and down to 320 kbits for sharing purposes)

also the audio encoding setting is important!!

Why not using Virtual dub for capturing?

With that ( if your TV card is not an USB 1.0 Haupauge) you can extend your resolution in capturing to 384 x 576
when you disable the overlay and preview mode!!!
also capture audio first in uncompressed PCM mode.
(it gives more speed for video capturing and processing)

you can compress the audio to mp3 and resize the video to proper resolution afterwards using Virtual dub

this makes a fine and small sized divx file.
by the way ... USE Xvid codec!!

[BoF]

Originally posted by shiny#3
It looks that alcskid misunderstood
the question!!!
a realtime mpeg2 encoder chip on your tv card does not speed up divx encoding!!

I know my english is quite poor but I don't see where alcskid says such a thing.

Originally posted by shiny#3
by the way ... USE Xvid codec!!

btw shiny#3, use ogg codec!!

[alcskid]

That's right BoF !

I never said "MPEG2 encoder chip speed up DivX Encoding". What do I want to say is with MPEG2 standard encoder chip enabled, usually got a higher resolution that can handled by video capturing card without lossing so many frames drops. That will improve the movie quality that we can grab.

[shiny#3]

seems that I was the one misunderstanding!!!

sorry for that ....

by the way

ogg is fine.... but won´t work on my
Kiss DP-450 (yet)