What Format To A Cd?

[rich novak]

hey all.

i'm currently based half a globe away from my loved ones, and i have a digital video camera, a firewire, a super laptop, a cd burner, and blank cd's.

my question is, how do i make this all work together? i'd like to be able to put some video footage, like a video message, onto a cd for use with windows media player or the like.

i need some bigtime help with this. what format would be best to use? what format could i convert to w/o losing too much quality?

thanks!

ren

[The Edge]

Hi, and welcome.
You could make a VCD (Mpeg-1) which, when you send it home, should not need any extra software to play. Quality is slighty better then VHS.
This VCD guide would be a good starting point.

Edge

[Batman]

Well it looks like you have all the stuff. I recommend that you search google.com and pay a visit to doom9.org (search forums and guides) and a visit to www.dvdrhelp.com Check/search for capturing guides. Also search this forum for pertinent information.


There are many formats you can put on a cd. VCD will allow you to save 80 minutes of video on a 700 mb cd-r/rw at about VHS quality. SVCD will give you significantly better quality and allow you to save about 50 minutes of video on a 700 mb cd-r/rw. The only conceivable benifits of the (S)VCD formats are that they can be played on many but not all standalone DVD players.

To get the best compression and quality I would recommend a 2-pass xvid/divx encode (doom9.org guides and Uncasms's guides). However, these files can only be played on a PC (there are some standalone divx players available).

Generally, capture with a lossless dv codec or something like huffyuv with Virtualdub (freeware www.virtualdub.org) then read the guides I said earlier on 2-pass divx/xvid encoding. You will require lots of hd space though.

[The Edge]

Batman said it better!

Edge

[Batman]

But Edge was faster!

[rich novak]

what format is the data in when it's still on the tape? i see a lot of "_______ to MPEG2" or "_______ to AVI" and stuff. where am i starting out?

thanks, i'll hit those links up a little closer when i know my starting point.

thanks!

[Batman]

Since you have a digital camcorder I assume you that you will capture to uncompressed huffyuv (to avoid dropping frames, capturing directly to xvid/divx and/or mpeg-2 may cause dropped frames unless you select a low resolution). AVI is a container, it is not a format. You won't have a tape, since the data will be stored on a hd (hoping you have lots of space ) Connecting your dv camera to the IEEE94 (firewire port) is probably the best option.

You will later compress the huffyuv/mjpeg file to divx/xvid for maximum compression or vcd/svcd.

[rich novak]

you know what? i plugged the camera into the fujitsu laptop and turned it on, and everything popped up. i hit record and figured everything out from there. it did all the work for me. i felt left out, like the third wheel between me, the laptop and the video camera. i think they're plotting against me.

thanks for all your help!!

ren

[rich novak]

I KNEW IT! they were plotting against me after all!

it seems that when i put the short video on a disk, it puts it into microsoft media player format... something like that. i play it off the disk perfectly on my laptop. but when i use the disk on an older compute, it won't play at all.

just to make sure it wasn't the cd-rw, i put it on a floppy and got the same results.

any ideas? like, maybe the other computers are just too old? maybe it's a diff version of wmp?

i might try vegas video.

thanks!

[rich novak]

ok, this is strange.

i got video factory 2.0 (sonic foundry) because i could record the dv in microsoft movie maker, but i couldn't save it as anything other than .wmp type file.

well, in video factory, when i try to capture, i drop an enormous amount of frames... and the audio is basically worthless.

so why does an inferior product work fine, but the better (i thought better) product drop them like crazy? i exceed all the recommended sys. requirements for the program. 1.6ghtz/512 ddr/???, yet the capture is wacky as all get out.

any help from the knowledge base here?

thanks!

ren

[Batman]

Have you tried Virtualdub?


There is also a special "hack" of virtualdub that supports wdm drivers, I can give you a link to that software if this does not work.

[rich novak]

i've never heard of it. i'll look it up... what's it do?

[Batman]

https://www.virtualdub.org

It is a free capturing/video editing software.

[rich novak]

damn it. now i'm getting frustrated.

i tried that program. downloaded it several times and it wouldn't install at all. it kept asking me to put in the backend disk or something.

for crying out loud, why is this crap so hard?

i appreciate your help, batman. can you recommend a different (freeware?) program that will make stupid assed windows media files into something i can actually use?

thanks!


ren