When I try to grab .AVI files I am offered a huge number of Codex options. I am looking for a good trade-off between compression and quality so that I can XingEncode them and write them to VCD.

Indeo??, Intel??, Mpeg-4?? etc...

What do you guys use? What is the best quality?(uncompressed?)

-- m 815261 (m815261@hotmail.com), November 03, 1999

Answers

I have used avi's generated by the intel video codec 5.06 or what ever the latest number is and found that to be OK. It also tends to provide a very good image at a reduced file size and that can be important in terms of used disk space to store the source for the encoder.

Uncompressed is marginally the best but if your encoder has a input limit of 2G it will restrict what you can do in terms of video time. In PAL I can only use about 4 minutes of video because for a PAL frame size of 352 x 288 7.5 megs/second of storage space is required for uncompressed video/sound. The intel codec usually averages about 1.0M/s and you really have to look hard to detect the difference on a TV.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), November 03, 1999.

Hi.

I would further suggest you visit the Intel Indeo web page to download the latest versions (promised to giver better quality and compression), and read about the best settings for encoding.

The address is: http://www.intel.com/ial/indeo/video/driver.htm

Cheers, Guy.

-- Guy (guy1511@hotmail.com), November 04, 1999.

Thanks guys. I've only tried short test clips so far so I hadn't hit that file size limit problem yet.

That Intel link was great. I've downloaded the latest version and their seems to be lots of hints there.

You've saved me hours!

-- m 815261 (m815261@hotmail.com), November 04, 1999.

You should use DIVX MPEG-4 codec to get the best quality!!!!!!!!!!!!! I use mpeg2avi and i can capture DVD in 720 or 640 without pixels. Have a nice day!

-- Yo! (Unknown@unknown.net), February 11, 2000.

try angel potion, it can be found on Kazaa.com. I capture movies with 320 x 240 res, 30fps and 24 bit color dept, and 16 bit sterio sound, with the wingo tv tuner card,that I got for 50.00 bucks. I use angel potion as the codec and I encode the files for the proper vcd format with xing mpeg encoder, let me tell you, everything looks awsome. MY computer is a athlon xp 1700, 256 sram, 100 gig harddrive and 32 meg rage pro ati video card.

-- Billy Godsey (brgodsey@yahoo.com), February 27, 2002.