Capturing TV shows - direct burn or to ".avi" - what settings?

Hi there

I have Nero 7 running on an ACER pc, which also has it's own ACER TV program allow to burn to DVD/HDD.

I can get this to work, but find that I can only get about 1h 30mins on a DVD (I assume because I'm setting the levels high).

OK, so what settings are suitable to watch/play back a show. E.g. what resolutions, what frames per second etc. I'm not familiar so all help appricated.

[bold]Also[/bold], my DVD player will play back .avi files (divx compatible). So, is there anyway I can capture direct to .avi using Nero or another program? If I do this, what settings should I use, e.g. when i've downloaded other peoples tv captures from the net e.g. Lost etc., then an hours show is "approx" 350mb .avi. I'd like to do the same!

Sorry if this is a simple solution, I just don't get it!

 

any ideas on this

 

To put 2 hrs on a DVD Recordable disk I found that 720x480 and 5200kbs mpeg2 video is about right(29.97frame rate in US)Mp2 audio at about 192 or higher. I've capsured TV shows using avi at realtime and the quality was never very good using compressed avi, only using no compression gave good results but the file size was way to large. I've found the best way is to capsure using your highest quality mpeg2 using 640x480(29.97),8000kbs, and best audio available. Then when finished use Virtualdub MPEG-2(free) to convert to avi (divx) except I use the xvid free codec instead of divx. Most all divx compatible DVD players will play the xvid codec. To get an hour at about the size you want (350mb)save it at 640x480(29.97) 780kbs with audio set at either 96 or 128 mp3 rate.

 

Use this link to get the virtualdub mpeg2 version http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/stable/ or use your search engine to find (Virtualdub Mpeg-2). The link in this forum only directs you to the regular version of virtualdub which does not convert mpg files.

 

You probably dont have a mp3 codec installed so get Lame (free) from this site http://www.free-codecs.com/Lame_Encoder_download.htm or use search engine. Find the lame acm file (lameacm.inf), right click it and choose to install. Then you can use the lame mp3 audio compression in Virtualdub.