I have a 1hr 55m program (Concert for George) on my SD STB which I want to transfer to my computer and then burn it to a 4.5GB DVD. The format is 720x480 PAL-G. I installed the WDM drivers for my video card (GeForce 6600GT). I managed to transfer the whole program using Virtual VCR, but then found I couldn't work with it because it almost completely filled my HD (added approx 120GB). Obviously I have to compress the file as I transfer it to my HD. Problem is I know nothing about codecs. Virtual VCR has options for compressing video with lots of choices. Also there is a separate tab/button for compressing the audio, again with lots of choices. Can someone please help me . Once I have the file as an .avi on the computer, I was going to use The Film Machine (good for dummies like me) to convert it ready for burning - or would you suggest something better/easier. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I haven't used VirtualVCR for quite a while. But, for video compression two good choices would be PICVideo MJPEG or Huffyuv. You shouldn't need to use compression for the audio. Once the .avi is captured to your PC I'd use software like TMPGEnc Plus to encode it to DVD compliant mpeg2. TMPGEnc Plus (free trial) will output an .m2v video file and a .wav audio file. Load those up in Muxman and Muxman will create a set of DVD files (VOB, IFO, BUP) which you can burn to DVD. You could try loading your .avi file into your Film Machine software to see what kind of results you get. If it does an OK job and it's easy to use then that might be a good way to go too. Codecs: http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=HuffYUV http://www.pegasusimaging.com/picvideomjpeg.htm Software: http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/download/tp.html http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=Muxman TMPGEnc Plus guide: http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=56454
When using Virtual VCR, I get a big range of codecs to select from when slecting video compression, and another range of codecs to select from if I tick the audio compression box. I think this may be because I loaded a suite of codecs into my computer when I was trying to use Film Machine on a compressed movie we had downloaded. The video selection includes MPEG4, MPEG2, Huffyuv, and a heap more, all under "ffdshow video encoder" (although there were others besides ffdshow in the initial dropdown list that I could have selected). When you don't know what you're doing, it's like picking a lotto ticket .
