Creative Digital VCR - My Results with X-Files Season 8 and 9
(the Creative Digital VCR is a hardware mpg capture card in a pci slot, like a TiVo can pause and record shows to your hard drive, but Creative uses a non-standard mpg format that makes converting to other formats a real pain)...
After encoding Season 1-6 from dvd to divx-avi format, and seeing that seasons 8 and 9 (preordered Season 7) won't be out for a while, I have been capturing The X-Files on TNT nightly at 5 pm as follows:
Export to 1 giant mpg (1.5 gig) recorded in LP mode 480x480
Use DVD2AVI to create project (d2v) and extract audio (mpa)
Use BeSweet to convert mpa to mp3 112k 32khz
Use VFAPIConv-EN to convert d2v to pseudo avi
Load avi into NanDub (or you can use VirtualDub) and encode video with filters: Deinterlace (blend), Crop (Black Borders), Resize (576x432)
Merge avi and mp3 using NanDub
Use AviFRate to adjust video framerate to synch audio and video (ok at beginning, but off by end if 1 hour recording)
Use Nandub to remove commercials and save final file, approx 340mb.
Burn 2 episodes per cdr
So far very good results, but the audio synch is the real pain, all the rest are chores, but straightforward (at least for me)...but adjusting the video framerate is guesswork and tedious.
Anyone have a better solution for encoding the audio?
(and of course anyone have a quicker solution overall?)
I am not interested in making these into svcd or dvd, as I can play divx on my laptop anywhere, and can also output from laptop to tv with nice sharp picture. I put two episodes on one 700mb cdr and at 576x432 the quality is excellent, just way too much work!
Tricky
PS All software mentioned is freeware and can be found at http://www.doom9.net in the downloads section. Nandub encodes DivX 3.11 using SBC, but the reason I use it is you can tell it what size you want the final file size to be and it gives you that size, if I used VirtualDub and DivX 5.03 the file size varies greatly...
(the Creative Digital VCR is a hardware mpg capture card in a pci slot, like a TiVo can pause and record shows to your hard drive, but Creative uses a non-standard mpg format that makes converting to other formats a real pain)...
After encoding Season 1-6 from dvd to divx-avi format, and seeing that seasons 8 and 9 (preordered Season 7) won't be out for a while, I have been capturing The X-Files on TNT nightly at 5 pm as follows:
Export to 1 giant mpg (1.5 gig) recorded in LP mode 480x480
Use DVD2AVI to create project (d2v) and extract audio (mpa)
Use BeSweet to convert mpa to mp3 112k 32khz
Use VFAPIConv-EN to convert d2v to pseudo avi
Load avi into NanDub (or you can use VirtualDub) and encode video with filters: Deinterlace (blend), Crop (Black Borders), Resize (576x432)
Merge avi and mp3 using NanDub
Use AviFRate to adjust video framerate to synch audio and video (ok at beginning, but off by end if 1 hour recording)
Use Nandub to remove commercials and save final file, approx 340mb.
Burn 2 episodes per cdr
So far very good results, but the audio synch is the real pain, all the rest are chores, but straightforward (at least for me)...but adjusting the video framerate is guesswork and tedious.
Anyone have a better solution for encoding the audio?
(and of course anyone have a quicker solution overall?)
I am not interested in making these into svcd or dvd, as I can play divx on my laptop anywhere, and can also output from laptop to tv with nice sharp picture. I put two episodes on one 700mb cdr and at 576x432 the quality is excellent, just way too much work!
Tricky
PS All software mentioned is freeware and can be found at http://www.doom9.net in the downloads section. Nandub encodes DivX 3.11 using SBC, but the reason I use it is you can tell it what size you want the final file size to be and it gives you that size, if I used VirtualDub and DivX 5.03 the file size varies greatly...