Wide World of Women

Okay here is my situation. I currently have the following set up

2 gig pentium four processor
512 mb ram
128 mb ati radeon 9800 graphics card
hauppauge usb2.0 mce external capture card

I have my video going straight into the card via coaxile cable. I tried using composite (is that right...red white yellow cable) going through my cable box to the usb tuner and did not like the outcome plus the sound was very hollow. I have yet to invest in s video due to the fact that I will still have to use the red white cables for sound. I mainly cap Fox News, QVC, and HSN. QVC seems a little pixelated or grainy compared to the other two. Not too much just enough to annoy me.

My question is when I record it creates on hell of an mpeg file. I have a copy of pinnacle studio 8 which is incredible for editing the clips. But when I go to create an avi or mpeg using Pinnacle the video is still pretty large in size. A one or two minute clip can run me between 100 to 150 mb. I have seen others post incredible looking clips and their avi is only half the size with the same length...sometimes a few minutes more. I would like to continue to us Pinnacle to edit my clips, save as mpeg again and the use some kind of program to convert to avi and at the very least keep the same quality. If anyone has any suggestions to a free program and then maybe I could find a good tutorial that would be great!

Thanks in advance guys!

The avi's should be compressed with a video and audio codec. Divx or Xvid for video are good, and mp3 or ac3 is good for audio. Chances are you're not compressing one or the other. You have to change the settings on the codec configuration. The filesize largely depends on bitrate. The quality of the output avi will be a combination of bitrate and original source quality.

I use virtual dub with divx and mp3 codecs which there is a thread already started if you want more info:

http://wideworldofwomen.net/WWW/viewtopic.php?t=71927

You'll have to do a few tests with a small 5 second clip to see what turns out right. You can also find a lot of good info by searching whatever codecs you plan on using.

Moviemaker is free and you already have it If you have XP

I use a program called total Video convertor that I bought a lincense to on line. Do a search for Total Video convertor. It allows me to change mpeg 1 to mpeg4 video as well as going from mpeg to mp3s all in one step. I have not tried going from mpeg to avi video yet. Almost all of my video is now in mpeg4 version (using quicktime player to play0. I also have a collection of over 50GB of mp3s.

dave