Wide World of Women

Hey guys,

I am a new member and am looking for help on my set up. I want to get the highest quality possibly, and am amazed by some of the caps and vids here.
Could you please give me some advice on my set up.

My set up:

-LG HD/DVD Recorder RH387-M (250gb)
-Cogeco Digital Cable box (standard version, mostly digital channels, although not full HD)
-Imac computer

Most of the channels I would like to record are analog channels, so they don't have the best signal to begin with...as they are not available in digital just yet.

Here is how I am capping/recording.
-I have the Recorder hooked up using coaxial cables, they run from the digital box to the Recorder and then to the tv.
(The recorder also supports S-video, composite cables, would these be better?)

-I record a program to the Hdd/recorder (Using XP mode, which takes up the most amount of space on the Hdd, it is supposed to be the highest quality available) The machine can also record in Divx mode, does this make any difference in the quality or just the file size?
-Any editing or trimming of clips I have been doing on the Recorder before burning, as it has a built in editing program.

-Then I burn the segment onto a DVD-RW and transfer it to my Imac
-The files are VOB files, which I am not familiar with, but they play fine on the VLC player everyone is using on this site.
I do not convert them to a different file type, is VOB ok, or is there something better?

-I am new to Mac, so I don't know what program to cap with, any suggestions? My mac is upgraded fully, so should be able to run anything.

-I then upload the original VOB file on-line to a hosting site.

Could anyone offer me some advice on how to improve the quality of my videos and what program to cap with?
Also are VOB files fine to archive programs/clips, or should I convert them to something else.
I would like to make short clips to share here, and also archive entire shows aswell.

I am totally new to all of this, and would love some help on how to improve.

Here is a sample of one of my clips:

I wanted to upload a clip that I couldn't find available, so heres one from the weather Network that I think you guys will enjoy.
Emily Vukovic: Oct 02, 2008
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RIW4Y3WE

I also have a lot of VHS tapes I would like to back up and share, although I won't get into that now...

Any suggestions on how to improve my set up would be great.

Thanks,

Quality is all going to depend on your source. Method will make slight improvements.

First off, you are using a coax cable to connect. Unless the coax is going right to a tuner then you should be using that. If you are using an RF input then you should switch to s-video. You also need audio cables since that's only a video connection.

With recorded DVD's I would record in the highest quality mode since mpeg-2 tends be a little lossy. VOB files are form of mpeg-2. You could always compress them down with a better codec like Xvid or DivX later if you wanted, but you want the best quality vids to begin with. Keep in mind encoding takes time and processor so depending on how much video you want to make you might have to plan that out.

You also said it records as DivX as well so it wouldn't hurt to try that out. DivX usually gives you same quality with more compression (or better quality with less compression), but I've had problems with dropped frames recording directly to DivX on computer.

I've heard of people using filters with encoding software and codecs to sharpen and fix up VHS recordings, but I've never bothered with them. Virtual Dub Mod has a few if you want to test them out. DivX codec has some. I'm not 100% sure if V-Dub works with Mac, but I'm sure some of the Mac guys here might have suggestions for encoding software.

Thanks for the help...the station I record is an analog signal right now, so that is probably what is affecting the quality....I will record some digital ones to show a sample aswell.

A .VOB (Video Object File) file is a container,it is basiccly an MPEG-2 transport stream.
an industry standard thats used in all dvd players/recorders
(Blue Ray dvd players/recorders can also be H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, VC-1 aswell as MPEG-2)