Best way to record Tv?

[MikeD340]

I have an AIW 8500DV and I'm looking for the best way to capture, store, and playback TV on my computer. Currently I'm running an Athlon 1700XP, 768 MB DDR, with plenty of hard drive space. I've got a CD burner but not a DVD burner. What I would like to do is be able to record Tv shows (and movies from cable tv) onto my hard drive and store them on the drive. I also wouldn't mind the ability to burn them to CD to playback on a friend's DVD player. I'm mostly concerned with quality of the image, but to get a good compression rate would be nice.

I am a novice, and have tried using Divx with Xmpeg and couldn't get the audio to work. Any suggestions? A link to any helpful guides would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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[the_Prisoner]

I am not sure how the 8500DV captures analog video, but if it does a good job you can record to your hardrive and burn VCD and SVCD on your cd-rom. Both formats are fine. Resoluttion wise, here are the formats:

VCD equals 352x288
SVCD equals 480x576
DVD equals 720x576

Your computer is fine to capture video but the quality may depend on your video source. Digital sources would be better. Analog is harder to work with then digital video.

the Prisoner

I'm not a number, I'm a free man!

 

[Mavicator]

If you have the money you could buy an Win TV PVR card for around $200-250. Works like a tivo on your computer.

-- Ah sh*t! sys64738 --

 

[rlemo]

From a cable analog source the end product is not that great. I have tried recording on my ATI AWI 128 and played back on my sony tv with results worth watching but not worth keeping for future viewing. Depends what kind of quality you want.

 

[rlemo]

From a cable analog source the end product is not that great. I have tried recording on my ATI AWI 128 and played back on my sony tv with results worth watching but not worth keeping for future viewing. Depends what kind of quality you want.

 

[MikeD340]

I've got digital cable. Now does the cable have to run through the cable converter box for it to become a TRUE digital feed? Or can I use a splitter so that I don't always have to record what is on the tv in living room? Also, if I decide to record directly from the cable converter box I've got the option of feeding a coaxile, composite, or S-video cable from the converter box to the AIW Radeon. What's my best choice (for picture quality) of those 3?

Does anyone have more tips on best compression/quality to capture the video?

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[bob_dn]

Use the S-Video hook up for best quality.
Get a separate cable box for your computer. You'll need it to have all channels available on TV and computer simultaeneously.
Go to <A HREF="http://www.vcdhelp.com/" target="_new">vcdhelp</A> for info on burning VCD's (or anything else you want to burn) since you don't have a DVD burner. This is an excellent site. They also have product info on which DVD players support VCD, MP3 and other formats. You can search their forums for instructions on how to make VCD's (audio/video CD's you can burn on CD-R discs). You can only burn 60 minutes on one CD-R so it takes 2 CD-R's for one full length movie.

You can compress your video using <A HREF="http://www.divx.com/" target="_new">divx codec</A>. The free one is fine. I use <A HREF="http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/" target="_new">virtualdub</A> (free) to compress the movies I get from my satellite to divx format for storage on my HDD. They look very good on a 17" monitor and in VCD format they look good on a 32" TV.

You'll need to do some reading at vcdhelp.com to figure this all out, but if I can do it anyone can.

One thing, you can only load MPEG 1 files in virtualdub. I downloaded <A HREF="http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html" target="_new">TMPGEnc</A> (free) to load MPEG 2 files and convert to MPEG 1 for virtual dub.

I actually PAID for software to edit and burn my video files. Intervideo makes <A HREF="http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Product_Profile.jsp?p=WinProducer3CD" target="_new">WinProducer 3</A> for burning VCD's or you can use <A HREF="http://www.nero.com/en/index.html#root" target="_new">Nero Burning ROM</A>. I have both and both will burn VCD's but WinProducer allows you to edit and add effects, titles etc. if you like.

If you have enough room on your HDD you should record in MPEG 2 format - DVD quality and keep the video uncompressed until you get a DVD burner. Then you can burn at DVD quality. Be warned, it takes 3 to 4 GIGABYTES of storage for an average full length movie at full quality. Once compressed to divx format the same movie will be 700 MB!

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