Capturing question

[VegasD]

Hi all. Here is my issue:

I have my crummy ATI card working now, hooked into coax for cable TV. I have downloaded VirtualDub for recording. I also downloaded DivX. My goal is to record Seinfeld episodes. When I recorded my first Seinfeld Episode (30 min long) the file size is about 450megs. (I am recording straight to Divx (.avi) I think)

When I download other Seinfeld episodes online they are all between 40 - 80 megs large. My questions are:

1. How do I get my 450 Meg .avi file down to the 40 - 80 meg size.
2. How can I remove the commercials?

Thanks!

VegasD

[Cart]

Suggestions to reduce file size:
1) Use a lower quality setting/bitrate.
2) Use processing filters on your video, e.g. temporal smoother and smart smoother.
3) Don't forget to compress the audio (to MP3, etc.).
4) Capture to an AVI with little lossy compression (Huffyuv, MJPEG) and compress to DivX in post-capture, preferably with 2-pass encoding.

VirtualDub can remove commercials. However, it's much easier to do this if you capture to an AVI because DivX videos must be cut on a keyframe if you want to avoid recompression.

-Cart
http://www.geocities.com/lukesvideo/index.html