DV Capture straight to DivX

[Slothbag]

Is there way to capture a video stream from a firewire (iEEE) device straight into DivX or MPEG, rather than the two stets of having to capture it to DV format and then compress it?

The captured video will be the final source, so there is no need for editing.

I currently use Scenalyzer and/or premiere for capturing.

[theReal]

Would be quite hardware-consuming since it must either be resized and then encoded or it must be encoded in fullsize.

However, I'd also want to deinterlace DV video first (and you can definitely forget about that in realtime.... in ten years maybe...)

[fluss]

Try the free MPEG4 encoder from http://www.sigmadesigns.com/support/downloads.htm

It is a one pass encoder, so if you have a
CPU powerfull enough, it might be possible to do it on the fly.

MPEG4 does not need deinterlacing, it is designed to compress
interlaced frames ( atleast that is how a read the
included pdf document ).

Yours Bosse

[theReal]

I just tried the Sigma encoder, but it seems to be more CPU consuming than Divx5 in "fastest" mode.
I'm not sure if Divx5 is recording two fields or just interlaced frames, but you can use it as well - only it won't look good on the monitor (fields or not fields, interlaced video always looks bad on the monitor).

[Slothbag]

What program are you using to capture? I use scenalyzer and premiere and they dont let you choose custom codecs, they only let you use the standard DV Codec.

[theReal]

I tried the codec for capturing from TV with VDub - that doesn't work with DV.

With Ulead Media Studio you can choose from all compatible windows codecs when capturing DV

[NeVeRLiFt]

Me and my friends videocapture using mpeg4 and it looks good. As good as a SVCD videocapture and half the size.
We use the KS Mpeg4 VKI V3 codec, we also use XviD and DivX5, DivX4 or DivX5 work with resolutions over 320x240 since you can deinterlace while capturing if you check the box. You judge the quality on that. Not to mention DivX4 is buggy piece of shit. DivX5 with the right settings can have small size and ok quality. You really need to have a clean source and use S-Video in or better if you can. XviD is good to with the right settings. But when it comes to quality and size the KS Mpeg4 VKI V3 codec that comes with the Delorian VA Studio v2.0 Codec Pack is king for videocapturing with Mpeg4 ;)

With a clean source and the right settings you can have 1min = 6-12mb avg the less motion and darker scenes do better and the clean source will get you just under 6mb.


*EDIT*
special note:
This size takes into account you compressed the audio to mp3 or wma.

[Darksoul71]

@NeVeRLiFt:

DivX5 with the right settings can have small size and ok quality. You really need to have a clean source and use S-Video in or better if you can. XviD is good to with the right settings

Could you please "enlighten" me about the right settings for XVid and DivX5 ?

I´ve tried quater PAL (352x288) and DivX 5.02 with the following settings:
Min quant: 2
Max quant: 4-6 (depending on source)
1 pass bitrate mode
around 1600 kBit/s

With some good source (satellite, digital cable, DVD, etc) I get about "cheap VHS quality" when playing back those captured DivX on my 70 cm Philips TV via TV Out. Can this be better ?

-D$