How practical is mpeg4?

[niv]

Hay,
I use a bt878 tv card with the btwincap drivers and iuVCR to record tv shows.

1. what is the best resulotion a current pc can record in real-time? can it do 768X576 ? (my xp1700+ can go 480X360)
2. As I am low on disk space, I thoght of using mpeg2 to capture tv shows in realtime. I tried to use CCE, but it doesn't show up in the codec box. what codec should I look for?
3. How can I tell my pc to recompress to xvid (offline) shows I recorded to mjpeg? so I tape to high quality, then automaticly convert to xvid to save space.

niv

[toysoldier]

1. I think we often capture at 720X480,and main factor is your hdd speed,
and your compress codec.your cpu is enough to capture 720x480,
why you just capture 480x360?

2. save disk space,you can choice "morgan mjpg" codec,set q=80,
1 min filesize>=100M.

3.if you no choice,you can capture to divx,
but it's not good support interlace video (like TV prog).
divx filesize <=mpg.

[niv]

1. seems that as you only need a 500Mhz cpu to play mpeg4 that it is not a hard disk issue. that is because the compression is done in the main memory. I can capture at 768X576 to MJpeg, which means less compression, which means more data to the hard disk. so the hard disk seems fast enogtn. I think its a cpu issue, which one do you have?

2. 10x I'll look it up, but isn't there a mpeg encoder?

3. Xvid has an interlace option

[2ZOD.COM]

.....

[niv]

My target is to watch the shows on the pc.
I tried capturing stright to xvid, and got as far as 480X360 on my xp1700+. I asked if anyone here managed to capture at a higher reselution, probably on a better pc.

The other option is to triger vitrualdub to recompress the show to xvid. how can I have it done automaticly?

Niv