Which format should I capture to? AVI, MPEG, other?
 

There are four possible workflows:

Format	Media	Size per hour	Benefits	Drawbacks
Huffyuv AVI	Hard drive	35-40GB/hour	Lossless, no compression artifacts	size
MPEG-2 for DVD	DVD-Video	max 4GB/hour	Standard DVD	quality is not "the best"
MPEG-2 broadcast specs	Hard drive or Blu-ray	avg 10GB/hour (15mpbs)	Better than DVD, smaller than Huffyuv	not DVD
H.264	Blu-ray, HTPC	~1GB/hour	Better than DVD	only for H.264 source

Decisions, decisions!

So ... which one interests you most? :)

I use all four, depending on what I feel is best for the scenario. There's no one right answer. I use:

• MPEG-2 broadcast specs, if long-term archiving family home movies. These can be stored both on hard drive (archives), as well as Blu-ray discs (for watching).
• MPEG-2 for DVD, for TV recordings. Use a DVD recorder.
• Huffyuv for temporary/intermediary masters, for editing and restoring family home movies, rare commercial videos, etc. Once the project is finished, export the final version to DVD, Blu-ray, and/or broadcast specs (exceeds Blu-ray, 20-25Mb/s). To me, Huffyuv is too large for archiving, as well as inconvenient to watch.
• H.264 to "rip" digital TV streams (capture).

Why ATI All In Wonder cards are best

With an ATI All In Wonder (AIW) card, you can capture MPEG-2 for DVD, all the way up to 20MB/s MPEG-2 broadcast specs. The only real downside is MPEG-2 for DVD has a slight quality loss against lossless > 2-pass MPEG conversions, but it's not at all bad.

The ATI AIW can also capture lossless AVI (Huffyuv, Lagarith) via VirtualDub or ATI MMC, though VirtualDub is suggested.


H.264 notes

Note that my size for H.264 will vary, depending on resolution (and thus resolution:bitrate ratios). The downside to H.264 is that you cannot (and/or SHOULD not) capture to it directly, when your source is analog. It's not a capturing format, unless the source is digital, and using good H.264 hardware capture.

Great post for ATI AIW
 

"The ATI AIW can also capture lossless AVI (Huffyuv, Lagarith) via VirtualDub or ATI MMC, though VirtualDub is suggested."

Lordsmurf, I wished I had read this post a couple of days before. I take it the above advice still holds?

Thanks, Paul.

Yes, the advice still holds. :congrats:

ATI AIW allows versatility. Most others are either/or, MPEG only or lossless/AVI only.

For NTSC, the ATI 600 USB can also capture MPEG or lossless (AVI). Quality on the ATI AIW is better, but you get newer OS support, and less hardware-related issues (mostly in that older hardware is suggested for ATI AIW). PAL is AVI only.

Note that jwillis84 and myself are experimenting with ATI AIW on Win7 x86:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/news...-wonder-3.html