Hi, I'm going to try creating VCD from my camcorder (not digital) recording for the first time. I have decided to buy Matrox G400 or G450 card for video capture. I have following questions: 1. Is Matrox a good choice? 2. If I have integrated video card on my motherboard, should I spend money in buying another card like this and disable the onboard card? Or is there any cheaper alternative? 3. G450 captures video in MPEG2 and G400 in MPEG1 (needed for VCD). Should I buy G400? Or should I buy G450 and some software to convert MPEG2 to MPEG1? The reason I'm inclined to G450 is I get MPEG2 for spending that much money. 3. What softwares are available to convert MPEG2 to MPEG1? It would be nice if someone could help me out with this. Thanks, Jayant

-- Jayant (jayant_walvekar@yahoo.com), December 27, 2000

Answers

The best software for converting FROM any video format TO any video format is Media Cleaner Pro by Terran. www.terran.com

-- ender (ender_xien@hotmail.com), December 27, 2000.

If I had the budget I would go for the latest and the greatest affordable. I have the older G200 Matrox card and created MPEG2 using TMPEnc and very good looking SVCD with Nero. Goto www.vcdhelp.com for more info. I would be inclined to disable the on-board card to eliminate possible conflicts and performance issues.

-- Chris Jaffier (cjaffier@yahoo.com), January 02, 2001.

Note that the latest TMPGenc do not support MPEG-2 anymore. This is just in case you decide to use it.

-- EPM (epmartinez@yahoo.com), January 02, 2001.