I captured 384x266 MPEG1 movie into harddisk using my capture card Pinacle VCD. I used CinePlayer DVR to capture. But, when I tried to play it on my Pioneer DV 626D VCD/DVD player, the movie displayed at left-hand corner which only occupied one quarter of the TV! Should I use 320x240 or...??

Can anyone recommend what capture device is good for price and quality? Which capture software is more preferred?

-- Justin Chong (justinchong@mail.com), August 22, 2001

Answers

The resolution you used is not valid for VCD. Valid resolutions are 352x288 for PAL and 352x240 for NTSC. Your resolution of 384x266 is somewhat strange and might be the reason your VCD looks weird on your Pioneer player. As far as capture cards go, you will have to make up your own mind on this. I recommend you look on the Internet for as many different forums as possible. Every card out there has its supporters and detractors. Some cards work better on certain systems than others. I use the ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon and I record using ATI's Digital VCR software. I should warn you that plenty of people have weird problems with ATI and some people hate it. If you think you might want to get an ATI card, look at www.pcphotovideo.com members.home.net/richa for some information that might be useful to you. I will tell you that if you have an Intel CPU, you will probably have less problems. Some people, like me, have AMD CPUs on motherboards with VIA chipsets and we tend to have problems. I have fewer than most people with similar PCs, but I still have some small problems. Dazzle (www.dazzle.com), which some people rave about, won't work at all on AMD systems. Again, look for as much info as you can and try to decide on what card you think will work best for you. Good luck.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), August 22, 2001.

Sigh - the forum reformatted my answer to make it less readable. The web sites I listed are members.home.net/richa and www.pcphotovideo.com. Hope that helps.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), August 22, 2001.