[MPlayer-users] mencoder video card recommendation

[Martin Collins]

On Thu, 18 Mar 2004 16:27:03 -0800
"Andrew J. Yeckel" <ay2b at queue.org> wrote:

> so I'd like to know what the "best" solution is, even
> if I don't end up using it.  I'm looking for an answer of the form
> "use X" not of the form "don't use Y".

For editability raw video, DV or mjpeg are the best options AFAIK.
Raw video requires huge quantities of disc space (~70GB/h?) but is
easily captured with any cheap TV card. Your final DVD will have the
best possible quality as it will only need encoding once.

DV capture is good quality with PAL and has reasonable disc usage. If
your event were being recorded on DV cameras you could just copy the DV
to your machine, no capture required.

Hardware mjpeg capture cards are now rare (Matrox Marvel, Pinnacle DC10,
LML33) but you should be able to use a TV card to get raw video and
encode it to mjpeg in realtime with your machine. This is probably
your best option, given you are using NTSC and don't have a terabyte
of disc space.

Martin