[MEncoder-users] Mencoder vs. hardware based devices...

[Brian Keener]

Brian Keener wrote:

>
>>
>> There's a couple of other factors here that I'm considering as 
>> well...  I'm using an old STB TV-PCI that had a soft drink spilt on 
>> it years ago; the TV tuner no longer works, and neither does audio 
>> passthrough, for one thing, and I've always kept an eye out for a 
>> decent replacement.  I bought the STB card in 1996, as I recall.
>>
>> That, combined with the fact that virtually all of my problems have 
>> been capture-related issues, and not re-encoding issues, tends to 
>> make me think picking up one of those Hauppauge cards for the initial 
>> capture, and then running it through Mencoder might actually be the 
>> way to go.
>>
>> Thanks for the advice.
>>
>> If I can get this working smoothly enough, my church has a library of 
>> about 50 VHS cassettes they'd like to put on DVD.  Lucky me.
>>
>> Brian K
>
>
> Whelp, I picked up a PVR-150 for 79 bucks at my local Circuit City, and
> after a rough night of installation, it's working beautifully.
>
> The quality from this board is pretty good, WORLDS better than even the
> raw capture from my previous card (the STB), and being a hardware-based
> encoder it uses just about zero cpu cycles.
>
> My capture command is now basically just "cat /dev/video0 > output.mpg",
> with zero complications, which is quite a relief from my mencoder/v4l
> captures previously...
>
> Brian K
>
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>
Meant to add this, even after scaling down to 3000 kbps and 352x480 
resolution with mencoder, it looks much better than anything I'd been 
able to output before, and with a LOT less trouble...

Brian K