what's the best video capture encoding codec?

[jrinco11]

i'm trying to find the best codec to use for capturing video (tv card). The best I've found so far is the windows media one that came w/my card and divx 4.x. Does anyone know of anything better?

Thanks,
James

[gwilks98]

I haven't done any video capture off the TV, but I put my vote in for Divx 5.02 or greater. (Stay away from 5.03 though).

If you're looking to share your videos, be concerned with compatibility since not everyone has the same codecs. Divx is both well known and widely support.

You can find some pretty good codec downloads here too:

http://www.divx-digest.com
Check the articles and software sections. Beware of spyware getting thrown into the download though...

[cheapchinese]

i always thought avi's were good

[SmokeyDP]

You also want to pic a codec that will be able to compress the video in REALTIME. Besides the video codec you also need the audio codec. I use Divx and MP3, but stuff gets out of psync. If I click on the slide bar it goes back in sync. This is the same accross Winamp and Windows Media Player.

[jrinco11]

yah, i think that the windows media codec (video and audio) is the best even over divx -- i guess divx would work better if i had a better video card (the one i have now is just 16mb i/o magic)

thanks for the info tho, as soon as I get a better vid card i'll use the divx codec

[Paymaster]

Originally posted by SmokeyDP
You also want to pic a codec that will be able to compress the video in REALTIME.

Not neccessarily... I generally capture the data in a high resolution, low compression format, then use TMPGenc to convert it to DIVX or whatever other format I need.