How to convert a Digital TV recording into high quality .avi

[Dv8]

I've been asked by a few people lately how to convert a digital tv capture into a decent quality .avi file (DivX, XviD, whatever) so I thought i'd do a quick tutorial to help anyone else wondering. I'm no guru this is just how I do it so feel free to add and other tips etc to this thread, hope it helps. Many thanks goes to kr0k, Offline Videos and Donbot for their help and tips in the past.

Get a copy of VirtualDub-Mpeg2 (free) and install it. Google it or get it from here http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/stable/. Make sure you have the audio and video codecs installed that you want to use for compression. I mainly use and recommend DivX for video and LAME for audio. XviD is also a very good and popular video codec. To install those codecs you can either get them as seperate installs from their respective homepages, again do a google, or another option is to just install a shitload of encoding and decoding codecs using something like K-Lite mega codec pack which is what I do (make sure the DivX and LAME encoders/decoders are selected when you install the codec pack).

Okay let's start. Crank up your copy of VirtualDub-Mpeg2 and follow these steps:

1. Press 'File'>'Open video file...' and browse to the .mpeg tv capture you want to convert and open it.

2. Next go to the 'Video' tab and make sure Full processing mode is checked.

3. Now we want add some filters to the video. Here we need to deinterlace it, i'm not sure exactly what it does technically but I do know it cleans your final video right up by getting rid of the "stairway" effect. All we need to do to accomplish this is press 'Video'>'Filters...' and you should see a popup box called 'Filters' appear. Press the 'Add' tab and select 'deinterlace', the default deinterlace mode (blend) is fine. Next we add the video filter called 'resize' and set it to any size ratio of 16:9 (widescreen) while keeping in mind that DivX only allows widths that are divisible by 4 and heights divisible by 2. I personally use 1024 (width) and 576 (height) or sometimes half that size - 512x283. I've heard that the size should be a multiple of 32 to save on processing CPU power needed to play the finished video, but let's not worry about that right now because only old outdated computers have problems with these videos... Ok now add whatever else you want in the way of filters, 'levels' sets the brightness etc. which I use sometimes and also the 'logo' filter...Anyway that's it with the video filters.
Press 'Ok'.

4. Press 'Video'>'Compression' and you should see a popup box saying 'Select video compression', select the latest DivX codec installed (in the latest K-Lite pack we are using DivX 5.2.1). The following is optional if you want to tweak the quality and filesize of the final compressed video - press the 'Configure' tab while you still have the 'Select video compression' box still up. You should now see a DivX configuration popup appear. Set the bitrate to whatever you want, this is the quality of the final video, the higher the number the better the quality. I use around the 2000-4000Kbs mark.
Press 'Ok'.

5. Now let's hit the 'Audio' tab and make sure 'Full processing mode' is selected. Now press 'Compression' and you should get a popup box called 'Select audio compression'. Select LAME MP3 and a bitrate on the right, again the higher the better the quality, I usually set LAME to 128kbs ABR Stereo. (ABR/VBR saves you extra bytes in final filesize but CBR is best if you want to join .avi files together, otherwise you will get a bitrate conflict).
Press 'Ok'.

6. If you need to cut out any commercials or boring bits then scroll to the start of that bit by using the controls at the bottom of Virtualdub-Mpeg2 and then click on 'Edit'>'Set selection start'. Again using the controls go to the end of the piece you want cut out then select 'Edit'>'Set selection end', now press cut, hey presto the piece is gone. Do that as many times as you need of course.

7. That be all folks, now press 'File'>'Save as avi...', give your file a name and save it

[Dv8]

Note for step 4: When you have the resize filter up, under the part where you enter the video dimensions select Filter mode > Precise bicubic A=-1.00. This will do some antialiasing work for you by getting rid of more rough edges from your vid.

The above instructions might look like a lot of effort but you will only have to do it once. When you have put all your settings in and tweaked VirtualDub to get the results you are after you can save yourself doing all of this over again, just go to 'File' > 'Save processing settings...' Save your settings as whatever and then of course next time you want to edit and compress a video, just go to 'File' > 'Load processing settings...' and load the "whatever.vcf" file. I personally have two .vcf's saved, one for widescreen footage and another for standard 4:3 ratio TV, the only difference between the two is the cropping settings.

Audio troubleshooting:
Audio skew/synchronisation problems - If you end up with a large compressed file and the audio goes out of sync towards the end of the video then this should fix the problem. Select Video > Framerate and then under the setting 'Source rate adjustment' select 'Change so video and audio durations match'.
Files which have audio that is out of sync from the very start can be corrected using 'Audio' > 'Interleaving...' Then in the 'Audio skew correction' box where it says "Delay audio track by * ms", enter either a negative (shift audio backwards) or positive number (shift audio forward) in milliseconds (1000 = 1 second). If that doesn't work then try this method - http://www.aussiesexposed.com/forums/vi ... php?t=2069