video capture

[petrea]

I am capturing video in mpeg format. Is there an advantage in capturing in avi format? I am having some problem with the audio segments - it may just be camera noise but I am not sure. The video is fine (picture, etc.) just audio. I would like to be sure that I am not creating the problem in audio due to settings.
Here are my audio properties
LPCM audio
84,590,190 Samples
48000 Hz, 16 bit stereo
Thanks
Pete

[DVDDoug]

You audio format is fine. 48kHz LPCM is pure-uncompressed audio. It is better than CD quality (higher sample rate). Of course, the choice of audio format won't affect camera-noise or other noise that's present on the original.

In general, you should NOT capture to MPEG! AVI/DV is the preferred choice.

MPEG encoding requires lots of computation. There is more of a chance of "dropped frames" or other problems. Assuming you're making a DVD, the MPEG-2 encoding should be done from a file on your hard drive, after editing. That way, the computer can "take its time" so you're not in danger of dropped frames.

MPEG is not meant to be edited. You can cut and splice, but any "real" editing" will require an extra decode / re-code cycle. Because MPEG is "lossy" compression, you loose video quality each time the file is compressed. Worse, you may end-up with a corrupted MPEG. In my case the corruption resulted in the dreaded "lip-sync" problem.