I need some help/advice. I am new to this forum AND to MC all together. So please bare with me.
For the last 3 years or so I have been downloading TV shows. An hour show with the commercials cut out is about 42 minutes long, about 350mb, and in an awesome 624x352 , 16x9 divx\avi display. I view them on a 52 flat panel TV, a 19” LCD monitor, or a laptop screen. It really doesn’t matter what I view them on. The displays are dvd quality.
So…. I install Vista, purchase a Hauppauge PVR-150 USB tuner card and start recording my own shows. The DVR-MS format is great. But I want to rip the shows down to about the 350mb range that I am used to. I have used numerous applications (Movie Maker, Crunchie, DVRMSToolbox, TMPGenc 4.0 express, etc.) to reformat the files. I can get them down to 350mb but the quality is horrible. If I increase them from 350mb to about 750mb the quality is ok. But I can never get the format right. MC records the shows in a 720x480 format. I have to use the zoom function within MC to view the recorded shows, as well as my own ‘ripped’ shows, in full screen. I don’t have to use the zoom function on the shows I download to view them full screen.
Can anyone help me out?? I would like to know what program (and settings) to use to rip DVRMS shows down to the 350mb, 624x354 full screen divx/xvid/avi, format I had been downloading all along.
Thanks.
