using GBPVR with ATI Theater 550 Pro for making DVDs from VHS

[aaronrus]

ive been looking at the sapphire theatrix as a good capture card for MPEG-2, because of its nice filtering capabilities. I have a bunch of VHS tapes and Laserdiscs that i want to transfer to DVD. I bought a full frame time base corrector to eliminate macrovision from the vhs tapes, and to stabalize the video so the MPEG-2 encoder chip can do its job easier. I have read on other forums about how completely shitty the bundled software with the theater 550 pro capture cards is, and how it doesnt give you fine control over the quality of the MPEG-2 compression nor the filters built into the card, and the way it is captured. My question is this: Will the GBPVR software allow me to make usable MPEG-2 files (.mp2 or .vob, or even .avi), so that i can use DVD authoring software to make DVDs with? also, is anyone else buying the theater 550 pro for this purpose?

[sub]

Yes it'll allow you to create MPEG-2 files (.mpg). I dont personally do DVD authoring, but these files should be fine for this task. There is one issue with the GB-PVR 550 Pro support that means its stuck on the high bitrate setting at the moment, but I'll correct this in the next release.

[aaronrus]

Yes it'll allow you to create MPEG-2 files (.mpg) which can be used for DVD authoring. There is one issue with the 550 Pro support that means its stuck on the high bitrate setting at the moment, but I'll correct this in the next release.

arent .mpg files just MPEG-1 files? or does it work for both MPEG-1 and 2?

also, if i install a huffYUV or MJPEG codec, can i capture to straight .AVI without MPEG-2 compression? or is that not within the capabilities of the software? The reason I ask this is that some VHS tapes i have are of such poor quality that live MPEG-2 compression will make it look liek shit, i'd need to capture to a much less compressed file format, then software encode to MPEG-2...

thanks again for the answers

[sub]

arent .mpg files just MPEG-1 files? or does it work for both MPEG-1 and 2?

MPEG-2 files nearly always have the extension .mpg. This extension is also used fro MPEG-1 files.

also, if i install a huffYUV or MJPEG codec, can i capture to straight .AVI without MPEG-2 compression? or is that not within the capabilities of the software?

No, GB-PVR will only record to MPEG-2 files (unless you have a hardware DivX/MPEG4 encoder device like the Plextor PX-TV402U).