Multimedia Madness
I'm working on creating computer-viewable backup copies of my "Star Trek: The Next Generation" Season 3 DVD set for myself and it's like I'm taking a college course in "Computer-Based Video Processing"! There is a lot of work going on in this field, and I've tapped more than a few websites and discussion forums for help and software. Read on for an overview of the resources that have helped me.
My first foray into computer-based video processing was a few years ago, when I picked up a no-name BT848-based video capture card on the cheap from an online auction. I was running the BeOS on one of my computers at the time, and I was able to connect my camcorder up to it and capture video/audio from it. Also, I got a Sony mini-CCD camera and hooked it up to the capture card for use as a webcam. A little while after this, I got a Pinnacle Studio PCTV card, which was similar to the first card I had, but also had cable-tv input and a TV tuner. Watching TV on the PC in our basement was convenient at times, but I didn't do a whole lot of that. The card is still in my main computer upstairs, but it's not connected to cable.
I've found free software tools that allow the capture, filtering, conversion, and limited editing of video on the computer. The main one I use is VirtualDub. It has a capture program, but its best use for me has been as a compressing tool. When I capture video from my camcorder, I compress the input video on the fly with the lossless Huffyuv codec. However, the captured video is still a large amount of data that can be compressed into a lossy format like DivX to lower the capacity requirements.
I also use DivX for compressing the video streams of DVDs I want to back up. DivX allows for a wide range of encoding bitrates, so its quality is very scalable.
For compressing audio, my favorite format is Vorbis. Bitrate for bitrate, it sounds better than MP3, and it is an open, patent-free format. I use it to backup my audio CDs, as well as the audio soundtracks for my captured video and DVD backups.
For capturing DVD, I've used the tools and methods described for Divx5/Vorbis/Ogg encoding at Everwicked's website. He also hosts some bulletin boards that I frequent (just lurking, for now). I also lurk at the Doom9 forums; it seems like more people read and post to them than Everwicked's. I'm currently learning lots about how to use the AVISynth tool to process captured DVD video before encoding it into DivX.
My current ST:TNG encodes are into OGM files which I play with Windows Media Player or Zoomplayer. I'm still experimenting with the processing of the video at this point, but I think I have most of the bugs worked out, thanks to the great tools and help I've received from the Net.