Hi (--warning-- long and disjointed --warning--) I've been doing quite a bit of (highly unscientific) experimentation on this. A big issue in quality comes down to playback. I have yet to find a *decent* mpeg viewer for linux that will do fullscreen playback (yeah, I know, mtv - but it's very choppy at fullscreen). I've been using (Ugh!) Windows 98 for playback, I have yet to see a Linux mpeg player that works *anywhere near* as well as windoz media player. (*damn* it hurt saying that!) I capture the mpegs at 384x288 (1/2 PAL) using mp1e w/ v4l2 and drop windows into 640x480 for fullscreen playback. A few observations: 1. mp1e and v4l(1) - drops a few frames here and there, and is a little choppy, audio syncs fine in stereo (-a0), but doesn't sync in mono (-a3). 2. mp1e and v4l2 - great - no dropped frames, needs to be configured with vidpanel, 'cause color is a bit funny otherwise, audio syncs OK in mono (-a3) but not in stereo (-a0). Low quality capture (default for mp1e is 2.3 Mbit IIRC) is acceptable, but I would only use it for, say 'Opray' or quick snippets. Takes around 1 GB per hour. Fairly decent quality is around 3 - 3.2 Mbit, works quite well for movies & action sequences, comes out around 1.3 - 1.4 GB per hour. I haven't tried anything higher yet, maybe this weekend. Playback on a TV would probably look a whole lot better than a small monitor close-up. btw. Hardware is an old IXMicro TurboTV, K6/2 500. Hope this was of some help Anton Coetzee
