Success-Thank You!

[rainman1962]

Thanks to all that have helped me find the right settings and answered all my newbie questions. Following are the settings that have resulted in near TV quality:

I am using a notebook with a 16 MB ATI RADEON MOBILITY graphics card. I am also using the ADAPTEC VIDEOH MEDIA CENTER (hardware encoding).

Using the default decoder I had 90+ CPU usage. Lots of dropped frames, etc. I was unable to get NVIDIA to work (the log said it would revert back to the default decoder). Then someone suggested using the OMEGA ATI DRIVERS. This did the trick and I was able to load the NVIDIA decoder. However, I also wanted to try the InterVideo decoder that was already on my computer (READ: FREE!!). But it would not show up in the available decoders choices.

Using the post entitled "Installed InterVideo WinDVD, but SS doesn't show codec" I was able to insert a new decoder to the DECODERCOLLECTION.XML file which allowed the InterVideo codec to surface. I then chose this decoder in the ADVANCED SETTINGS and my CPU runs at about 24-35%, equally good as the NVIDIA for $30 bucks less.

My settings are
Audio Hz=4800
Audio BR= 224000
Frames=29.97
Dimensions=640X480
VBR encoding 4M-8M
Bidirectional=2
Predictive=4
Motion Precision=25%

Like I said, seems to work pretty darn good. I haven't tried full screen yet but that is usually better than windowed.

Thanks again for everyone's help!