Best compression/quality settings for MPEG-2 and showsqueeze?

[wvenable]

Hello everyone,

I did some searches on the forum but I didn't find the information I'm looking for. My turner is an ATI Theatre 550 Pro. I'm currently using some pretty basic compression settings: recording at 4224kbsp MPEG-2 (DVD ready) and not doing any Showsqueeze. However, the artifacts are much more noticable now on my new big screen TV than they were on my old set, so I'm looking to improve the quality without using up a lot more disk space overall.

I'd like to get some suggestions for what settings I should use for recording standard-definition content at a higher quality. There's no need to be DVD compatible. I'm also thinking of using showsqueeze to save space for recorded shows but I don't know what the best options are for that either. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

[ZetaVu]

If you want dvd compliant you can go as high as 9000kbps for video and audio combined, just subtract the audio from video and that would be your best setting. If you don't care about dvd compliant, then the sky's the limit, experiment (record a repeated show at several settings and decide for yourself). For my 40" I use 5000kbps and have no issues. At that setting I'm clean on satellite and better than my antenna on sd ota.

For showsqueeze, I use 1200 kbps but (very important) dual pass. Single pass you lose too much quality. THis is close to what I get with autogk xvid where I compress 90 minutes to 700 mb. (except this is about 1gb). I'd say that would be your lowest quality and work upward, definitely dual pass though. I keep screen size at 640x480.

For HD, I use the HD showsqueeze high setting, looks fine to me.