Creating MPEG that plays on mjority of PCs

Hi All,

I’m new to the world of creating MPEGs for work purposes. Usually I capture stuff from VCR or DVD on to AVI through A Canopus capture card.

I then edit the AVI to suit what I’m doing and converting the export to MPEG.

What I can’t quite grasp is how to encode the MPEG. I’m not sure what the best CODEC to use is so that the MPEG file I create is pretty much going play on most PCs (clients PCs etc). I have a few codecs to select from (one being “MainConcept MPEG Video” but I need a “generic” one if such a codec exists.

Thanks for any help in advance!

Chadda

MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 are not containers like avi where you can have dozens of different codecs encoding the audio and video stream. They’re pretty standard in their encoding method. You may have slight differences in bitrate, GOP (group of pictures) structure, and stuff like that, but the end result should be playable in any mpeg-1 or mpeg-2 player (note that mpeg-1 playback is much more universal than mpeg-2 - for instance mpeg-2 playback does NOT come standard with Windows operating systems - mpeg-2 is the format for dvd’s and usually requires additonal software).
Now what I think your program was asking you was not a codec, but which encodER to use. Perhaps you have several encoders on your system, from different vendors, so it asks you. (It’s like when you encode in mp3, they ask you if you want the use the encoder from fraunhofer, xing, lame, or someone else)

I can not thank you enough for that explanation. I had so many questions in my head - why and why not - and your response totally cleared them up.

Thanks so much!