05/01   I've been trying to convert some old vhs tapes into dvds on my
        mac using the AlchemyTV DVR card.  I started out by capturing
        the video as MPEG4 but the quality doesn't look that great when
        I import the result into iMovie. There are several other QT codecs
        available in the AlchemyTV software, are any of them better for
        vhs conversion than MPEG4, or should I get the MPEG2 QT codec
        in order to get better quality?
        Also I can't seem to figure out how to get iMovie to let me edit
        out the edges which have bright green lines. Is there some other
        free program that can do this, or do I have to buy Final Cut? tia.
        \_ Don't capture in MPEG4.  You're capturing in one lossy format and
           then re-encoding it into another lossy format.
           \_ Okay. Some of my other choices are 'Component Video',
              'DV NTSC', 'Motion JPEG A/B', 'Apple Pixlet', 'Video'
              and 'None.'  Any of these better than MPEG4?
              \_ Use DV or MJPEG.
              \_ DV is probably your best option; it's what most videocameras
                 these days used.  MJPEG may be okay; but it depends on the
                 fps.
                 \_ fps shouldn't be relevant; it's orthogonal to the
                    encoder.  Assumably any of the formats he chooses would
                    match the FPS of the source material (29.97 fps for NTSC).

05/01   Summer intern, recent grad, senior developer positions available
        at Zone Labs.  email sky for details.  --sky