I've owned my PVR-250 TV card for a year now but after Hauppauge decided to 'improve' their drivers I'm having to re-calibrate my settings and get the optimum capture rate. (in case you don't know, the PVR-250 encodes to mpeg in real time so its never a raw file)

At present I capture at a higher rate than I will write to a DVD at. This allows me to make sure I can get the best quality/time balance on a disc. I'll encode at 10,000kbps, and then use TmpgEnc to re-encode down to 6000kpbs to ensure I can get 90 mins ona disc.

But do I need to capture at 10,000? (I got synch problems at 12,000). When I captured at 6400kbps, I got pixelation on high speed after I converted to 6000kbps.

Am I right in thinking I will get better quality converting from 10,000 to 6000 than I will by going from 6400 to 6000?