The Ultimate Vid Capture Card = ?

[Captain Hilts]

I'm using my TV Wonder (not VE) in Windows XP right now, so it must've been some sort of conflict like you said.

 

[DaddyB]

OK I have 15GB free on a hard drive, if I let the ATi MMC use the whole thing then this is how long I can record for in a given file format at a given resolution:

AVI 320x240 55 min
AVI 640x480 14min
AVI 80x60 - 9 Hours 30min

MPEG2 480x480 14 hours 16min (SVCD, only 2Mbps)
MPEG2 720x480 4 hours 21 min (DVD 8Mbps)
MPEG2 320x240 8 hours 37min (only 2Mbps)

As you can see with AVI I can record for 14min at 640x480 and with mpeg2 I can record for 4+ HOURS at 720x480. Thats why I say generally its better to use MPEG2, although I am not sure how much better an AVI would be at 640x480 then it would be at 320x240, with MPEG2 the difference is substantial though. Strange thing is that DV-AVI (digital video camcorder) takes about 4GB for 15-20 minutes and thats at 720x480

I haven't really encoded standard AVI to MPEG2 but I do often encode DV-AVI to mpeg2 and it takes about 4-8 times the length of a video to encode it depending on the effects I use and the computer I use (ie. if I have a 15min video it will take between 1-2 hours to encode). Obviously for longer movies it's one of those things you start before you go to bed and hope it's done when you get up, I use Adobe Premiere 6.5 with adobe's own mpeg encoder though (only tried Ulead video studio a couple of times).

you might be interested in the site www.dvdrhelp.com it has a lot of info about all of this stuff.

Edit: fixed link, its dvdRhelp not dvdhelp.com

 

[Movax]

Daddyb, your measurments are using the standard ATI VCR codec for AVIs, are they not? One can also install the DivX codec and encode their AVIs with Divx (A hacked MPEG4 codec) and Mp3, drastically decreasing the file size without effecting quality.

I'm not sure where it is in the MMC, but I know you can tell it to use different codecs. The level of compression you can use in real time all depends on the speed of your computer, or you will drop frames.

 

[DaddyB]

Hey its DaddyB not Daddyb there movaX...j/k

I am not aware of a way to add other codecs to MMC but the reason he was asking me about that is because I said that for optimum quality one should record to AVI (uncompressed) then encode it to MPEG for S/VCD, the same is true for DivX. Garbage in - Garbage out, the higher quality the original file the higher quality your encoded file will be; MPEG and DivX and not lossless compression formats as (uncompressed) AVI is.

You dont scan an image to JPEG then convert it to gif if you are looking for the best quality, you scan it to tiff or at least bmp, then convert it directly to gif; same principal.

Also encoding in real time does not produce the same quality as encoding it with seperate software later on, as I said above it can take 4-8 times the length of a video to encode it with software (ie. 15min video can take 1-2 hours to encode), there is quality loss associated with the speeding up of the encoding process.

Its all just preference though, like I said I just encode to MPEG2 in real time but for 'optimum quality' encoding in real time is not the best option.

 

[raven]

Looking to watch and record shows from my cable, vcr, and such. So I'm looking for a video capture card. But I don't know what good names are, or even what to look for.

Are video tuners the same as video capture? Or do video tuners need software to capture the signal?

What about output formats? Are AVI's better than MPEG's? Vice versa?

- Thanks for all the info.

If you want a good video capture card, get a Dazzle! right here Dazzel also has many other models then that, so just search around their site. You might actualyl find something you like!

or if you want a somewhat lower quality, get a a 9700 AIW =) you cant go wrong with that!! =) Great gaming performance, with AIW capabilities and a KICK-A** remote!

raven

 

[Movax]

DaddyB,

I think you are wrong. If your system can keep up that is. If quality is a concern then, yes you should save real time video to a low compression, but less CPU intensive format, and encode it later. If your system can keep up without a loss of frames, and you plan to encode to a high compression format anyway, why not do it from the start? I'm sure you know DivX and mpeg2 can result in very high quality video.

As far as the MMC, I am sure you can specify what codec is to be used, as I did it with an ATI TV Wonder card.

 

[JohnnyTheRed]

Would a card designed for capturing analog signals, still be able to capture a signal from a digital cable source. Is there a difference? If it can, will there be any degradation in the signal, or the quality of the captured image?

BTW Thanks to whoever posted that link for dvdrhelp.com it's a fantastic site.

However, i am reading alot of the reviews over there, and it seems most of the cars are limited to 720x480 at 30fps....earlier I mentioned I read MPEG2 standards were 720x480 at 60fps is this incorrect?

 

[shadowdr]

I have the ATI TV Wonder VE and i like it.I have cable hooked up to it and the picture is fine fullscreen at desktop res 1024x780.There are a few channels that are fuzzy but most are at least as good as tv.Encoded files can be watched with win dvd or media player so i havent seen quality to be an issue.encoding on my machine is about twice runtime.

 

[Highlander]

I have the Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP Deluxe capture card and I highly recommend it.

Totally agree....
does the time shift fucntion work ok on your card....
on playback, the sound cuts off at the point on the live tv feed where I hit play to watch from the beginning again.....

 

[DaddyB]

Would a card designed for capturing analog signals, still be able to capture a signal from a digital cable source. Is there a difference? If it can, will there be any degradation in the signal, or the quality of the captured image?

Yeah you can use digital cable and you can do it with virtually no loss in quality but there are a few problems with doing it. My digital cable box (Scientific Atlanta) has coaxial/cable out, Svideo out and composite/RCA out, they may not all have all three outputs but I think most would.

Regardless of which output you use you will not be able to change the channels through your computer, you will have to have the capture software set to channel 3 (or Svideo or composite/RCA) and you can only change channels on the cable box. If you use the coaxial/cable out there will be quality loss both in video and audio. If you use the composite/RCA out you will get good picture and audio quality and if you use the Svideo out you wil get better picture quality and good audio quality.

30FPS (actually 29.97) is the standard, that is 30 Frames Per Second. All NTSC signals (DVD, VHS, TV) are 30FPS but it is interlaced which means it draws all of the odd lines (1,3,5...479) then it goes back and draws all of the even lines (2,4,6...480). Those are "fields", so while the TV or capture card is doing 30FPS it is doing 60 Fields per second (30 odd and 30 even). Only when all of the odd and even lines are drawn is it a "frame". Perhaps that is where the 60 came from, regardless 30FPS is what TV runs at so capturing at a higher FPS would yield no benefit.

As for the encoding to DivX and then re-encoding it to mpeg or whatever else there is quality loss and I was telling him how to get the best quality, not how to get almost equal quality with DivX. There is a reason that the AVI file is 10x larger, even if you real-time encode to mpeg2 720x480 then re-encode it to the much lower quality VCD MPEG1 352x240 you will get much lower quality then if you went from avi to VCD or even just captured at the VCD resolution - same goes for DivX.

 

[Malakai]

No problems with PCI cards but as Malakai said stay away from USB 1 devices (USB2 and firewire ones are propably OK but I don't know).

USB 2 and firewire are fast, but their latency is nowhere as good as PCI.

In todays systems with excellent IRQ management and 6 PCI slots, there really is no reason to run external unless you need to easily tranfer it from one computer to another.

 

[Malakai]

I'm still trying to find as much informatin about a handful of cards as I can.

Namely the Hauppauge models 880, 980, and 990 (WinTV PVR series). And various ATI cards.

When you say AVI takes insane amounts of space to encode to, about how much space would an hour long show take up? And then again, how long would it take to encode it with software to MPEG1/MPEG2 format?

- Thanks

I record straight to xvid, I get virtually no loss in quality at about 600mb/hour. Considering I usually watch something than delete it, this is fine. If I were going to record something that I wanted to look good and be a small file, I would record it originally uncompressed or into high bitrate mpeg2, and then encode it with xmpeg or virtual dub in 2 pass mode, variable bitrate. I could keep the quality and resolution the same and cut the filesize in half easily this way.

 

[RoadWarrior]

I was just thinking about some things.

VCR control.

Just for a tuner, there's some older top loader VCRs out there that didn't come with a remote. They have a socket to plug a remote module into. Just thinking it shouldn't be all that hard to rig something up to the parallel port to switch channels.

Also, some motherboards have a IR option instead of com 2. If you find/buy/make an IR module for the header, there's probably shareware out there that will let you control anything, cable box, VCR, etc, etc.

 

[JohnnyTheRed]

For my budget, these cards still have my attention:

AIW 8500
Asus TV Tuner Card
Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP
Hauppauge WinTV pci
and a handful of others...the list is always changing :/

Anyone with firsthand experience with any of these? Good experiences, or horror stories?

 

[Malakai]

I was just thinking about some things.

VCR control.

Just for a tuner, there's some older top loader VCRs out there that didn't come with a remote. They have a socket to plug a remote module into. Just thinking it shouldn't be all that hard to rig something up to the parallel port to switch channels.

Also, some motherboards have a IR option instead of com 2. If you find/buy/make an IR module for the header, there's probably shareware out there that will let you control anything, cable box, VCR, etc, etc.

The Leadtek WINTV2000/XP comes with a very nice remote that can control all of their PVR software's uses, including fine tuning controls.

 

[Malakai]

For my budget, these cards still have my attention:

Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP

Anyone with firsthand experience with any of these? Good experiences, or horror stories?

I have used that one, an ATi TV wonder, and an original AIW radeon, and the software and hardware quality (image quality) is far better on the leadtek.
The included softeware is also easy to use and very robust. I highly reccomend it, and reccomend against getting an ATi TV Wonder, for it was pure garbage

 

[madcow235]

Since we are on the subject say i get 5.1 channels such as hbo and cinemax can i use the 5.1 on my sound card while my tv card is in my comp. Bleh that sounds retarted maybe someone will understand me.

 

[Malakai]

Since we are on the subject say i get 5.1 channels such as hbo and cinemax can i use the 5.1 on my sound card while my tv card is in my comp. Bleh that sounds retarted maybe someone will understand me.

Regular coaxial cable only carries 2 channels, stereo right and left.

So no, 5.1 only works over satellite or digital cable, not analog

 

[Pyros]

If your truly worried about the capture quality of the card, the IMO you are better off using a stand-alone capture card rather than a all-in-wonder type card. Let your video card do whats its designed to do in the first place and let your capture card do what it was specialized to do.

And yes, Garbage in, Garbage out is the truth. Try converting a low quality avi. to DiVX 5.0.3 or VCD and see what you get. Extra special Garbage instead of regular garbage. lol

Hers a good example of compression size and quality. Tonight I took a 700mb DiVX movie (608 x 256-23fps-127kbps data rate-MPEG Layer 3 audio) and converted it to MPEG-2 so it could be burned as a SVCD. I split the file in two, encoding each one at a time resulting in MPEG-2 files that were approx. 711mb each. ( 480 x 480-23.976fps- 2000kbps-Layer 2 audio @44100k) the resulting burned SVCD was naturally the same size. When played on my dvd player and my 25" tv, It look so close to a real DVD movie no one else would know the difference unless you told them. Sure the file size doubled, but thats the price you pay for getting a free movie to have DVD quality.

Hopefully this will help you understand things better.


One more thing, It doesnt matter how good the capture video or ripped video is, if the software your using to convert it isnt any good then the converted file will be a lower quality than it could have been. This would be called Quality in, Garbage out. lol