Which of these two capture cards are better for VHS to DVD?

[nomad2224]

I am embarking on this project of transferring some of my more memorable VHS tapes to DVD and I've been doing research all over the videohelp site as well as digitalfaq.com. I am on a really tight budget and trying to keep my costs low, so naturally I looked at the current hardware I had in my system and unfortunately I have no capture card to bring the analog video into my PC. However, rumaging through my old pc's parts, I did find two old PCI and AGP cards that I think can do the job; I just need some expert opinions, given these two choices, of which card is better for the task of digitizing my videos and authoring them to DVD. The two cards I have are:
1) Hauppauge WinTV-Radio - 878 chipset based board (http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_radio.html)
or
2) ATI Rage Fury Pro 32MB AGP 4x VIVO (http://ati.amd.com/products/rage128pro/ragefurypro/index.html)

I know these hardware devices are old...the ATI card is from late 2000 and the Hauppage...I have no clue. But if one of these cards can serve the purpose I need them for and save me the cost of going out and buying a new capture card or USB device, then I would really prefer to use them instead. I really don't have the budget to transfer these VHS tapes with a professional service or buying a more expensive Canopus or TBC or S-VHS machine or any other fancy equipment, so I'm really looking to see if I can get a decent result with the current resources I have. Any advice or experience with these two cards would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[lacywest]

My two cents .... use a Panasonic DVD Recorder ... works for me.

Might find a Phillips DVD Recorder with a Hard Drive and a digital tuner at Walmart.

[lordsmurf]

Use one of those cards, capture in VirtualDub as HuffYUV, then filter out all the chroma and grain noise from the VHS, using software.

I don't know if you'll have trouble with sync or dropped frames yet, we'll operate for now under the assumption that you'll be fine. Cross that bridge if you come to it.

Don't use a Philips DVD recorder for this, bad choice.
Panasonic, maybe, depends on model. Some help remove noise, some make the quality worse than the tape.
Sony and Toshiba also bad choices. (Easy to find recorders.)

You can make a DVD that looks better than the tape, with a little bit of effort (money not required, but can make it easier). Hardware is best, but a tiny budget can still do okay with pure VDub work.

I don't get into the details of filtering in posts, you'll need to PM me when the time comes, for that advice.

[nomad2224]

The ATI Rage Fury Pro card can capture in MPEG-2 (hardware) I believe, but I can only use it on my older PC because it's an AGP card and my current system doesn't have an AGP slot. The system with the ATI card is an older system with a Pentium III 800 MHz CPU and 640 MB Memory. My new system can accommodate the Hauppauge card and is a 3.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB Ram. But I don't think the Hauppauge card can capture straight to MPEG2 (at least not through hardware).
Is it better to go to AVI through the HuffYUV codec and then encode to MPEG-2 for DVD or should I use the ATI card (on the older system) to encode straight to MPEG-2? I was trying out Intervideo WinDVR for capturing, but if I'm going to end up going to AVI first, I'll try the recommendation of VirtualDub.
[/quote]

[Nelson37]

The ATI card is hardware-assisted, but NOT a hardware encoder. An 800-Mhz Pentium may work for an AVI capture, but is not optimum for MPG. Been there, done that. Somewhere around a 1.4 to 1.8 is needed for MPG capture. Also for mpg cap you will need to use MMC to use the hardware features of the card, for that older model you will be limited to 44k audio. SSRC can fix that.

For AVI cap, your hard drive performance may be an issue. If you have multiple hard drives, VDub can do a sort of software RAID wherein it will capture video to one drive, and audio to another. You may need to change some of the buffer values in the software.

[johns0]

My two cents .... use a Panasonic DVD Recorder ... works for me.

Agree.

[jman98]

Nelson37 is dead on and the PC you propose using is inadequate for that ATI card. I know, because I used an ATI card from that era. If you ignore our advice and try anyway, you'll get dropped frames unless you record at D1 (352x480) resolution and even then, an old 800 MHz Pentium may not be able to even do D1 captures correctly. My 1000 MHz AMD CPU could keep up with SVCD resolutions (480x480) and not do anything bigger.

[lordsmurf]

That specific ATI card isn't even hardware assisted. It's BT8x8 based, if I recall correctly.

[nomad2224]

That specific ATI card isn't even hardware assisted. It's BT8x8 based, if I recall correctly.

Actually, the manual says it uses the Rage 128 Pro chip which contains a Rage theatre chip. I know that this allows MPEG-2 hardware decoding, but I can't find where it says it does the hardware encoding. Using ATI MMC 7.1, I can capture straight to MPEG-2, but how do I know if it's doing it through software or hardware?

[nomad2224]

The ATI card is hardware-assisted, but NOT a hardware encoder. An 800-Mhz Pentium may work for an AVI capture, but is not optimum for MPG. Been there, done that. Somewhere around a 1.4 to 1.8 is needed for MPG capture. Also for mpg cap you will need to use MMC to use the hardware features of the card, for that older model you will be limited to 44k audio. SSRC can fix that.

Sounds like I should just give up on the older ATI card and the older system and go the route of capturing to AVI with the Hauppauge. If I do, should I use the WinTV2000 application of go straight into Virtual Dub? What about other programs like Cyberlink PowerProducer or WinDVR? Would they allow me to skip the AVI capture and go straight to DVD?

[danno78]

Ati Rage Theatre has one ADC (analog to digital converter for analog capture) and one DAC (digital to analog converter=TV Out). Encoding is done with software encoder. No hardware mpeg decoder or encoder.
http://ati.amd.com/products/ragetheater/features.html

[Nelson37]

For Crying out loud, it is NOT a hardware encoder. It is Hardware Assisted. "Memory Register Buffers". That's a quote from an ATI tech guy from many years ago. No, I am not entirely sure just what exactly that means.

On a PC that old, you will almost certainly drop frames unless you use low resolutions and/or low bitrates. AVI capture is possible, but then hard drive speed becomes an issue. Though it is worth a shot, I went from an AMD 550 to a 1000 before getting anything usable, never tried an 800. Perhaps with a bit of overclocking, it may be workable. At least hard drive speed is less of an issue with an MPG capture.

I do recall that many folks had problems capping AVI with Hauppage cards of that era. Only recently got one and haven't done an AVI capture in years.

[nomad2224]

I suppose I should just try both of them out and see which one gives me the better results. At least I know a little more about these two cards now. Is it recommended to use Virtualdub for AVI capture and then encode to MPEG-2 for DVD or is there a straight to DVD software out there that provides good quality?

[lordsmurf]

I think you're worrying about something for no reason. Hardware or software, Rage Theatre (which is hardware-assisted, FYI), will make nice encodes, using ATI MMC. Or do HuffYUV in VirtualDub, that would work too.

Look at the card itself, to find the Rage Theatre chip.

[nomad2224]

I think you're worrying about something for no reason. Hardware or software, Rage Theatre (which is hardware-assisted, FYI), will make nice encodes, using ATI MMC. Or do HuffYUV in VirtualDub, that would work too.

Look at the card itself, to find the Rage Theatre chip.

Would you recommend using the Rage card on my older system over the Hauppauge card on my new (faster) system?
I can't use the ATI card on my new one since it doesn't have a AGP slot. Also, I am having trouble getting a version beyond 7.1 of ATI MMC to work on the older system.