Problem capturing with VirtualDub using a Pinnacle PCTV Pro

[Struppi]

Hi,
I am new in this “business” and have a question regarding capturing a TV program using VirtualDub. I am not able to set the video format to full NTSC (640 x 480) at any data format. Do be more exact, the best I can get to is: 320 x 240.
I checked the box of the TV card and it tells me, that I need to have at least an AMD Athlon XP 1800+. Well, I do have that (Athlon XP 2000+). I think that my memory (768 DDR) and my HD (120 GB, 7200) is also sufficient for the job of creating a DVD like quality.
Can anybody tell me where the bug is?? Maybe the card…..

Thanx.

[yamato72]

Are you using the drivers that came with the card? Use the btwincap drivers instead. They are a "generic" driver that will let you choose any rez. You have plenty of horsepower for this task.

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/

[Struppi]

Yes, I used the drivers that came with the card.
I will try that tonight and see what I can do. I figured that my system should have enough "horse power" to do it.

Thanx for the info.

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Did you deselect any options of using Video Overlay in VirtualDub?
Although the BTWincap drivers are a less problematic alternative, you'll also lose the use of PCTV's Vision software,(not a bad thing though!), to use the card.

As far as CPU power goes, I've captured with the older V4.02 drivers under Win 98 640x480 AVI (Huffy codec),PAL 25fps,using a Celeron 900, Mpeg 2 s/w realtime is a tad more CPU intensive though.

[Struppi]

To: yamato72

I tried to use the driver you recommended, but I got an error - maybe due to the fact that my exact card was not listed on the driver's webpage - just another one.
I tried capturing yesterday with WinDVD Recorder and was able to at least set it to the desired DVD quality. I now have to put it on a DVD and see how it looks. I just want to try the VirtualDub, because it seems to me, that this program is the one that is mainly used and seems to give you very good results.

To Hong Kong Phooey

Thanks for the hint. I am not sure whether I did or not. I have to check that tonight. Could that be a reason for not reaching the desired format? I am not that familiar with all the terms yet. What does the Video Overlay do? When I was trying to use VirtualDub I followed a tutorial I got from the web. I was thinking of upgrading my Athlon XP to a 2800+, since they are quite affordable at the moment. That would erase any doubts that my system can't handle the job.

[yamato72]

Sorry you're still having trouble struppi. There are a couple generic drivers out there and in fact the iulabs driver may be the better one:

http://www.iulabs.com/drv/index.shtml I think this one also lets you uninstall other pre-existing drivers.

And yes you do need to turn off the overlay in vdub to get it to work. Also, as powerful as vdub is there are a couple other freebie and shareware capture utilities that have a strong following here -check the "tools" section.

[Struppi]

Thanx,

I will give that a shot (driver) and also browse through the tool section again. I guess that evantually I have to find the tool that works best for me and the card. Would you say that the card is a good choice or not the best one. My exchange option expires tomorrow.
Ok, I will see if I had the overlay turned on and try it with it being off.

Thanx again for the support - I appreciate it.

[yamato72]

IMHO the only drawback to the PCTV cards is that for the best capture you have to uninstall the Pinnacle driver which as was stated above deactivates the TV app which is pretty cool. However, if you are serious about quality you'll have no trouble capping 720x480/576 with Huffyuv on your system. You really can't get better quality than that on a PC. There are of course a million other ways to do this but the PCTV gives you the flexibility of using the codec of your choice (mjpeg is another really good one). You do not have that freedom with hardware mpeg2 and dv capture cards. If you paid less than $50US I'd say stick with it, otherwise if you're not 100% certain go ahead and shop around. Heck, I went through a Pinnacle Deluxe (DV) and Pinnacle AV (mjpeg) card before getting the PCTV. I stayed away from hardware-mpeg2 cards since editing footage can be dicey.

I still have my PCTV card but since I stick to stuff I've shot with my camcorder I've gone to a dv capture card ( a Canopus ADVC-1394) for drive-space considerations as well as ease of editing footage together.

[Struppi]

I think my approach will be to delete the Pinnacle driver and try it again with the new ones you recommended. I will also look into the overlay issue of VirtualDuband see if that helps me. If I can't get it to work I go and exchange the card. I paid 80 bucks for it!
Here is another Newbie question. What is a hardware encoder card??

[yamato72]

Hardware capture cards come in a couple flavors and a wide price range. The advantage is that you don't overload your PC processor during the capture process since the compression is done on the board itself. The disadvantage is that you have to stick with a particular compression scheme, for example you won't be doing mjpeg compression on a dv capture card and vice-versa.

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Sorry for the delayed response. Though it's been a little while since I last messed around with capturing stuff with the PCTV pro, I do recall I definitely managed to get the BT sourceforge wincap drivers working with it under WinXP. If memory served, I think the drivers tried to ID as only being a standard PCTV card under the auto setup options that was easily changed-you do need to install those BTsourceforge drivers on top of the Pinnacle drivers however,(& the inbuilt vision software won't work as mentioned before, although there are other app's out there depending on your preference,the tools section lists some, Pinnacles user forums mention a couple more too.).

The codec I mentioned earlier,(Huffy), is a great AVI codec, but you will need lots of HDD space & of course you need a program like Tmpegenc to convert it to convert it to mpeg 1/2 starndard to make it VCD/SVCD/DVD friendly to burn with Nero etc.

An alternative to VirtualDub used commonly on XP is VirtualVCR, I think it should still be listed on the tools section to the left here.