ati aiw capture cable tv?

[mysticone]

ive read all i can here and did many searches guess im just dum! i am useing my ati 9800 aiw to record cable tv in usa.whats the best setting to use with mmc.to record cable tv for play back on tv?please help.i need a simple answer im a tad dumb sometimes

[lordsmurf]

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/atimpeg/atimpeg.htm

[mysticone]

i read that but it dont come out that good perhaps there is another problem is 352X480 high enough resoltion? for cable tv?

[whitejremiah]

i usually jump it up to 640x480 or better...it will eat up your harddrive space massively.....also, im not sure how your capturing it exactly, but your best off to capture to lossless video, such as huffyuv then converting from there...if that's not a possibility, then mjpg is your next best bet...if that's not possible, then get more harddrive space.

[mikiem]

THis is what I've been doing for a couple 3 years or so... Based on trying most every method I come across.

I've got digital cable, meaning I don't do a lot of filtering etc. on movies, but still use 3 methods depending on what I'm capturing.

For prem movies, capture at 720 x 480 mpg2 cbr at max bitrate of 20, then re-encode as I prefer the results from slower mainconcept encoder -- generally feel that any mpg2 capture is not as high quality as encoders where speed is not main goal.

For analog broadcast stuff where I'm not as concerned with max quality (wouldn't get it if I was ), capture as above with VBR at 9 or 10 bitrate, cut/edit in project x, create DVD layout and shrink if/as nec.

For desktop/web/CD etc., either use recode to mp4 from 1st or 2nd method (I'm lazy), but often actually get best quality capturing direct to wmv, real etc. using their encoders rather then mmc.

Haven't had great luck with avi capture -- aiw's tuned to mpg2, and quality seems less to my eyes capturing to mjpeg. For audio I either filter and normalize mp3 audio, converting to wav and then ac3, or more often go a more involved route...

I capture many movies twice, once using first method, 2nd using .vcr format. This gives me a backup in case of cable drop-outs (common ), captures CC which I convert to subs, & allows me to record ac3 decoded by audigy2 (a bit of a hassle, as sync is guaranteed to be off, but worth it comparred to noisy analog from cable box).

[greymalkin]

what bitrate are you using when you cap @ 352 x 480?
And are you using the video soap(i usually turn it off)?
I used to cap at that resolution and on my 27" SDTV couldn't tell much of a difference.

[mysticone]

thank you everyone i do have video soap on maxium do to my cable isnt the best signal sometimes then i do 352x480 30 mb a minute mpeg 2. seems like when i tryied huffy coded pc crashed instatly im usieng mmc 906 cause mmc 908 had problems to 908 always gave me a atisched.exe error.damn i hate this card some days lol i capture to a 300 gig hardrive that a i defrag daily that has 16 megs a cache and is ide

[greymalkin]

For max quality you could cap @ 720x480 at a combined cbr (audio and video) of 9.8mbps. This will give you one hour per dvd. If you want to get a full movie on a single layer dvd you might want to go with 352 x 480 @ about 5-6mpbs and see how it looks on your tv. I'm not sure you would really tell any difference or perhaps have worse quality capping @ 20mbps and then re-encoding the already compressed mpeg stream down to a bitrate low enough to fit on dvd. It will also take muuuuch more time to do. The ati cards are hardware assisted mpeg encoding and the advantage of it is being able to cap mpeg on the fly. Any time you compress to mpeg twice you are going to loose more quality.

Your eyes will ultimately be the judge. Do a test cap @ 720x480..approx 9mbps, then do a 352 x 480 @ about 5 to 6mpbs..then watch them both on your tv. if you can't tell much of a difference then just cap at the lower resolution and you'll save yourself some hard drive space. The video soap will kinda blur things as it tries to mask the noise. I would try capping without it...also, the more noise you have, the higher the bitrate you will have to use to compensate for it..play around with the settings and cap 1-2 minute segments to see what is acceptable to you..

[mysticone]

cool thank you everyone.this forum rocks

[mysticone]

opps forgot to ask would it help if i convert it to divx or xvid after i capture it?i have a phillips 642 standlaone divx xvid dvd player .would i get s file thats almost as good but a lot smaler if i covert it to divx or xvid

[Nelson37]

Xvid can be smaller but worse quality, particularly if you cap MPG to start with. A re-encoded AVI can be quite good, if you have the time.

Always cap 720x480, regardless of source. This is closest to the native cap res of the card and avoids the lo-quality resize built-in to the card.

You could check other sites but there are none with more information than this one. Accurate, too, for the most part.

Try 720x480, VBR, Target 5 to 7 and Max .5 to 1 greater than Target. Do not use VideoSoap unless source is very bad or size reduction is most important. Do not use a large range between Target and Max as this will induce pixelation.

Bitrate calculators are essentially useless for ATI cards. Filesize will vary dramatically with same settings for different identical time captures, with different sources. Darker movies will get a lower bitrate and brighter movies a higher one.

Important to adjust color saturation, brightness, and tint, and test ON THE FINAL OUTPUT DEVICE. These settings when correct for PC display can be way off when displayed on TV.

Are you using the S-video connection and NOT the coax? Can you get Digital Cable? These two offer significant quality improvements.

[mysticone]

wish i could get digital but heating gas is so expensive now for house.so keeping ohter bills low.btw what should i set motion to i have it as it stated on the link above 99%i was wondering does this card have the abilty to capture the quality that digital cable can pruduce? opps im useing the coax pluged into ati card

[Nelson37]

Yes, Digital cable looks significantly cleaner than analog, the lack of noise is the main benefit to capturing. IMO, the card will capture an MPG which is indistinguishable from the original source, when properly set up.

Motion set to 99 is good.

Strongly recommend using the S-video, or composite, instead of the Coax connector. Two reasons - Coax is the worst quality of the three, and it goes thru the tuner on the card, which degrades the signal.

In my area, Digital cable was not much more than analog. You might also look into satellite. I have found the quality to be roughly as good as digital cable, although more variable. I changed for the NFL games, which are only available on satellite. Next step is to get Hi-Def, I can't capture the original signal but the hi-def stations down-sampled thru the S-Video is IMO the best capture source currently available, outside of a DVD.

[mikiem]

"I'm not sure you would really tell any difference or perhaps have worse quality capping @ 20mbps and then re-encoding the already compressed mpeg stream down to a bitrate low enough to fit on dvd."

Depends on your signal, eyes, TV etc., but I do notice a difference or wouldn't waste the time.

"It will also take muuuuch more time to do. The ati cards are hardware assisted mpeg encoding and the advantage of it is being able to cap mpeg on the fly."

Re-encode actually works at about realtime if single pass, same as capture. Can't tell about hardware assist -- can capt mpg2 without if cpu over 1.5 gig or so. In any case, time isn't the issue, but quality, & for those wanting the max, can't do 2 pass encoding whilst capturing.

"Any time you compress to mpeg twice you are going to loose more quality. "

Very true with *any* recompression, but the issue is how much loss from what levels. At max bitrate, you have more data to lose, same as using DV then encoding to mpg2, or using a digital still camera with higher resolution, more mega-pixels. If the goal is re-encoding in the first place, you want all the data you can get. If the goal is time-saving, skip mmc entirely and use something like Nerovision (http://www.surpluscomputers.com/store/main.aspx?p=ItemDetail&item=SWW12281) to capture direct to DVD format (inc. ac3) or even to DVD VR.

"you might want to go with 352 x 480 @ about 5-6mpbs and see how it looks on your tv."

If you go to narrower frames, mmc works well de-interlacing & removing pulldown -- haven't had the same luck with full frame.

"opps forgot to ask would it help if i convert it to divx or xvid after i capture it?i have a phillips 642 standlaone divx xvid dvd player .would i get s file thats almost as good but a lot smaler if i covert it to divx or xvid"

IMHO, depends on your source. There's some color conversion etc that's going to happen. AFAIK all the codec in-house experts recommend highest bitrate capture possible at full frame size to feed encoder more data. However, on lower quality material I've sometimes found it best to capture directly to the more compressed formats like xvid, real, wmv.

"Important to adjust color saturation, brightness, and tint, and test ON THE FINAL OUTPUT DEVICE. These settings when correct for PC display can be way off when displayed on TV."

Great point!!! I normally compare picture on PC monitor with TV monitor using same source, adjusting contrast, brightness, & gamma up a touch. Then when given the choice, as with DGIndex, stick with TV scale. OTOH, some softwre will automatically convert to PC color range (0-255), you must make sure TV used for comparison doesn't have some color adjust enabled (theater, dark room etc.), and you need to adjust controls for TV and S-Vid inputs separately -- mmc saves separately.

"does this card have the abilty to capture the quality that digital cable can pruduce? "

AIW can capture digital or sat cable at same quality as seen on your TV. Usually main issues are occassional dropouts -- with digital you lose signal rather then show interferance, & too often poor mpg2 encoding before broadcast.

"Next step is to get Hi-Def, I can't capture the original signal but the hi-def stations down-sampled thru the S-Video is IMO the best capt..."

Depending on location, cable HD requires DVR... Depending on firmware installed by local cable operator, transferring stored video via firewire as with sat is possible. Just something you might want to check out.

[mysticone]

g im so darn slow even with ya all being so cool and explanling it to me im still lost thansk for trying thought thats so cool.i finaly did get a good capture with mpeg2 but i always though mpeg4 was better .i even tryied with auto gk to turn my mpeg2 intompeg 4 but it didnt look good even at 5 meg per minute i guess ya cant capture in mpeg4 cause card is to slow?

[mikiem]

"i guess ya cant capture in mpeg4 cause card is to slow?"

capturing mp4 and similar (real, wmv, DivX etc.) take more cpu power, so it is more difficult. But you should be able to do it (at least at reduced frame size), & depending on the software your using, if you've got somewhere around a 1.5 gig cpu or better. You could try the formats built in to mmc, or use separate prog -- some are listed in the tools section.

"i always though mpeg4 was better "

It's Different. Just another way to compress the video you're capturing. The quality of your original video & capture, the encoder & settings, and the player all have a lot to do with the quality of an mp4 file.

[wcb4]

how I generally do it is this:

I have a profile called 1/2 D1.

MPEG2, NTSC (525) 352x480
Encode interlaced
audio 48KHz sampled at 24 16 bit stereo

P Frames: 4
B Frames: 2

Variable Bitrate
2.6Mbps max bit rate
2Mbps min bit rate
audio encode at 224

No video soap

This produces video on my SDTV that I think looks pretty good. On the HDTV you can see imperfections if you are close, but from across the room, it looks pretty darned good. The beauty of these settings is that they are a valid format for DVD authoring, so you can put about 4 hours of video on a DVD as backup once you have it encoded. I have used these setings for about 2 years to capture SHows for the kids (Winnie the Pooh, Blues Clues, Bear in the Big Blue House) etc... Then I burn to a DVD using a TMPGEnc DVD Author template and it looks quite nice.... More recently I have been just slapping the files up on my media server and having the wife use the Hauppage Media MVP to play the shows instead of dealing with DVDs... This way I can burn just the episodes of just the shows the kids like.

[lordsmurf]

Your source signal is not much different than 352x480, and you really don't need more than 4000-5000k CBR or VBR.