PHILIPS SAAXXXX chip series , Anybody have one?

[Fos]

I am looking for a PCI capture card for uncompressed video. I'm very satisfech wtih my ATI AIW but i want to update my card to a 6800 GT and I wonder how good is the philips chip (i have been seen this chip built in canopus and pinnacle devices).
Can somebody give me advice??
Can i capture with VirtualDub using 720*576 resolution? Directshow or WDM drivers?

Thanks!

[ronnylov]

I switched from ATI AIW Radeon 32 MB to a Terratec Cinergy 400TV which use the Philips SAA7134 and the quality of the captures improved for me. I am using VirtualVCR with WDM drivers. This setup is more stable than the ATI AIW ever was and I have no problems with sound quality either. VirtualDub did not work with capturing but VirtualVCR does and I think VirtualVCR is a better software anyway for capturing so it does not matter for me.

The best capture resolution is 704x576 with this chip because it gives a more correct aspect ratio compared to 720x576. To get 720x576 just add 8 black pixels on left and right (they won't be seen on the TV anyway because its hidden in the overscan area). But you can as well make the DVD with 704x576 resolution because it is DVD compliant. There is no reason to capture uncompressed compared to lossless compression. I am capturing in YUY2 compressed with huffyuv using VirtualVCR or directly to MPEG-2 using Mainconcept PVR.

[geowharton]

VirtualDub will not work with the 713x cards above 320 x 240, but a program that works very well for me using a 7133 Philips chipped card is ChrisTV. FlyTV2000 also works well. Capture quality at 720 x 576 is very good. As for aspect ratio, you will get the correct aspect back when your mpg2 encoder renders your video (I use tmpgenc 3.0).

A note - I have found that many other programs, as VirtualDub, will not capture from this card either.

I have used this to archive my VHS collection. Capture to dedicated hard drive. Stop every else from running. Disconnect from Lan and internet. Go into other programs that just decide to check for updates and stop them. Stop Windows and all other automatic updates. In fact stop all automatic every thing. Go to the start-up menu and stop all of your "Run at start-up" programs. Go into your registery and stop all start-up programs. Run msconfig and do a restart with only what you need. Capture with lossless like HuffYUV. Uncompressed requires less processor, but your hard drive can get behind at the high data rates of uncompressed if anything else even takes even a little of the drive controllers attention. Because of the heavy drive intensity, uncompressed also makes editing more difficult. Maybe the newest drives are faster.

Cheers

[TheFamilyMan]

I've used the phillips SAA71XX chips in 2 products, a gf4200Ti card and an Avermedia PCI capture card. I've been disapointed by both: problems with white oversaturation and red saturation. I currently use a Kworld PCI card with a conexant chip. Its quality is much better than the SAA71XX products I've used in terms of brightness and color levels, and image detail (IMHO, of course). The gf7800gt I have has VIVO and its capture quality is weak in comparison the to Kworld card. A few months back I had an ATI x700pro card with Theater Rage capture chip; it capture quality was the best I've ever had, but the card failed and that's when I got the 7800gt. Virtualdub does not work with either the Avermedia nor Kworld cards, though VirtualVcr does. I can't remember if it works with my gf7800gt, but I'm sure VirtualVcr does.

[abcedem]

I also have an Avermedia PCI card with SAA71xx and cap with Virtualdub at 720x480 with no problems. Quality is decent - I don't have the saturation issues mentioned above.