Choosing capture card

[zamac_man]

I have been searching a few days for a capture card. At first I was going to get the AIW x800xt, so I could have a new video card too. Then I read that AIW cards can cause problems. So I was reading reviews on here and found AVerMedia AverTV Studio. I went to their website and can't figure out which one that is. They have eight, and none are called studio.

Don't want to capture TV, just old vhs tapes and hi8 to record to dvd and have online.

My pc is 2.4ghz intel, 1 gig ram, audigy 2 zs sound card.

I don't know stuff about this mpeg, avi or all that. I really was looking for around $50, but I want good quality.

edit: It does not have to be under 50, but I just dont want to spend alot or get junk.

I think I am about to just buy Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150. I hate looking for stuff like this and have read so much.

[redwudz]

I think I would take the Hauppauge 150 over the AverTV card. And the 150 is pretty much the bottom line card for Hauppauge, but it does OK. For more money (Of course. ), the Hauppauge 250 and 350 are the more recommended cards.

[mats.hogberg]

No matter what card you choose, you'll need a TBC to reliably capture old tapes.

/Mats

[Bjs]

zamac_man , go with avermedia .

I have both the ezydvdgold pci , and the avertv usb2 unit (this one is the best) .

Both unit's are now reaching two years old since I bought them ... never a problem .
They have been removed , and reconnected to and from several pc's ... never a problem .

Bullet proof .

Never an issue with driver's ... no program freeze's or crash's ... no issue with reinstalls of the product after xp clean reinstalls ... nada problem ... they just do the job and get on with it .

You will not be disappointed ... like those other's mentioned already ... dont look any further .

Just be carefull the unit is not MCE classified ... read the info on the supported operating system before purchase .

-------------

As for TBC ... if the tape's have perished this much , then tbc becomes near useless .

I have had a few tapes here with slight damage acoss the top during playback ... but this did not appear in the capture file at anytime using the avertv usb2 unit .

[mats.hogberg]

If all you want to do is transferring VHS to DVD, I'd say a DVD Recorder would be the easiest solution.

/Mats

[jman98]

zamac_man - Listen to Mats and buy a DVD recorder. You admit that you "don't know stuff about this mpeg, avi or all that." I can promise you that you are NOT going to want to do what it will take to record your shows in DVD quality. It will involve editing video, perhaps re-encoding it, authoring DVDs - all time consuming steps. Not to mention all the reading and learning this will require, which you may not want to do.

I'm not a big fan of ATI, but I'll spare you my comments on that. I have a Hauppage PVR-350 and I love it, but I don't think you are really going to want to capture to your PC and do all the work required to get those captures onto DVD.

Just buy a DVD recorder and be done with it. You'll get what you want a lot cheaper and quicker that way. I don't want to go into technical details that you don't have background to understand, but basically DVD recorders do some things that make them excellent candidates for exactly what you want to do and I think you'll be pleased with the results.

[jmkeuning]

I have the Hauppauge 150 and I love it. I have done a bunch of VCR captures and have had no problems. I was using an old VCR and had some audio distortion that was only noticeable during some music. Then I got a cheap new VCR and I think the caps look great.

I mean, you have to consider what you are really after. I put some tapes on DVD and, once burned and played back, no one complained or even commneted. That said, if you are looking you can probably tell that they are not DVD quality.

Doesn't all of this come down to the pickiness of the individual? I am not saying I'm not picky, just that I am not as picky as some people. I also think that if you want to get REALLY picky you are going to go crazy.

As for the DVD recorder. I do not have one, but I can tell you that using the card and a DVD burner is not too tricky. I don't know much, if anything, about the technical underpinnings of this stuff and I just record the tapes then drag and drop the mpegs into by DVD burner.

[zamac_man]

What is TBC?

I am also going to be using it to get my HI8 tapes on the computer so I can edit them and have them online. That is a reason I do not want a dvd copier.

I hate to say it, but I am very picky. It will probably bug me if something is just a little fuzzy.

[jmkeuning]

It's a doo-hickey that improves the quality of the recording. As I said, I like my recordings on my VCR without this doo-hickey.

http://www.questronix.com.au/info/info_tbc.htm

[zamac_man]

I think I can live without that since VCR is not that great anyways. But I did find this that looks good
http://www.leadtek.com/multimedia/winfast_tv2000xp_deluxe_1.html

I was reading the reviews and it sounded good. If I got that, is there anything else I would need too?

Just searched and read that leadtek is bad, at least thats what one guy said.

edit. I know this is usb, but it gets good reviews on newegg
ADS Tech USBAV-709-EF

edit2: The ADS Tech PTV-305 looks decent. Somebody posted pics on here and it looked good too me. I think I am going to go with this one, unless somebody can say its not good.

[redwudz]

I have no opinion on the Leadtek, either way, but one thing you should be aware of: The Hauppauge cards have hardware encoding, while most of the others do that in software. Software encoding has the advantage of being able to use different formats, depending on the capture software. Hardware encoding can only use formats that are built into the capture card. But if you want to capture in DVD compliant MPEG-2 and burn immediately to DVD, they work well.

And software capture and encoding does take much more CPU power. Sometimes enough so that the computer can't run other programs or do much of anything but capture at that time. Hardware encoding is done in the capture card and the CPU usage is fairly low.

For example that Leadtek card has a fairly high minimum CPU requirement. From their specification:

DVD recording Intel® Pentium® 4, 2.4 GHz or higher or equivalent AMD processor

A hardware encoder will work the same with about any CPU speed.

Something to keep in mind.

[mats.hogberg]

Time Base Corrector. The more worn your tapes are, the more you'll need one.

/Mats

[zamac_man]

I have no opinion on the Leadtek, either way, but one thing you should be aware of: The Hauppauge cards have hardware encoding, while most of the others do that in software. Software encoding has the advantage of being able to use different formats, depending on the capture software. Hardware encoding can only use formats that are built into the capture card. But if you want to capture in DVD compliant MPEG-2 and burn immediately to DVD, they work well.

And software capture and encoding does take much more CPU power. Sometimes enough so that the computer can't run other programs or do much of anything but capture at that time. Hardware encoding is done in the capture card and the CPU usage is fairly low.

For example that Leadtek card has a fairly high minimum CPU requirement. From their specification:

DVD recording Intel® Pentium® 4, 2.4 GHz or higher or equivalent AMD processor

A hardware encoder will work the same with about any CPU speed.

Something to keep in mind.

That is some good information. The PTV-305 says it has mpeg-2 hardware encoder and min requirments are P3 800mhz.

How hard would it be to transfer mpeg-2 to avi?

[mats.hogberg]

Make your mind up.
If undecided, get a hardware DV encoder - some ADVC gizmo. Captures to highest possible quality, to be downconverted to mpg or more compressed AVI at a later point.

/Mats

[zamac_man]

Make your mind up.
If undecided, get a hardware DV encoder - some ADVC gizmo. Captures to highest possible quality, to be downconverted to mpg or more compressed AVI at a later point.

/Mats

This is driving me nuts

I don't want to just get some piece of garbage. I am ordering the ptv-305 now.

I will probably be back in a few days trying to get this to work right.

[zamac_man]

I cant get that capwiz or whatever its called to work that came with the card. All what I can get to work is the windows video maker (what comes with win xp)

Anyways, when I try to get the audio to record through my audigy 2 zs, it does not work. I can do it with the capture card, but it gets slowed down at points. Also, this records in wmv, don't I need to have it in mpeg2?

So, I am trying to figure out which software to use.

edit: got it working but it still slows down some. this is 720x540?? resolution. Maybe my computer is just too slow. 2.4ghz, 1gig ram, 128mb video card

[v-sharp]

These are the softwares I use with my Ads PTV-305;

Arcsoft Showbiz (comes with PTV-305)
Ulead VideoStudio 7
NeroVision Express 3

I think capwiz will not work with pci capture card.

[FulciLives]

The ADS Instant TV Deluxe PCI (PTV-305) is a most excellent capture card as it has the same guts more-or-less as the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 device (highly rated).

I've used the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 but not the PTV-305 but my understanding is that the hardware is almost identical except one has a TV tuner and one does not.

My guess is CapWiz will work when you are not using the TV tuner input.

This is a MPEG-1/MPEG-2 capture card so yes you should not be capturing to anything but one of those two formats.

If CapWiz doesn't work then there are a host of other programs (some included with the card) that you can use. See what v-sharp had to say!

Forget using Windows MovieMaker.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
You said you were using 720x540 but that makes no sense. NTSC is 720x480 and PAL is 720x576 ... there is no 720x540 ... so if you are "forcing" that oddball resolution it might explain the audio problems.

[jmkeuning]

As for your question about converting mpeg to avi - I use AutoGK. I just set it up to convert my recorded mpegs (usually an hour each) to 700 meg AVIs. I set up a few of them at a time and let them run over night. The conversion takes 1-3 hours. After it's done, I always play them back, going to the end of the file to check audio-synch.

[zamac_man]

rather than a new topic I will ask this here


when I capture my hi8 tapes there is a little line at the bottom (kinda blurry line). It goes along the entire bottom and is about as thick as a nickel.

Can I get rid of that?

[mats.hogberg]

Only by cropping. But if you intend to play back on TV, it will be hidden by overscan.

/Mats

[jmkeuning]

someone will give you the technical answer, but you will not see that if you burn to DVD or play on a television.

If you really want it gone you can put a black mask across it (I have never done this.

check this out:
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=311546&highlight=

[FulciLives]

That line at the bottom is always there ... even when playing back the original to a TV.

You don't see it on a TV because all televisions OVERSCAN meaning the image is masked slightly on all four sides (top, bottom, left, right) of the image. It is done to hide "junk" like the line at the bottom. Stuff like that is just inherit to analog video.

However a computer screen does not have OVERSCAN so you actually see ALL of the image.

Now the general idea here is you either just leave it as is or you mask it with "fresh clean" black. However this is a MPEG capture card and chances are you are capturing to MPEG and then authoring without re-encoding so you pretty much have to leave it as is. If you do want to mask it then you have to re-encode and it doesn't make sense to re-encode just to do that.

BTW if you ever do capture with the idea of re-encoding then capture at 15,000kbps CBR with 384kbps 48k MP2 audio. That will give you the highest quality capture for re-encoding purposes. You can also force an all "I" frame capture but that has to be done through registry editing.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman