WinTV PVR 150 - Capture Size Question

[Heineken]

I use wintv2000 to cap. Is it possible to capture video with this card to get these results:

1 hour of video at roughtly 700-900 meg size.
Quality as good as various AVI captures that you find at this size for an hour of video via other cards out there?
Quality as good as say an xvid file of this size? Normally when I cap an hour of video via mpeg2 wintv through my sattelite, i get a file at almost 3 gigabytes. I would like to get a file about 700-900 megabytes that has the same quality as an xvid file immediately, rather than have to take that 3 gig file and run it through AutoGK after the cap is finished. Any way to do this? If so, what software should I use and/or what settings should i use?

Thanks!

[mats.hogberg]

No, you can't, since mpg2 is not nearly as efficient codec as mp4 codecs like XviD. But then, there's not many alternatives, as realtime mp4 hardware capture cards are rare if they exist at all.

/Mats

[yoda313]

What about something like the archos 400 and 500 series? I know you can record straight to them with a dvr docking station. Don't they have a record to avi option? I don't know but it might be something to look into.

[Heineken]

Thank you very much for the reply.

So can someone recommend a hardware encoding card that is top notch in terms of quality, and it can capture directly to avi or mpeg at the size that I require?

thanks!!

[Heineken]

What about something like the archos 400 and 500 series? I know you can record straight to them with a dvr docking station. Don't they have a record to avi option? I don't know but it might be something to look into.

I heard a plextor has the option to record directly to avi. Just wondering if there is anything better than the plextor for what I'm looking to do?

[jagabo]

You can capture with the MPEG1 VCD template. That will get you about 620 MB/hr with a 352x240 frame. The SVCD Long Play template is about 830 MB/hr. And you can create your own template to get whatever you want.

Of course, none of these will have the quality of a DVD rip compressed with Xvid. And you won't find any tuner/capture card that can do that. You have two problems:

First of all, you are capturing an interlaced video at 29.97 second. A DVD rip is typically progressive at 23.976 fps. Fewer fps means you can use a lower bitrate to get the same quality.

Secondly, you are capturing off-the-air (or maybe from a VCR?) which is much noiser than a DVD rip. The presence of noise means you need higher bitrates to maintain quality.

[Heineken]

I understand that I won't get the quality of a DVD rip converted with xvid. But I do want to get the same quality of Mpeg2 stream that I capture via sattelite converted with xvid.

Like I said, I believe that a guy was using a plextor card capping sattelite, and he caps directly to avi which turns out to be about 800-900 megs for an hour of video, and his video does turn out to look like an xvid quality clip.

Is there a better DIVX hardware encoding capture device than the plextor tv-402u?

If not, where can I purchase this in Toronto?
Thanks!

[jagabo]

http://www.divx.com/products/hw/browse.php?c=6

[tipstir]

I use MainConcept MPEG1/2 Software Encoder on all Quicktime AVI, MS AVI an etc to convert to MPEG2 352x480 NTSC. I can take PAL 352x288 and convert that over to 352x480 NTSC and display the video on my TV using Media MVP, GBPVR 98.14 HTPC Server. I also use 5 - PVR-150 tuners to record off COX Analog Cable channels and playback on 5 Media MVP devices. This all works out nicely.

I also record Live TV (Cable stuff at High Quality 9,000 to 10,000 bit rate for MPEG2 720x480. Comes out excellent.

[SHS]

Like I said, I believe that a guy was using a plextor card capping sattelite

This part I belive is 100% fales and it pciture quality not that hot and there major con with this device No MP3 Audio encoding, it only MP2 Audio encoding.

[Heineken]

Thank you for your replies guys.