Pixelview capture card under XP

[Greycat]

My capture card is a good Pixelview PV-BT878+ w/ FM rev. 8D.
It's an old card, I know, but under Win98 it works flawlessly and its image quality is superb (at least for me) in any resolution up to 720x480. Also I have no audio sync problems at all (using the dinamically resampling method of VirtualDub-sync or VirtualVCR). But to use this card, I must run it under Win98 (the XP drivers are crap), so I made a dual-boot system (98/XP) in order to use Win98 only for capturing and WinXp for the rest of my tasks. But sooner or later I'll have to upgrade my machine and I have the feeling that Win98 will no longer be supported by the new motherboards (am I right?). So I'm trying to make my old capture card work under WinXP. I tried the alternative capture driver Btwincap that has finally put my card to work under WinXP, but... I noticed that some capture resolutions have severely degraded the image quality (e.g., 352x480, my favorite resolution for DVD authoring, becomes a bit blurry under WInXP ). Also, the audio resampling method seems not to work anymore: after just 1-2 minutes of capturing and the audio is already 2 seconds out-of-sync!

Is there something I can do to correct the imagem quality and sync problems under XP with this card or should I finally retire the old (but still good under Win98) thing and buy a brand new one? Which one do you recommend for XP? I live in Brazil where there are few brands to choose, the easier one to find is -- guess -- Pixelview.

[Caple]

I used to record with WinDVR when I had this card, using the original drivers.
I know they suck, but WinDVR would not work with the modified ones, if I'm not wrong.

[mgh]

there are settings related to image-gamma and sharpness among them
play with the settings till you are happy.
had a pixelview card (rev 9D)-dual boot 98 and xp- the btwincap drivers gave me better quality capture than the oem win 98 drivers- as far as audio video sync is concerned, i always used uncompressed audio, picvideo mjpg codec at q19 and virtual vcr-never had audio video sync problem.

[Greycat]

Caple:

I used to record with WinDVR when I had this card, using the original drivers.

Unfortunately, Caple, I'd prefer using free softwares. WinDVR is trialware. And I'm not sure my problem depends on the capture software, it seems to be related with the WDM drivers.

mgh:

there are settings related to image-gamma and sharpness among them
play with the settings till you are happy.

Already did that (exhaustively). The "sharpness" slider, even set up to the max position did not solve the problem.

had a pixelview card (rev 9D)-dual boot 98 and xp- the btwincap drivers gave me better quality capture than the oem win 98 drivers- as far as audio video sync is concerned, i always used uncompressed audio, picvideo mjpg codec at q19 and virtual vcr-never had audio video sync problem.

Yep, I always use those same settings: Picvideo MJPEG at Q19, uncompressed PCM audio (48KHz-16bits-stereo). As I said, its perfect (very sharpen and sync-ed) under Win98, but disappointed (blurry and out-of-sync) under XP. The image is only good if I use higher resolutions like 704/720x480. But I prefer 352x480. Audio sync problem can't be solved though.

[The_Doman]

I have used the BTWINCAP and Picvideo MJPEG combination for years on XP with AVI_IO.
That program always has made perfect A/V sync captures for me.

www.avi-io.com

[mgh]

i always captured at 720x576 (PAL) but never had issue with audio video sync
you can try latest virtualdub

[Greycat]

The sync problem is not the real problem since I can correct the lenght of the audio stream later (an extra, undesirable work, but...well). In my case the blurry image under XP is my main problem!
I don't think this problem is related to sharpness (or lack of sharpness). My guess is that the XP drivers are not mixing the interlaced fields properly. I can see that small font letters appear jagged (under XP, not under Win98 where they are cristal clear)

Here are 2 screenshots of the captures, the left one made under Win98 and the right one under WinXP. I've added red arrows to help comparing:



Don't know, I have a feeling that it's a bug of the WDM drivers especifically with this old card, and there is no fix for that on the horizon... [/b]

[The_Doman]

Here are 2 screenshots of the captures, the left one made under Win98 and the right one under WinXP. I've added red arrows to help comparing:



Don't know, I have a feeling that it's a bug of the WDM drivers especifically with this old card, and there is no fix for that on the horizon... [/b]

Isn't this a field issue in the Picvideo MJPEG settings?
I have to enable the "Swap Decompress Fields" function to display my captures correctly when using BTWINCAP and the MJPEG drivers.
If set wrongly the image will indeed look blurry.

Pegasus Advanced MJPEG settings:

[Greycat]

The_Doman: No, it didn't solve it and it's not related to the capturing codec: the blurred images show up in the preview window, before any capture job, when the image isn't being processed by the codec yet.

I played with other horizontal resolutions and realized that resolutions smaller than 384 give me blurred images, while equal or higher than 384 give me sharpen images. Don't know why though 'cause in Win98 I can use ANY resolution without problem.

The audio sync issue is also strange: even with the dinamically resampling method on, it gets out-of-sync incredible fast. It seems like this method (that work perfectly under Win98) is actually increasing the sync issue under XP!

As I said, seems to be a WDM driver issue (or may be my old motherboard too?) PLUS those old cards PLUS WinXP. Maybe other Pixelview models and/or revisions have solved this, and those are the cards you guys are/were using. Who knows?

Thanks anyway for all the replies, folks!