Which card to use for 480x480 AVI capture?

[Y2Bogus]

I currently use an ATI TV Wonder for capture in Virtualdub but I'm not happy with the 240 vertical resolution limit. I was thinking of getting a new card. Here is basically what I'm looking for:

A card that can capture to AVI in 480x480 with its own manufacturer supplied drivers (I've had bad luck with tweaked drivers)

Stereo sound

coaxial, composite, and SVideo inputs

Around $100.00

My PC is an 1GHz Athlon with 512 megs of ram and a 40 gig HD and running Windows 2000 sp2.

Virtualdub is my capture software of choice.

I like to capture to uncomressed AVI then apply filters and frameserve it into Tmpgenc



If anyone can give me some advice as to which card I can buy that meets my specs, I would be eternally grateful.

[SHS]

I wouldn't count on doing that resolution under NTSC you best option is realtime hardware mpeg encode.

[spidey]

I just capped at 480 x 480 Huffyuv on a Hauppage WinTV PCI card last night. Those cards are around 40.00 at most.

[Y2Bogus]

Spidey, are you capturing to AVI? I've seen posts on these forums from WinTV users who are having the same beef that I am. Basically, Virtualdub tells us that a vertical resolution of anything over 240 is not supported by the card.

[SHS]

spidey not everybody get lucky at any resolution higher then 240.

[Dave B]

I can guarantee that anyone with a Hauppage WinTV or Pinnacle PCTV capture card can capture an AVI at 480 and 576 vertical resolutions with the right software.

Both these cards retails at about $40 (or £40). Before you buy either of these cards you should check that your system is fast enough to capture at high resolution without dropping frames.

[Y2Bogus]

I'm interested in the Hauppage cards, so I looked one up and looking at the specs sheet, it says it captures at 320x240. http://www2.warehouse.com/product.asp?pf%5Fid=EX7301&cat=pc

I'm not sure if I understand if this is the maximum capture resolution or if it's something totally separate.

[spidey]

It did give me a warning, but I still did it. C'mon guys, you gotta tell it who's boss.

It warned that my Voodoo 32 meg card wouldn't support it, but it did fine. Don't worry if the preview freezes during capping, it's just that the disply couldn't keep up, but it was all capped fine.

I used Vdub 1.4.10 and Huffyuv, at 29.97 fps, 24 bit RGBA, as well as 44.1 PCM.

I was surprised as well, but it let me nab a beutifully virtually uncompressed file with minimal frame droppage. I think it dropped just over 300 in total over the course of an 80 minute vid

You're gonna need drive space though - approx. 45 gig was the output, but it was worth it.

[macleod]

Ybogus,

I also have a ATI TV wonder card and a similar set up and I think that I (and others) can help you break that 240 line barrier. PLEASE fill out the computer details section of your profile and "we" can see what steps need to be taken to help you.

What type of problems are/were you having when you tried to get to 240+? I never got along with Vdub on my XP machine and decided to try powervcrII (you can buy it for about $10 on ebay). You cant capture AVI, but after you try this software, you probably wont want or need to. Are your trying to apply tweeks that fail for x reason(s)?

Me personally, I have a 1.2 gig emachine, 256 PC133 ram, ATI TV wonder card, nero, and powervcrII. I cap home and commercial videos, and cable using powervcrII 352x480 (I use to use 480x480 SVCd compliance before with no problem 352x480 is better look to me). REAL TIME edit commercials beginning and ending to movies and split them between x amount of CD's, and then burn using nero. NO REINCODING. When I view a TMPGEN cleaned file and a straight run that I do, I don't see a difference. My 1.2 gig cannot do 480x480 AVI without drops. No issues with 480x480+ using powervcrII.

[Y2Bogus]

Ok, I updated my profile. I've tried using the source forgre drivers, and I was able to capture AVI at 480x480 (with occasional horizontal white and green lines during heavy action scenes). But is also cause a big vertical black bar to go down the left side of the capture which I had to crop out in Virtualdub. I've since gone back to ATI's official WDM drivers and the black bar is gone, but so is my ability to capture anything above Xx240. If I go into virtualdub and set my custom resolution to 480x480, it tells me that my card doesn't support that format, and it resizes it back to the previous resolution.

I also tried using Power VCR2, but occasionally I'd get video stutters and I'm not a fan of real time encoding. Basically, my mission is to find a card that I can plug in, install the included drivers, open virtualdub and set the resolution to 480x480.

[drdy111956]

I believe I have read elsewhere that Brooktree 848 / 878 based cards cannot cap above 240 lines unless you switch to preview mode ( as opposed to overlay) . Actally least frame loss in blind mode. Presuming your software front end allows this toggle. Virtual Dub does. Ulead DVDMF for eg , doesn't.

[Y2Bogus]

Yes, I should have mentioned that I am in preview mode.

[fingernailX]

I have great results capturing 640 or 480 or 352 by 480, progressive, cropped video if broadcast using AIW 128 and MMC 7.6 in MPEG2, I-frame only 15 mbps, Motion estimate 100 percent. xmpeg then to divx or xvid or dvd2avi project file to tmpgenc (much slower). Audio is still 44.1 but acmstation will upsample to 48 khz if doing 352 by 480 48khz for future dvd-r