Is the AVI TV WONDER card good for capturing VHS?

[DVantrease]

I am looking for an inexpensive capture card for capturing my home VHS tapes to burn onto VCD. Is the AVI TV WONDER (PCI) a good card for this? How is the VHS capture quality? I'll probably capture raw and convert after. Can the capture resolution be raised by using another software program? Anyone had any good/bad luck under Windows XP?

[mh2360]

I use the TV Wonder with iuVCR under XP, no problems. You can capture to MJPEG (among other things) and convert later with Tmpenc, the quality is good...

TIP... The old TV drivers suck, go to ATI's site and download MMC 7.1, but dont install MMC just the drivers...

[Strahlen]

mh2360, why do you suggest not installing MMC? I admit I have many problems capturing with them, black frames around mpeg captures (vcd setting..) and general quality issues.. what alternatives do you use..? for capturing from the TV tuner.. see my hardware profile for an idea of the set-up I have.

>>X<<

edit

Soz > I DID NOT READ YOUR POST PROPERLY, YOU'RE USING A DIFFERENT CARD...

[mh2360]

BTW...

Although iuVCR is fine for capturing from composite-in, the TV tuner sucks a$z, another good point is that its WDM based and not VFW...

[DVantrease]

To be honest, I dont know what WDM or VFW are, or the differences, I am new at this. I'm well experienced with creating VCD from DVD rips, just haven't got into capturing yet. So you are saying the card itself is ok, just use different software correct? What's the highest res I can expect, and what about dropping frames?

Anyone willing to email me a small clip of one of your captures, so I can see the quality for myself?

[macleod]

you're describing my set up to a tee. I have the ATI AIW card, a 1.2gig emachine and a desire to convert VHS to VCD.

I bought a Apex 1000W (serial number ending in 05) DVD player and it plays pretty much everything I through at it. Here is what I've learned when making VCD/SVCD/XVCD....

1. Use a good 4 head VCR when moving tapes over. A 2 head VCR makes the final product (at every resolution and setting that I did) look VERY grainy (but not pixelated).

2. Use the RCA wire (not the composite as it degrades the picture even more

3. VCD format - (NTSC)352X 240 (or whatever the VCD format actually is) and a bit rate of 2.0-2.6 (which makes it actually Xvcd). The "complaint" format is 1.15, which looks good gives you a little pixelation (hardly noticable on my older TV), but the 2.0-2.6 brings the pixelation to where it is BARELY noticeable (you actually have to want to find the pixels to notice it). If you decide to go with a higher bit rate, I'd recommend that you just go to SVCD as it makes it that much better, because at VCD with the higher bit rate, you only get about 30-35 minutes per CD.

For my 10-20 year old VHS tapes (on 4 head VCR), the picture looks GREAT! When I pulled in VHS-C(camcorder tape), you see a LITTLE pixelation, but SVCD does help make it hardly noticeable. I put a store bought movie into the 2 head VCR and pulled from it using every bitrate, etc. and the best I got was a grainy look. Highly recommend a 4 head VCR.

WDM is the architecture that is used for different hardware/software. To the people like me, it means that all your LPT and COM port stuff no longer worked when you went to XP and you had to buy all USB stuff, ha ha.

ps. with the AIW card, the only "bad" thing I noticed was that using the VHS-C tape I say lines the sorta looked like the screen refreshing itself(seeing the lines on a computer monitor when looking at it through a camcorder, etc.).

Hope this helps and wasn't too long.......

[mh2360]

To be perfectly honest the card isn't THAT good, there are much better alternatives, but it is cheap... If money is no problem then go with something better, im just working with what i've got.

[DVantrease]

Yea, I'm actually just looking for the best way to capture home VHS tapes to my pc, raw is fine I can convert it after. I want to get the best I can get for under around $70. A tv tuner is a nice bonus but not my biggest concern.

[kitty]

Shop around

[Anonymous65]

With ATI drivers, you cannot capture both fields, so you're limited to x240 pixels in the vertical direction. This is a big limitation when you want to capture video. 352x480 should be the lowest you should capture for making VCD's. WinTV costs the same, and has good drivers for up to 720x480 captures, both in VFW and WDM mode. Forget about doing this with ATI TV Wonder card.

[muzman]

I have ATI TV Wonder card and I can capture at 352x480 (or higher) resolution if I use iuVCR for capture. You can download iuVCR from Tools section at this site. The 240-line limit must be imposed by ATI's software and its VfW drivers.

[Anonymous65]

Yes, it's the limit of the WDM drivers. ATI does no longer make VFW drivers. If the TV Wonder use the BT8x8 chip, then you can use a generic driver. But the ATI Multimedia Center and the WDM driver that comes with the card has a limit of 720x240 pixels.