What Card? WinTV-GO? WinTV-PVR 250?

[gowrygabriev]

Hi,

I'm wondering what card I should buy for converting
VHS and Laserdisc to VCD or SVCD? After reading
the forums I was thinking of getting the WinTV-Go.
I haven't heard a lot about the WinTV-PVR 250. Does
this card do a good job? It has Svideo in...I don't know
if the GO card does nor not.

I'm running and Athlon XP 1700 with SBlive, Radeon
8500 on an ECS K7S5A Motherboard

Thanks for any help

[gowrygabriev]

Is it right that I can only get mono sound with the win tv go?

[ViperXT]

I think it is mono only if it is from a cable source. Also, even if the card turned the audio to mono, you could bypass the card and just send your audio directly to the sound card. I have the wintv-go capture card and it never lets me down, it captures up to 720 x 480 on my p3 600 with nealry no frame drops, and at 352 x 480 i usually get no frame drops at all.

[Barnabas]

Is it right that I can only get mono sound with the win tv go?

Only if you use the tuner. If you use the video and audio inputs it's Stereo.

[PelicanDriver]

The WinTV GO is one that I was also considering. Barnabas and Viper, are you software converting as you capture, or capturing as AVI for later conversion?

[ViperXT]

I usually do a capture with Virtual Dub with Huffy UV. I then open the .avi files in vdub and cut the commericals. I apply a deinterlace filter and frameserve to TMPGEnc(because I like to have it in MPEG for playback on a standalone plus I like having normalized audio. However, even on my P3 600 I find that if I am careful I can capture divx low-motion in real-time with very little frame droppage as long as the resolution is 352 x 480 or below. But I don't usually do this because I demand normalized audio and since I can't deinterlace in real time with divx I will have to reencode if I want good looking playback on the PC. VDub and TMPGEnc make a great pair. If you have a fast PC though and you like divx you can probably encode divx in real time if you just want it on your PC. Hope this helps.

[SHS]

WinTV-GO is Soft capture and mono audio only
WinTV-PVR 250 is Hardware MPEG1/2 capture and it dose VCD "352x240"/SVCD "480x480"/DVD "720x480" 1MB thur 12MBit/sec.
See this Topics on the WinTV-PVR 250
http://forum.vcdhelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=98514
I can you rigth there is no comparison the WinTV-GO to the WinTV-PVR 250 hands down the WinTV-PVR 250 will win this.

[gowrygabriev]

I'm currently using the AverTV Stereo. It seems to be working
well for me. I've captured a 40min VHS tape to AVI with maybe 5
frames dropped. I then run those through TMPGENC and used a
ULead demo to burn the VCD. I also did a SVCD.

I'm still trying to decide on software for use after TMPGENC. The
Ulead program was very easy to use, but I'll likely try others like
VCDEasy before making my final decision.

Does the PVR-250 really beat using TMPGENC after a full AVI
capture at 720x384 (or whatever that res is ) ?

Dorwin

[SHS]

gowrygabriev how long dose it take you to do that with TMPGEnc?.
With the WinTV-PVR 250 let say you capture 1/2 hour clip of VCD/SVCD/DVD
5to10min of Editing each one
10min VCD/SVCD or less, 1hour DVD MPEG2 720x480 4MBit/sec or less DVD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW to burn with ULead DVD MovieFactory.
You have render a AVI to MPEG which take hours to do.
Oh ULead DVD MovieFactory come with new WinTV-PVR 250/350.
720x480 is use on all DVD movie.

[Barnabas]

The WinTV GO is one that I was also considering. Barnabas and Viper, are you software converting as you capture, or capturing as AVI for later conversion?

No. When I use my CyberMail AV card, I capture to AVI. I just bought the Hauppauge PVR USB, so will use it for real-time mpeg captures. So far, it's captures look very close to those I just made from AVI's to TMPGenc.

[Tommyknocker]

I use WinTV-Go. Almost no dropped frames, either. My Win TV USB card was doing well if it dropped one frame for every 100 frames.

The WinTV Go does not have S-Video in, but I do not miss it from my WinTV USB. And with NanoVCR free from Hauppage, I capture directly to MPeg-1.

So, in my humble opinion, I will not go back to USB unless absolutely necessary. And giving up S-Video while all but eliminating my dropped frames was a beautiful trade off.

Also, if you want stereo, you can use Gold Wave to copy one channel to the one not being used.

[Barnabas]

I use WinTV-Go. Almost no dropped frames, either. My Win TV USB card was doing well if it dropped one frame for every 100 frames.

So, in my humble opinion, I will not go back to USB unless absolutely necessary. And giving up S-Video while all but eliminating my dropped frames was a beautiful trade off.

I assume you owned the WinTV USB that captured to AVI but not the PVR model that captures to mpeg? USB would be too slow for AVI but it's plenty fast enough for mpeg compressed files.