TV Capturing in DVD Quality

[jcikal]

I want to record TV shows on the computer and later transfer them to DVD. Image/sound quality is very important to me, I would like to get at least the 525-lines of resolution (DV Quality). I’ve been reading about the ADVC-100 card and so far, the reviews have been excellent. My question is, if I do decide to buy the ADVC card, what other hardware (besides the computer of course) would I need so that I can schedule the computer to video-capture at a particular time/date & channel? What operating system do you recommend? Thanks for any info.

[Tommyknocker]

If you use Virtual Dub, it has a timer available. Look for both in the Tools section.

Amen!

[snowmoon]

VirtualVCR works for some people ( not for me unfortunatly ).

It can do timed, and can change channel ( assuming wdm drivers ).

[jcikal]

I'm assuming that no matter what program I use (virtual vcr, virtual dub, etc), the quality is actually dictated by the ADVC-100 card, so that for example, Virtual VCR would just tell the ADVC card to record at a particular time/date/channel. Is this assumption correct?

[snowmoon]

Not totally.

First is the card, then you need to look into the CODEC used to compress the video. Remeber that unless you are capturing a small resolution file 352x240 you will probably NOT be able to use high compression codec like DIVX/XVID or others. Good capture codecs are fast and do very little compression. You can then take the resulting huge file and use Vdub or other video editor and re-compress the files down to a reasonable size.

[Tommyknocker]

Ypu can also adjust the quality a little by tweaking TMPGEnc once you have captured. Look here

[snowmoon]

Oh and for refrence a good TV signal is mabye 420 LOR. Medium to poor braodcast and VHS are much lower.

You really can't get more out of the signal than what's there.

[jcikal]

Actually, when I say TV, I actually mean Satellite signal. On another note, what kind of file will ADVC card give me? Will it be a raw avi uncompressed file, or a compressed file? I have Adobe Premiere 6.5 which is the video editor I use. If anyone out there knows of a better one for editing, let me know. 8)

[snowmoon]

Sorry...

It's a DV capture device you will always end up with DV compressed .avi's

Satellite can be worse than an good analog signal. At it's best you will get 480 LOR.

Remeber that scanlines != LOR. "resolution" in the analog world is a slippery beast and means many diffrent things many of which do not jive with the digital world.

[Lam]

jcikal,

You might want to try Snapstream. You can use it to set up TV recordings and the only thing you need other than the software is a TV tuner card. The newest beta of the product allows you to record at up to 640X480 using Windows Media or DiVX. Thanks.

[Thorn]

Not to be rude, but be very careful not to use divx or windows media at any point of your process. windows media often can't be converted back, and both of those codecs are very lossy so you'd see the image degrade.

While DV is very good, it isn't lossless. It's a good option though, and probably easier than a lot.

Otherwise try to capture to Huffyuv (lossless) using something like virtualdub or avi_io.

I don't know anything about the ADVC, but ensure that others have used it with the programs that you want to use, since many of the high-visibility 'capture devices' severely limit what you can do with them because quality wasn't their priority (dazzle comes to mind).

[jcikal]

[quote="...many of the high-visibility 'capture devices' severely limit what you can do with them because quality wasn't their priority (dazzle comes to mind).[/quote]

The Village Idiot's Signature Message also comes to mind which reads:
"Stay away from Dazzle (Razzle) products! Those idiots don't deserve your money!"

[lusid]

If you want to make DVDs out of your captures, you should try to avoid using Divx or WMV as an intermediary format. Huffy would be ideal, and Mjpeg is a pretty good compromise.

Also look at showshifter for your recordings. With the right add-on gear it can control your cable box to set the station for timed recordings, and it's got pretty good pvr functionality.

To have the PC set the channel on your sat box you'll need an actisys IR200l or similar infrared transmitter.