Best Software for TV-caps..

[supersoccer2001]

What i'm got a question on now is what is the best TV-capturing software, price doesn't matter. Preferably something for Windows (2000) , although i could set up a linux box to run it on. Got enough speed and memory to run anything. I would be looking for some software that would be able to schedule captures (perhaps with a TV-guide like appearance), edit out commercials (preferably automatically), and have an "always on top" option so my screen wouldn't be hid every time i wanted to work on something else and watch TV on my pc at the same time. Please give some recommendations, because the software that came with the card is not acceptable to me. For those options, will i need digital cable?

[snowmoon]

Why not get a set top DVD- burner....

[supersoccer2001]

Because i've already got the tv-capture card (other reasons) and i want to get the most "bang for my buck"

besides, i would then have to buy a bunch of dvds, i just want to keep the shows temporarily until i get a chance to watch them.

[vhelp]

supersoccer2001,

>> i just want to keep the shows temporarily until i get a chance to watch them

Oh, then what you need is a VCR dude!!

[CauCauCau]

I have a few actual software solutions for you.

PowerVCR 2 v3.0. Nice software, can be a bit pricey. Can record to a variety of mpeg formats, including DVD quality MPEG2. Not the best for keeping the stuff, but great for just recording it to watch later. It has a really simple scheduling utility that resides in your task bar and I believer has "always on top." I keep it on my computer just for watching TV and for recording/pausing life TV. A good processer and some decent harddrive space and PowerVCR effectively turns your computer into a nice TIVO unit.

If you want to go for free or cheaper, try iuVCR and VirtuaDub. iuVCR has a sceduling system and there is a seperate program you run for scheduling. If you want to spend a little bit of money, it sounds like PowerVCR would be a better choice for what you want to do.

Cau

[supersoccer2001]

I have a few actual software solutions for you.

PowerVCR 2 v3.0. Nice software, can be a bit pricey. Can record to a variety of mpeg formats, including DVD quality MPEG2. Not the best for keeping the stuff, but great for just recording it to watch later. It has a really simple scheduling utility that resides in your task bar and I believer has "always on top." I keep it on my computer just for watching TV and for recording/pausing life TV. A good processer and some decent harddrive space and PowerVCR effectively turns your computer into a nice TIVO unit.

Bingo, exactly what i was looking for, thanks a lot.


@vhelp: VCR?! get with the current century 8)

[El Bart0]

I've tried just about every program and have finally settled (and fallen in love with) WinDVR. It has everything you mentioned, and 'only' runs for $50. Check it out at www.intervideo.com.

[MITSUI_1]

el barto:

How's the quality of WINDVR?

Can you manipulate the images later? (I.e., capture with software, then author to DVD or reencode to SVCD?

[El Bart0]

I personally think the quality is excellent...just gotta tweak the settings like the motion vector. You can cut out the middle man and just cap directly to SVCD if you want...you can capture either MPEG1 or MPEG2. There's a number of premade profiles, such as NTSC VCD, NTSC SVCD, NTSC DVD. The VCD is actually off a little...for some reason, the bitrate is set to 1050 or something. I made my own profile and copied over all the settings, but changed the bitrate to 1152.

[jeremymiller]

I tried it as well and used it to capture stuff from the Sundance Channel and Indpendent Film Channel. Most movies from these channels don't have a lot of action scenes in them, so capturing directly to SVCD works just fine. The only problem is that I noticed a slight (very slight) off sync between video and audio throughout. Did you run into that problem? I don't know if it is the setting or something else.

[Xtasy2002]

I, too, have tried every single commercial TV capture application out there. There's only 3 applications IMHO that are even remotely worth your time & effort:

WinDVR: The absolute best in terms of ease of use, and quality of recordings. On my system at least, I have found WinDVR capture quality higher than all other products. It's fast & easy to setup. The biggest problem I have with this is the lack of customization. If the capture formats (limited) it has are good for you, get it..

PowerVCR: Second best IMHO. The amount of customization and configuration on this is impressive. The quality, however, seems a notch down from WinDVR. It crashes more and the recording quality isn't as crisp as WinDVR. If you really need a ton of options but the 100% best quality isn't your thing, go for this.

iuVCR: If you are broke & need something cheap, here's your ticket. I find the quality to be quite good, and the configuration modest. The software is slightly buggy though.. And it's definately the hardest of the 3 to use, you have to fish around in the system for settings often, etc. But for the price (half of the others) it does the job very well.

There are trials of all 3 for you to find the one you really like.

[El Bart0]

The longest capture I ever made with WinDVR is 30 minutes...and in the 30 minutes, I didn't have any audio sync problems, unlike all the other programs I've tried. The MPEG does, however, have some jitters in it...here and there, it jerks a frame. It's not horrid...it's a little annoying, but not noticeable enough to ruin the experience. It probably has to do with the fact that my system isn't the most optimal for video captures. And even though it jitters a little, the audio and video stay in sync the entire time.

[supersoccer2001]

Muchos Gracias fellows!

I'll try a couple of the demo versions of the software, see how it turns out on my pc. Exactly what i was looking for

[susie]

How does one make their own profile for WinDVR 2.0 ?

Please show me how.

I personally think the quality is excellent...just gotta tweak the settings like the motion vector. You can cut out the middle man and just cap directly to SVCD if you want...you can capture either MPEG1 or MPEG2. There's a number of premade profiles, such as NTSC VCD, NTSC SVCD, NTSC DVD. The VCD is actually off a little...for some reason, the bitrate is set to 1050 or something. I made my own profile and copied over all the settings, but changed the bitrate to 1152.

[rhuala2]

I've tried all those programs and actually like Virtual VCR better. Grab it from the Tools section to the left. Compress using the Morgen Codec at quality 90, and you get a nice .avi image that can be cropped and edited with TMGEnc (Search forum for best settings), giving you a nice clean edged SVCD/VCD/DVD to burn. Seems to be whatever really works best for your system and how you perceive the PQ.

The best advice I can offer is try them all and capture small amounts from about 10 different channels. Especially get the channel that shows the TV Listings, because then you have constant content. Then grab Radlight player and play your captures side by side with Win Media or whatever your default player is (personally I hate Windows Media player). I also try to get some kind of sporting event and a cartoon, this gives you a way to evaluate motion issues (sports) and color bleeding (cartoon), which I find PowerVCR II is poor at.

rhuala

[El Bart0]

Under Settings -> Record, click on the Profiles... button near the bottom left. There you can either modify an existing one, create a new one from scratch, or duplicate an existing one (and modify it).

[supersoccer2001]

Ok, got some problems. My card isn't recognized by any of these programs, the programs simply don't see it at all. I've got a Hauppauge WinTV model 401 with FM stereo on a Windows 2000, P4 2.27 gigahertz, 80 gig hard drive, 512 meg ram. Card is plugged into the first PCI bus, i've got the win2k drivers installed, and i get picture and audio from the default software that is on the hauppauge web site, however, their software i not very good. Anyone have any suggestions? thanks

[El Bart0]

Are those WDM drivers? Most, if not all, of these programs require WDM drivers.

[Xtasy2002]

Hey, umm.. I'm going to modify my original post and move iuVCR to the top of the list.

I now think it's better than WinDVR and PowerVCR. WinDVR is a great capture application, but when you want to capture in other formats like huffyuv, divx, or even windows media it falls flat on it's face. For some people mpg 1 & 2 captures may be enough.. But if someone is really serious about video like I am, the lack of AVI formats & codecs hurts.

PowerVCR while being mainstream is simply too bugy & low quality on captures IMHO to stand up to iuVCR. For the price I don't think iuVCR can be beaten.

[rsuave5]

i do infrequent captures of tv but avi_io does a good avi capture for me i convert and burn pretty nice

[easydvd]

I like v-dub and iuVCR the best. That's after trying ALL of the other stuff I could. Not trials either

iuVCR is a little buggy. I have problems with it every time I try to go higher than 320x240(if anyone knows a workaround for this, feel free to post it!!) Other than that I don't have any complaints about it. The price is right.

v-dub I think does a better job of capturing than any other proggies I've seen and it's FREE. Didn't really like virtual vcr and avi_io is a good thing but it won't let me make a big avi only segment. I'm using NTFS, I don't need segments.

The problem that I see with winDVR and PowerVCR, other than the price, is the not so true claims of realtime mpeg1 and 2 capture. I tried it and the quality sucks!!(my opinion...no-one else's) If you are going to encode an avi why not use something free? This brings me back to v-dub.

With v-dub in conjunction with AVISynth I can repack the avi with really good results.

Moral to the story is........

v-dub is a labor of love that someone takes great pride in. The commercial stuff is just that, commercial.

[geniv]

as for AVI captures I like VDUB the most, IuVCR sounds pretty decent if u plan on capping from scheduler and TV tuners.

but WINDVR TOTALLY KICKASS!. I just d/l and tried it the other day after reading this thread. BEST QUALITY REALTIME VCD captures I ever seen and I owned alot of Haredware Mpeg Capture cards, SNAZZI I, PV256T, PV233, Dazzle DVC (Snazzi II).RealMagic DVR, WinTV PVR250. It include a scheduler, split file captures, easy and simple user interface yet ok set of custom setups. WinDVR seems to have less blocky/flaky edges than HW encoders at the same bitrate.

I use the original WinTV/FM card from it and the on realtime VCD caps the picture quality is one of the best. forget about PowerVCR I tried it, picture quality not as good and not as stable.

I did a cap of SOLDIER DVD through SVIDEO to to my WinTV/FM it was capping in VCD format for about 2 hours and the a/v sync is perfect.

I also caped AKIRA DVD (Anime) to VCD with 3meg bitrate. 2.2 hour nonstop cap. and the final video was problematic. during 1+hour of the video there was some Jerking on the video. and there would be some big macro blocks popping up frequently. I can't say for sure it's the fault of WinDVR cause during record I was access and copying files to the HD from a network PC. and I didn't set the file to split, just one big clump of a file. also Soldier was live and Akira was a cartoon. the 3M bitrate might be a problem also.

didn't try SVCD but tried like 5 min DVD and I do notice slight jerking but not really bad. (that's probably the limit of my system's performance.) quality not as good as my HW mpeg2 cap with WInTV PVR250.

over all WinDVR is awesome for VCD mpeg1 needs.

[lusid]

For simple caps I like AVI_IO. Simple, dependable, solid avi capture app.

For direct to vcd caps, WinDVR is the best. Best realtime software mpeg capture app out there.

For general tv recording, Showshifter is great. It's got the unique ability to control an external cable box for timed recordings, and it's the best PC PVR app out there.