Help me decide on one of these two cheap cards....

[Calzonie]

I now have a AverTV Stereo which I can't get anything more than 480x480 out of. I've had and returned the Creative VCR as it would only record audio at 32k and then non-standard mp2 the video was saved in.

So after reading and digging for change in my couch I'm ready to buy either the ATI Radeon VIVO or the Visiontek Xtasy Cinema Everything. I need to be able to capture in at least 640x480 and 720x480 would be ideal. As of now I'm using ivcr with the divx pro codec running on a Dell P4 1.7ghz with 256megs of RAM and a 7200 30gig WD drive.

[kitty]

I think the AverTV card has the bt8x8 chipset. Have you tried the drivers or checked for your card in the compatability list at
http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/

I have heard of others who switch drivers to this one and then they can cap at DVD framerates/sizes on a pc with a decent CPU. P4 1.7 should be fine but you might want to pick up a bigger hard drive during the holiday sales.

[JHebert]

There are a few things to try before you go and spend money on another new capture card. The AverTV Stereo is a good card and your system sounds plenty fast enough for fullsize captures.
First of all what happens when you try capping above 480x480? Are you dropping frames, maxing the cpu or hard drive, does your software not allow higher resolution settings, or something else? Give more details of your problem.
If you are capturing directly into DivX, instead try either Huffyuv or PicVideo avi or even mpeg-2 for capture. DivX is very cpu intensive and is more of an output codec, not the best for direct capture and editing although some will disagree.
Finally what drivers are you using? I think your card is based on BT878 chipset, if so you may want to try the btwincap drivers for better results.

[Calzonie]

All I can say is wow. I'm now running the alternate drivers and capturing with virtualdub (iuvcr still wouldn't go above 480x480) and using Motion MJPEG for compression, a world of difference. I'll try Huffyuv and PicVideo next!

Thanks much.

[Calzonie]

Crap, the capture works great but with the new drivers my TV program doesn't work and I can't change the channel

[JHebert]

Are you now using the btwincap drivers? If so, did the install autodetect your card and tuner correctly? You might need to rerun the installer and try different options particularly for the tuner section. Check the btwincap installation faq for details.
When you said you can't change channels, is that with iuvcr or with a program that came with your card? Also, you said iuvcr still won't go over 480x480? Does it not allow selecting anything higher? You might want to try reinstalling iuvcr after each driver install/change. It seems strange that you can't select 720x480. Also if there is an overlay option in iuvcr try turning it off.

[Calzonie]

Yes, the btwin drivers work great. I used the btspy util to install a custom card as the AverTV Stereo was not listed as a working card. I never actually tried to let the installer detect the card on it's own.

Iuvcr doens't allow me to change the channel and the software that comes with the card doesn't work at all with the btwin drivers.

I'll try and reinstall iuvcr later but at this point happy with virutaldub although I had to temp go back to the old drivers to change the channel, I'll have to figure that out for sure.

As far as iuvct not doing anying about 480x480 I don't know why, the option is there but when you click start capture nothing happens at all. Reinstalling might solve this as well but I wish virtualdub had a way to change the channel itself because iuvcr cost money so I'd rather not use it and just donate $5 to virtualdub.