Hardware video conversion to MPEG1 & 2

[samcut]

Damn, I have been reading my a$$ off on the capture card list and the forums. Still need help. I am tired of using TMPGE to convert AVI to VCD, SVCD, or DVD. Great product & I will still use it, but I want something to capture & encode the video & store it on my drive. I have high end hardware, a firewire card, & a digital camcorder. My camcorder converts analog to digital (from my VCR). so I really just need the hardware encoder. Also, do not want USB. Any hints? I want to spend between $100-$400. I'm looking at:
Snazzi III
Vidac Vmagic
Dazzle DVC II
Dazzle Hollywood
Pinnacle DC30
Pinnacle DC200
I like Canopus, but from what I read, their Raptor is their low end product and cost > $500.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks, Samcut

[BJ_M]

i have hardware encoders costing from 15,000 - 100,000 (whole workstation cost) at my work and really the quality is no better than tmpgenc or cce -- just faster ...

if there is a great mpeg2 encoder costing only 400$ -- i would sure like to know about it ...

btw -- i must say - with further testing and playing with the settings, the main concept software encoder is starting to turn out some really good results

[samcut]

Still hoping for some replys! One item I forgot was the compression and speed that these devices operate at. Any help would be appreciated.

Samcut

[Anonymous65]

At the moment, the Hauppauge PVR250 is the best card for the price for real-time VCD, SVCD and DVD captures. It will not encode an AVI file, but it will capture analog video and encode it in real time using onboard audio and video hardware processing.

http://steve.kittelsen.com/pvr250

For VCD ONLY captures, try the PV-231 card. It's priced at only $85.

http://steve.kittelsen.com/pv231

[ItsMe]

I tried the Hauppauge PVR250 but took it back to the shop as I wasn't impressed with the quality of the codec. The quality of the output is not consistent, the software doesn't remember the contrast or brightness settings and I had audio sync issues. Hauppauge support are absolute crap. The card is not worth the money.

I have now ordered the Vidac VMagic TV Plus which not only captures straight the mpeg1&2, but also has hardware transcoding. Judging on the comments in the capture card comments I think I have made the right choice. There are downsides though, the card doesn't support NTSC and it appears that all the documentation and problably the software are in German. Although I don't speak any German I am prepared to live with the latter until vidac come up with some English docs.

[Anonymous65]

Wow, the quality of the PVR-250 is the best I have ever seen from a hardware encoder. Good luck finding a better one...

[ItsMe]

The picture quality is usually itself fine, when capturing to 720x576 mpeg2 using a high bitrate albeit a bit unsharp and having too little contrast. However, the quality of vcd mpeg1 captures is much worse that software solutions, even when captured through the analogue port from a DV camera with good quality source material.

Also, if you trim the beginning and end of a capture using the supplied software then the audio becomes out of sync.

I know there are fixes for the setting not being retained but if I payed 260 Euro's - which is what it costs here in Holland - for a product costing that much I expect it to work as advertised.

I get better captures using the pinnacle pctvpro and pinnacles pctv 5.1 software which also captures straight to mpeg1&2.

[Macros746]

I don't know why you don't just spend the $500 to upgrade your rig. With a new motherboard and P4 or AMD 2 gig chip you could be well past realtime conversion in no time.....

Macros

[GiantRobo]

I just got my Dazzle DVC II for $199 US. It came with a PCI card that does the hardware Mpeg1 & 2 encoding / decoding. It connects with a proprietary interface to an external box which houses S - Video in/out, Composite in/out, audio in/out (L&R). No SPDIF/Optical or Component video connectors. I run it on my XP Pro machine.

It can capture video at DVD MPEG2 (720x480 NTSC) at various bitrates up to 10 Mbps and audio at 48 KHz. Just like DVD in other words. I usually just capture MPEG2 at the highest bitrate settings and the picture is great. File sizes are a little over 7 Gig for 1 hour 30 min of video. The DVC II allows playback out to tv or vcr (very cool).

However, some edited clips I've created with their own software (capped with as well) do not load in Moviestar (the only app you can use to playback out to TV/VCR)!! (Very bad!!) The unedited file still plays back out to TV / VCR fine. Also the timeline slider on the playback utility will not work (player will stop) if you try moving the slider on very large video clips.

Play back out to TV or VCR is quite good. It looks better than when played on the software DVD player on the PC. I have not tried burning to DVDs yet.

You should be aware that the product is buggy. It DOES NOT do MPEG1 or SVCD or VCD correctly. It drops frames / breaks out in blocks when captured with the SVCD or Mpeg1 or custom settings. This is even with their latest version of Moviestar (4.24 for XP as of this time). I've already been to their website and downloaded the updates and it says that the latest version is already installed. This is odd since I can Capture at the highest DVD MPEG2 settings with no problems.

It does not want to share IRQ's which may be a problem. Good luck trying to find an PCI slot that does not share an IRQ. This is pretty stupid since your only option is to move it from one PCI slot to the next. Not very elegant solution here. It does work on my PC despite sharing the IRQ 9 with just about everything else in the system. I did receive a message once that said "device attached to system is not functioning" error. After rebooting, I have not received that message since.

Their software is also pretty weak. Moviestar isn't the most intuitive program and editing is a chore with it. It is very a sluggish program too and I've seen it stop displaying the video couple of times.

Overall I like it especially when you consider trying to do this with a $60 TV Tuner card - You'd have to have buy a 90 Gig hard drive just to capture with Huffyuv at 720x480 - 90 minute clip (you'll definitely drop frames too). Plus more hard drive space to edit it. Plus no hardware codec.

[samcut]

Thanks for the info folks. I am leaning toward the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250. But before purchasing I am going to research more on realtime software encoding. Don't quite understand how this is done in realtime with just a firewire card. I like the Dazzle products but have heard some negative feedback from quite a few people. Buy the way, my goal is to transfer VHS & mt Digital 8 tapes to SVCD.

Thanks again,
Samcut

[Dave Knowles]

BJ_M


I am interested in your comments about Main Coincept. How is it going ? What settings are you using?

[BJ_M]

BJ_M


I am interested in your comments about Main Coincept. How is it going ? What settings are you using?

well it would be faster if it accually could remember and save its settings . i have to manually reload each time as save settings and even writing a new .mef file didnt work ...

dvd setting
CQ setting causes it to crash (its odd how CQ is set anyway)

enable line filter 11 and 15 for setting
vbr 8000 4200 2500 some varitations will cause is to crash
rate control mode 1
quality limit 0 or 1
cq is set by enter 0000 in avg bit rate and setting CQ setting to 5-8 (large file size) or (8 - 12) smaller file size
better is LOWER numbers for most settings.

other wise use VBR

noise sensitivity 4 - 6 a little slower
or 10 for faster encoding

motion search mode = 5

do half pel (though i ussualy dont do this)
motion search area - not sure this is working .. set to off or on @ 3 and 3

additional settings --
use alternitive scanning ... I P B frames

[Dave Knowles]

BJ_M


Thanks for the reply. How do you find the quality compared to TMPGEnc? Also have you tried any MPEG 1 encoding with it?

[ItsMe]

Thanks for the info folks. I am leaning toward the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250. But before purchasing I am going to research more on realtime software encoding. Don't quite understand how this is done in realtime with just a firewire card. I like the Dazzle products but have heard some negative feedback from quite a few people. Buy the way, my goal is to transfer VHS & mt Digital 8 tapes to SVCD.

Thanks again,
Samcut

I just got my VMagic TC Plus card through the post and I must say it blows the socks off the Hauppage PVR 250 that I returned to the shop. The software is very resposive, the PVR 250's software is sloooow when changing channels etc. Also the picture quality is much better on the VMagic card. The VMagic gives you much more control over the capture parameters and handles 16:9 correctly.

I also found that the VMagic will capture ALL my video tapes from my VCR. The Hauppage card my old pinnacle PCTV pro card couldn't always capture them properly, producing mpeg files with macrovision like distortion although these cards were not macrovision sensitive.

In a nutshell the VMagic is amazing. The only drawback are that all the documention (on disk only) is in German although you can switch the software to English mode. I also use http://babel.altavista.com to tanslate the info I need. Because the software gives you so much control you need at least some detailed knowledge about the mpeg file format to get the most out of the hardware although there are good presets available.

The Vidac hardware cards are expensive though, but I prefer to spend a bit more for something that actually works.

Last but not least, I read in the reviews that the VMagic TV card doesn't support NTSC, well the Pro version does by the looks of things although I would verify this before buying one if you are in a region that uses NTSC, I myself use PAL.

[robertzanzerkia]

Hi,
Check out posts on PVR250. I was about to buy one and saw someone return with poor picture problems.
In anycase I ended up buying Xtasy Everything 5564 AGP card from Visontek.($60-90 you can buy on Ebay).

It does MPEG1 and MPEG2 HW conversion of analog source.
I can get 0 drop frames at 720x480 resolution.

Check out the capture card list to see both of above cards...

Robert

[Anonymous65]

I can't find any information on the VMagic TC Plus card, so it must be less known card, most likely a semi-professionalc card if it's priced at $600. I would sure hope a $600 capture card would work a lot better than a $150 TV tuner card.

Also, the Xtasy Everyhting card does NOT have any hardware mpeg encoding, it is all done in software. Which means VCD quality is really poor. The only way to make high quality VCD's is to capture at 640x480 or higher and then encode directly down to VCD. All software encoders capture at 352x240 and encodes it to VCD. This will always give very poor results. Some hardware encoders capture at 704 or 352x480 and encode it to VCD, giving better quality.

[ItsMe]

Hi,
Check out posts on PVR250. I was about to buy one and saw someone return with poor picture problems.
In anycase I ended up buying Xtasy Everything 5564 AGP card from Visontek.($60-90 you can buy on Ebay).

It does MPEG1 and MPEG2 HW conversion of analog source.
I can get 0 drop frames at 720x480 resolution.

Check out the capture card list to see both of above cards...

Robert

Its doing realtime MPEG using software by the look of things, not hardware. Check the system specs at and in particular ' recording settings and requirments' at http://www.visiontek.com/everything.shtml

[ItsMe]

[quote="skittelsen"]I can't find any information on the VMagic TC Plus card, so it must be less known card, most likely a semi-professionalc card if it's priced at $600. I would sure hope a $600 capture card would work a lot better than a $150 TV tuner card.
quote]

Oops, typing error, should read " VMagic TV Plus"

Its more or less the same card as the Vidac VMagic TV that is listed in the Capture Card section on this Site. The difference being that you can use filters while doing hardware transcoding.

[robertzanzerkia]

Hmm!
I am going by my exprience. When I use this card I see now CPU load or dropped frames. Vs If I use vdub which is software capture then I see dropped frames.
However like many others trying various cards I found above card to be excellent in installation (everything worked out of box) and capture quality.
Check out reviews at
http://<br /> <a class="contentlink" href="http://www.vcdhelp.com/capturecards.php?Ca...arch</a><br />

Hi,
Check out posts on PVR250. I was about to buy one and saw someone return with poor picture problems.
In anycase I ended up buying Xtasy Everything 5564 AGP card from Visontek.($60-90 you can buy on Ebay).

It does MPEG1 and MPEG2 HW conversion of analog source.
I can get 0 drop frames at 720x480 resolution.

Check out the capture card list to see both of above cards...

Robert

Its doing realtime MPEG using software by the look of things, not hardware. Check the system specs at and in particular ' recording settings and requirments' at http://www.visiontek.com/everything.shtml

[/url]

[ItsMe]

Hmm!
I am going by my exprience. When I use this card I see now CPU load or dropped frames. Vs If I use vdub which is software capture then I see dropped frames.
However like many others trying various cards I found above card to be excellent in installation (everything worked out of box) and capture quality.
Check out reviews at

http://www.vcdhelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCardRead=Visiontek%20Xtasy%20Cinema%20E...&Search=Search

Software encoding is not per definition a bad thing. I had been using a Pinnacle PCTV Pro card to do realtime mpeg captures using software encoding and I never got a single dropped frame, even when capturing at 720*576. At the highest resolution my CPU (2Ghz) was pushed to its limits though. When capturing at half D1 CPU usage never got much above 50%. The quality was good.

[mlcarson]

What's everybody think about the following two HW encoders?

1. Navis Pro - $280
2. Vitec DCM (dvd cut machine) - $350

I currently have a Canopus ADVC-100 for analog <-> DV converting but am rather disappointed that there doesn't appear to be much available in HW to do a direct DV -> MPEG2 conversion. I'm therefore considering getting an analog -> MPEG2 capture card and output the DV back through the ADVC-100 and into a MPEG2 capture card for final rendering. I'd rather have a better solution and software rendering just takes forever.

[yossisht]

Did you look at the Matrox RT X.10
Yes, it coast about 600$ but it is a very good card.
I do not actualy own it but I was able to see what it can do at a friend place.

Again, if all you need is fast encoding just buy or upgrade to faster machine, the diffrence will be night and day.

The Matrox also enables you to run some visual and 3d effects in real time when using Adobe Primiere and this is something cant be done (yet) by the faster CPU's.

Remeber that when you are using a dedicated hardware solution you might be surprised with the compatibility and you are bound to this piece of hardware.(some time junk)
Software solutions like TMPGenc are much more flexible.

[ampm422]

I highy recommend the Canopus MVR-1000. It's a PCI-based MPEG 1 and 2 (DVD and Video CD) encoder and uses the source footage from standard RCA or S-Video sources. This card, although is pricey ($699.00 plus shipping) that quality is excellent, the card is efficient and has NO incompatibilies like the DVC II has, plus it has some TBC features build into the card (some video stablizers, although not complete)

I would recommend this card anyday for reliable usage and production and avoid any cheap version of it.

E-mail me at ampm422@cox.net for more information. Thanks.

[jfebus]

DCM offers extra features not found in the Navis Pro such as:
1. Fully flexible encoding rate , from 3Mbps to 12Mpbs, CBR and VBR (Navis rpo allows you to encode at 4,6,8Mbps only)
2. VBR can be your assignment on average, minimum and max. (You cannot set VBR parameters for Navis Pro)
3. Record audio in formats of MPEG, PCM and AC3 from 224 to 386 Mbps. (Navis Pro records audio at MPEG, 386Mbps only)
4. Runs on Windows 98, 2000, XP (Navis runs on Windows 98,2000)
5. Encodes to separate streams or combined streams. (Navis encodes as .mpg combined stream)
5. Navis comes with NTSC tuner, NOT for DCM.