Need help with capturing... Please...

[j1d10t]

Hi,
I need some help with capturing. I'm kind of a newbie, so please bear with me. I just got a Pinnacle PCTV Pro capture card to capture a TV program, and I'm having some problems capturing. I understand that I should be capturing in avi format, then converting to mpg in TMPGEnc, but every program I've tried won't work with the capture card. I've tried all the programs on this site in the tools section, and the only one that will work is Power VCR II, and it will only let me record in the mpg format. I've tried VirDub, Pinnacle Studio 7, all the Ulead programs, Video Wave 4 and 5, DVD Complete, and My DVD from Sonic. When I launch them, they all say that they can't connect to the capture device, because another program is using it, and I have checked everything, and no other program is. With Video Wave I can capture in the DV format, but that takes about 1.2GB per minute of video. I have a P4 3.06GHz processor, and a 200GB HD, and 1GB of RAM, if that makes a difference. Does anyone know a good capture program that might work with my Pinnacle PCTV Pro card? Or a good capture format (i.e. size, and bitrate) for Power VCR II, that will look good on an HDTV? All the captures I've tried with Power VCR look OK on my computer, but when I burn them to a VCD, XVCD, CVD, SVCD, XSVCD or DVD they look really, really bad on my HDTV - alot of microblocks that don't show up on my computer. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks.

[Dragonsf]

If the input is DV, I can recommend DVApp for capturing.
Your machine is capable enough for capturing this sort of data.
But DV is 1GByte/5 Min not 1Gbyte/1Min.Maybe your settings are wrong.
And be sure, your HD is NTFS formatted and defragged (=empty).

[j1d10t]

My input is cable (TV). Maybe my settings are wrong. But when it captures in Video Wave, it captures in 704x480, and it takes up 1.2GB per minute on my HD... Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I've defraged my HD (with 170GB free), and made sure my capture card is set to NTSC. I'm using WinXP, if that helps, or means anything. I'll go with any capture setting that will look good on an HDTV - (X)VCD, CVD, (X)SVCD, DVD... Anything.
Thanks for you help

[Dragonsf]

Misunderstanding:As I don't know your Capture card: does this card give you a DV stream (out of your TV input) or anything else?
DV is 720x 576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC).And the Bitrate is fixed to about 3600KBytes/sec (see other thread in this forum, where this is discussed more deeply).What I need to know: is your HD FAT32 or NTFS formatted?
As you are talking about 1GB/1s: maybe you are using the wrong codec (applies to avi).Or are you capturing to mpeg?

[j1d10t]

My HD is NTFS. I'm not sure about the stream. The program that came with the capture card (a Pinnacle PCTV Pro PCI card) says I can capture in VCD, SVCD and DVD (in mpg or mpg2 format), but they look really, really bad, then I can't open them in TMPGEnc. In Video Wave it gives me the option to capture to avi and use DV compression. It doesn't offer me any other codecs to compress to, even though I have them installed on my system. When I capture directly to mpg in Power VCR II it doesn't look that good, and no matter what size/bitrate I use, there are always some microblocks... I've got Huffy, MJEPG, and several other compression codecs installed on my system, but as I said, they aren't an option for compression when I capture.
Thanks again for your help

[Dragonsf]

I had a look at Pinnacle's HP and found, you are only supposed to capture to mpeg (1 or 2).Try AVI-IO for capturing and use mpeg-2 5 or 6 MBits/sec framerate.The resulting file should be small enough so 10 Min will be 450 MB.With 750 KBy<tes/sec should get a decent resolution too.

[j1d10t]

Cool. I'll try that. I really appreciate your help. Thanks.

[j1d10t]

When I launched the program it pulls up the same error message that all the other programs pull up, about not being able to connect to the WDM capture device because it's already in use...

[Dragonsf]

Is there any BG program running (maybe from pinnacle), which uses the driver exclusively?Try stopping the driver and look, who complains.
Maybe some VCR/Time shift operations are happening.
Go to the task manager and kill everybody, who looks like pinnacle!
:P

[j1d10t]

I've tried closing out almost every BG program, and still the same problem. I've found that Pinnacle's Studio 8 will let me capture in .avi format, but only in VCD resolution... Thanks for the help

[NYPlayer]

j1d10t

I have to same problem. I have tried different capture programs. The best to use with this card is WinDVD Recorder. Everything else I tried, cannot open the card. I even tried to capture straight to dvd using MYDVD and still cannot open it.

WinDVD Recorder is the only one I can capture straight to dvd using this card.

[j1d10t]

Which WinDVD version do you use?
I'm glad to hear that it's not just me having this problem, and Pinnacle has no information on their site about this problem. Thanks for the help

[NYPlayer]

http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Product_Profile.jsp?p=WinDVDRecorder

[j1d10t]

NYPlayer: Thanks for the link. Do you know the best settings for WinDVD recorder? I'm trying to capture a TV show, and have it look good on my HDTV. I know the picture will only be as good as the source, but everything I've tried to capture in .mpg with other programs looks bad. I've tried PowerVCR, and it looks really bad on my HDTV. Thanks for your help