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  1. i have a hauppauge WinTV tuner. i have an nvidia geforce2, i have a 40 gig drive, and another 40 gig capture drive. the picture i get from my tv tuner is not the greatest. on every other tv in my house, the picture looks fine, but my picture has a lot of noise. sometimes i have to tighten the cable to get a somewhat clearer picture. is there any way i can reduce the noise so that when i watch tv it looks better and when i capture not as much filtering is necesary? i went out to the store and bought a new cable only to find that it didnt work right, so i dont really want to try another cable because it is so difficult to switch cables. i have to run the new cable from the source in one room, through the wall, and then to the other side of my room. any suggestions that dont cost a fortune?
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  2. You could:

    - Used a signal booster $30 (This may cause ghosting if too strong)
    - Run the CATV into a svhs vcr and run s-video to my cap card (the tuner in the cap card is not great)
    - Used better cables
    - Sigma copy master probably cleans the signal (I don't have one)
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  3. I would try the vcr. I found I did not get as good captures when I used my ATi's tv tuner. Now I use a vcr for channel selection. Works much better.
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  4. i have seen signal boosters in stores, but do they really work?? also, i have a vcr, but it does not have svideo out and i dont have a capture card, i have a tv tuner card that i capture with.
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  5. Human j1d10t's Avatar
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    xsbs52x, you and I are in the same boat - I have the same problem with my Pinnacle PCTV TV tuner card, so I will be very interested to see what people suggest. I've tried switching cables too, and it didn't help. I went to Radio Shack and purchased a (really cheep) little signal booster for coaxial cable, and it made the signal too strong, and there was almost no picture, just a ton of noise. I've been a little leery about trying another one, so if anyone can suggest a really good one that doesn't cost a fortune, that would be nice. I read one thread that said you should make sure that your cables don't run parallel to any power lines, but seeing as how they run all though the house, I'm not sure how you could avoid having them do that, at some point. I've also read that you should use the shortest cable you can, but my house was pre-wired for cable (when it was built) and I've got my computer sitting right next to a cable drop, so there isn't much I can do
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  6. Play the tape on a really good VCR with TBC. Esp for old tapes this makes a huge difference. I have some old anime tapes that are unwatchable on 'cheapo' VCRs but look much much better on my SVHS deck.
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  7. well there are two problems with that suggestion: the first is that its not a vhs tape i want watch, its regular tv. also, i dont have the money to buy a very nice vcr. i still havnt been able to get a nicer signal, but ill tell you if i come up with anything
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  8. No Capture Card ? It says in your profile you have a haupaugge winTV. I'm guessing your model does not have s-video. So forget svhs.

    Here's a thought. I believe your card has a yellow rca input jack, Right?

    Do you have a dvd player? If so, play a DVD thru the RCA input of your card. This is probably as good as you can get. Now, start working back wards. The next thing would be the winTV tuner. Not sure how you test that. Next comes the cables / splitters/ etc.

    Personally, I have a crapy signal from cable. I just clean my capture in virtualdub. It takes a while, but it's amazing.

    I might buy a Sima Copy Master from Walmart to see if it makes things better. They generally take anything back. So if it doesn't improve enough, back it goes.
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  9. a while ago my dad bought a signal cleaner/booster. he found that it made no difference on our tv so it has been lying in a corner for about a year. i just hooked it up to my tv tuner card to see what it could do. there was very little improvment on the picture. the improvment was so little that it was not even close to being worth the rediculous price for this thing.

    i think i should mention that my tv tuner card is a few years old, not sure how old but i think about 4 years old. someone suggested that maybe it isnt the signal that is the problem, maybe my tv tuner card is just old or bad. any thoughts?
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  10. I can say this I was never a big ATI AIW fan until now I just tried there new captrue software MMC 8.1 it has a filter that remove's all noise in any picture.
    On your card you might want to check there website may there new software has video filter in it. I will say this the AIW ATI clean up noise as good as my $900.00 dollar VCR I bought six year's ago
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  11. Just buy the Sima CopyMaster, that will fix any noise. I have two of them, one for capture and the other I use on another VCR to watch VHS movies.
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  12. Member shoozleboy's Avatar
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    Dare I ask where one can get a Sima Copymaster?

    I was told they sell at WalMart - but no luck
    Circuit City - no
    Best Buy - No
    Radio Shack - no
    Target - no

    Do any stores carry these or they an online item only?

    edit: I just found it on Walmart's website.... DOH!!! Has anyone found them in their stores? If so, what department? I walked the electronics area three times tonight and found nothing by Sima....
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  13. They sell them at BestBuy in the same section where they have the VCR's and DVD players or you can order one online at www.bestbuy.com .
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  14. Human j1d10t's Avatar
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    The Sima Copy Master looks nice, but does anyone know of anything that you can use with coaxial cable, instead of S-video, or composite video?
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  15. Originally Posted by j1d10t
    The Sima Copy Master looks nice, but does anyone know of anything that you can use with coaxial cable, instead of S-video, or composite video?
    Your VCR is so old it doesn't even have a composite video output LOL jk. If you're trying to capture TV then I suggest you run the coax through the VCR and use it as the tuner and output from the VCR composite video out.
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  16. Human j1d10t's Avatar
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    No my VCR does have composite plugs - it's not THAT old It's just that my computer is sitting right next to a cable jack, and my VCR is about 60 feet from my computer, in another room... That's why I was hoping for something (fairly) cheap to clean up the signal right here at my computer.
    "Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgment."
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  17. I believe I have seen passive noise filters with coax in and out at BestBuy and Target.
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  18. Member shoozleboy's Avatar
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    Bob W - thanks for the suggestion, but I have already been to Best Buy and they have nothing like that on their shelves... even had the sales peeps asking their manager about it... they say that they don't carry it.

    I will check out their website though, I was hoping to find it locally so I could get my greedy little paws on it by this weekend....
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    Get the best available capture drivers for your card. If it is Btx based with VFW drivers use Btx tweak in Virtualdub; if Btx based with WDM drivers-try switching to the Btwincap drivers from sourceforge.
    If you are getting clear video on TV but not with your card-problem is almost certainly the capture drivers or your card is not ok.
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    BT drivers on sourceforge don't work for me, locks me in PAL land.

    Remember; Electically speaking the inside of you computer is an INCREDABLY noisy place. The noise levels exceed the input signal level from your cable. Every 6th-7th channel (in the US) has a harmonic from your PCI buss on it. If you have an ISA buss, then 4/5 channels have a harmonic on them. Your RAM will through harmonics on 6 or less channels. What colors and refresh rates your video card is displaying can cause distortion on the capture card.

    This is why I use an external Demodulator (think of a VCR with no tape deck), then run video in. The video is less sensitive to the interferance (frequencies are under 6 Mhz).

    Ground loops can cause interference, and UPS as well. All in all, if your going to capture RF, you need a well grounded and shileded computer. I put in an internal partition to seperate my CPU/RAM/Video card from my cpature card. This improved the RF capturing capabilites quite a bit, but not as good as the external demodulator. USB devices are good in this aspect (but bad in the 10 Mbps limitiation of a 1.1 device). Other external devices don't have the RF interferance problem that an internal card does.
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  21. just wondering, what is a Sima CopyMaster? sorry if that is an ignorant question
    by the way ImaWeTodd, when i say i do not have a capture card, i mean its not really a capture card its a tv tuner that i use as a capture card. sorry for the confusion. and it does have s video. i run my ps2 through it using svideo and looks pretty nice. it also has the yellow rca jack. u said u clean it in vdub...what filters do you use?
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  22. Originally Posted by xsbs52x
    just wondering, what is a Sima CopyMaster? sorry if that is an ignorant question
    by the way ImaWeTodd, when i say i do not have a capture card, i mean its not really a capture card its a tv tuner that i use as a capture card. sorry for the confusion. and it does have s video. i run my ps2 through it using svideo and looks pretty nice. it also has the yellow rca jack. u said u clean it in vdub...what filters do you use?
    I don't have a Sima CopyMaster, but my understanding is that is cleans the signal and corrects the timing especially on old vhs tapes. It also removes macrovision, which is a analog copy protection. It's a box I would hook between my vcr and my capture card. I'm no expert on this, so do a search for more info.

    In virtual dub I mainly use 2dcleaner and dynamic noise reduction. I cap cartoons from cable tv, and make dvds. I find these filter work well for me.

    On another note, based upon your post, I started looking at my setup. I found the splitter and cables I used added some noise, so I replaced them. It's well worth a look at this, if you can.
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  23. i havnt seen the dynamic noise reduction filter online, where can i find it? in the past i have used i think its called like a VHS cleaner but i dont think it does much. i use the 2d cleaner for cartoon caps. also i bought a cable and i didnt see this on the packaging but on the cable itself it said high definition. does that mean it would only work on a hdtv? i assumed that just mean it was a higher quality piece of equiptment. it did not work with my tv tuner. i got fuzz with audio and if i looked real hard i could kind of make out some sign of a picture. i checked all my connections and it was fine. then i switched back to my old cable with the same exact setup and it worked fine.
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  24. You can get DNR here http://www.shdon.com/dnr1.zip

    You can get lots of filters here http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/. DNR was under 'other', Steve Don.

    I find Dynamic Noise is less noticable in the AVI, but makes a big difference when compressing to MPEG2.

    Not sure on HDTV cables. I don't have HDTV. I actually bought the HighSpeed internet do it yourself kit from Compusa. This is from my cable company in the area. The kit has 2 really high quality cables and a good spliter. It's a llittle cheaper than buying Monster brand stuff.

    A picture of the filters I use are in this thread https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=165999&highlight=
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  25. thanks for all your suggestions. i will test them all out soon.

    i am interested in buying a new tv tuner card. i want something that can do mpeg1/mpeg2 AND raw avi capture. i want an svideo in. the only card i have seen that can do all that is the hauppauge wintv pvr pci model 880. i have been leaning toward this card but i was wondering if any one could suggest another one. thanks again for everyones help.
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