Optimal Capture From Sky Digital

[marcus2704]

Hi, I am very new to video capturing and am hoping for some advice.

Please can someone advise me the best method of capturing direct from Sky Digital (I have Sky +)? By this I mean which resolution should I be capturing with to get the best picture. I have found that when capturing I tend to get captures whereby I can clearly see lines across the screen, presumeably I am capturing at the incorrect resolutions.

I have found that capturing using resolutions around 384 x 288 result in no scanlines, however I beleived that I would be able to capture to what I thought Sky outputted, 720 x 480.

I use:

Geforce FX VIVO
IuVCR
S-Video connection

Regards

[Richard_G]

Your profile doesn't say where you are but as you are talking about Sky+ I assume in Europe somewhere. The correct resolution for full frame (D1) for PAL systems is 720 x 576, 25fps. The lines you see are interlacing which will show up on your computer monitor but not when you output and play back on your TV as a TV uses interlaced scanning and a monitor uses progressive scanning. They will be particularly noticable if the video has lots of horizontal movement. When you capture in smaller resolutions your software will de-interlace the video and capture progressively so you won't see the lines no matter what you view it on.

You can capture at D1 resolution but you probably won't notice any difference in quality if you capture at half D1 (352 x 576, 25fps) as the broadcast quality from Sky isn't as good as most people think it is. I'm not sure what the actual output is, but I think it is no better than 702 x 576 at best and they vary it depending on the content. It definitely isn't 720 x 480 as this is an NTSC resolution.