Help with picking TV Tuner/Capture card, lots of questions

[furanomycin]

Hello everyone,

Great website, great info. I’ve learned a lot.

I’m looking to get a TV Tuner/Analog Video Capture card for my computer (Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, 1GB RAM, 160 GB Harddrive, ATI Radeon 9200 video card, DVD Burner). I’d like to transfer home videos, edit them a bit with music, still pictures and transitions and record television shows to DVD. This site has helped reduce this from bewildering to slightly bewildering. I’ve been poking around and researching, (I found the User comments about Capture cards very insightful) and have lots of questions.

1) I’m considering a TV Tuner Capture card, such as the Hauppauge PVR-250, but also note there a lot of non-TV Tuner capture cards. Is There a difference in capture quality between the two?

2) There can be quite a bit of price difference between products, is this because of better software at the higher end (A lot of the user comments complained about software)? Are there quality differences in that captured video?

3) Is it important to have MPEG-2 Encoding on the capture card??

4) Is MPEG-2 easy to edit? I recently read that AVI is easier, though a larger file size, than MPEG-2.

5) Advantages and disadvantages of PCI vs USB vs Firewire connectivity?

6) I’ve caught snippets about resolutions, 720 x 5 xx, VCD, SVCD, and MPEG, what is that about?

7) Is there a better choice between software encoding and hardware encoding? What about real-time vs non-real time encoding?

8) Is there an advantage to having the MPEG decoder on the PCI board (such as on the Hauppauge-PVR-350)

9) How well do the TV-Tuners capture video for recording.?


Thanks for your help. I appreciate any responses.

MPV

[FulciLives]

It sounds like to are going to be doing what I would consider being EXTENSIVE EDITING.

Basically anything more than CUT EDITING such as cutting out TV commercials and trimming the start and/or end points is what *I* consider EXTENSIVE EDITIGN.

You mention wanting to do stuff like editing them a bit and adding music and transitions etc. so yeah ... I'd call that EXTENSIVE EDITING.

So the BEST format for doing that would be the DV codec.

In which case you are probably best off getting either the Canopus ADVC-100 or the DataVideo DAC-100

These are external devices that hook up to your computer via the FIREWIE port (most newer computers have this built-in).

These devices then have normal RCA jack analog video and stereo audio inputs. You can input any type of analog video (such as a VHS VCR) and the box will convert it to the DV video format and then send it to your computer through the FIREWIRE port.

Now that you footage is digitalized on your computer as DV video you can edit to your heart's content.

Some of the more popular DV editing programs include:

Adobe Premiere
Vegas Video
Ulead Videostudio

In fact if you CLICK on the TOOLS link (which you will find on the LEFT HAND side of your screen under the OTHER section) you will see that there are a number of video editors listed under ADVANCED VIDEO EDITORS.

TV tuner type capture cards are great when you don't need to do extensive editing.

MPEG-2 is also a poor format to edit in. In fact MPEG-2 editing could very well drive you insane.

It really is best to stick to DV video for major editing projects.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jdizzy40]

I run 2 WIN PVR 250s in 2 seperate systems. Both work with a program called SnapStream. Record in full DVD High Res. 2 gigs per 1 hour video. its the best TIVO + setup anyone could want. It beats TIVO by a long shot and no fees. I use TMPGENc to demultiplex, IFOEdit to Author DVD, and DVD Shrink to trim stuff out. Burn using Nero 6. Great quality DVD's with no audio/video snyc issues. These boxes are my away from home PVRs.

[furanomycin]

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate it.

Slowly but surely, I'm beginning to understand how all this works. I want the TV-Tuner features
I want to be able to capture in MPEG2 or AVI

However, I still have a few questions.

Can The PVR-250 capture in AVI, this would be helpful apparently for editing.

Second, if I go with a cheaper $50-100 TV-tuner/capture card, do they capture in AVI?

What is the software converstion to MPEG2 like, Time consuming? I have a P4 3.0GHz processor.

Thanks for your patience.

furanomycin

[FulciLives]

Can The PVR-250 capture in AVI, this would be helpful apparently for editing.

The WinTV PVR-250 can only do MPEG-2 capture. It uses a HARDWARE encoder which is the preferred method of capturing REAL-TIME MPEG. Again this capture card does NOT do anything but MPEG-1/MPEG-2 capturing.

Second, if I go with a cheaper $50-100 TV-tuner/capture card, do they capture in AVI?

Yes. Such cards do capture in AVI but most people use them to capture either with the HuffyUV codec or an MJPEG codec (of which the most popular is the PICVideo MJPEG codec). I don't think these are as easy to edit as using the DV codec but I'm not really sure. They are much easier to edit than MPEG files.

What is the software converstion to MPEG2 like, Time consuming? I have a P4 3.0GHz processor.

Well generally most people either capture direct to MPEG which either requires a HARDWARE encoding capture device such as the WinTV PVR-250 or a VERY fast computer. So either way you are covered there.

The other popular method is to capture in AVI (which usually means HuffyUV or MJPEG) and then convert to MPEG using a software program such as TMPGEnc or CCE or MainConcepts etc. This way generally gives better quality because you don't have to do the encoding in real time ... the encoder can take it's time and you can do a true 2-pass or multi-pass VBR which generally maximes quality when trying to fit more than 1 hour of video per DVD disc. As you can imagine this IS slower than real time but depends on a lot of variables as to the final time. Having said that though I wouldn't be surprised if you could do most 2 hour encodes in less than 6-8 hours maybe 12 max with a lot of filtering. CPU speed is the most important element to speeding up this type of MPEG encoding so you are pretty much at the top of the heap with your P4 3.0Ghz.

Here is the problem though as I see it ...

You really want to get you analog video into DV format for the type of extensive editing you want to do and I don't think that can be done without some sort of HARDWARE device such as the Canopus ADVC-100 or the DataVideo DAC-100

However this is where my inexperience with DV coms in. With such a FAST computer you might be able to catpure to DV using a card that saves to AVI but then again you might not be able too. It comes down to speed. If you can't then you might be able to capture using HuffyUV then convert it to DV for editing without too much loss if any since HuffyUV uses compression but is considered a LOSSLESS type of compression.

It sounds to me like you might best be served by one of the ATI AIW capture cards because they can capture to MPEG using HARDWARE ASSIST (meaning some of it is in hardware and some of it is in software). Your computer is so fast that even though it isn't completely HARDWARE like the WinTV PVR-250 you should still get great quality. But the reason why I suggest the ATI AIW line of cards is that they can ALSO do AVI capture. And here is a question for LORDSMURF ... can you use an ATI AIW card to capture using a DV codec? I'm not really sure.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[lordsmurf]

Hello everyone,

1- All card act different. Brands and models mean nothing, figure out which chips are on board. I don't like BT or Conexant chips (very generic), but do like ATI Theatre chips. Find a non-generic-chipped card for best results.

2 - Yes to all of those.

3- No, but it helps. My ATI is hardware-assisted, not pure hardware or software.

4- Both are easy to splice. Splicing is removing unwanted footage or adding a few pieces together. Editing is adding all kinds of custom transitions, fades, effects, etc, and AVI is best.

5- Externals only capture DV in most cases, and I prefer internals. But both can be fine, depending on the chips.

6 Each one has a resolution it uses. Some have several (like DVD).

7- As long as it works and looks good.

8- Do you plan to watch DVD on you computer. That's a decoder.

9- Great.