AverTv Studio Problems

[vifa84]

I bought an AverTv Studio PCI capture card and have had nothing but problems. The software that came with it is AverTv Studio 4.31 and it shows video from the coax in fine from my sattelite rcvr. However, when I try to record a movie that's where the problems start. The software always kicks over to a new mpg file once it reaches 4gig whether your using an NTFS file system or not. The first file will play fine, but the second file never plays or is loadable into tmpgenc dvd authoring. It just says illegal mpeg II file or size out of range. So I tried a different capture software (Powervcr II) and it also plays video fine, however, it cuts the files at around 650mb or so and the first two or three mpg files will play fine but then the fourth file won't have any audio, then the fifth might be fine but the sixth might not have any audio. It is usually randum which files play audio but what's the same is it's usually the third or fourth file that starts not having audio and usually not two files in a row will not have audio. It's always a full file that won't have audio and not half of one, in other words either the file has audio or it doesn't.

Things I have tried:
rebooting before capture
unloading any programs that might be using memory
copying to different hard drives
checked dma active
turning video down to 16bit

My system
Athlon 2200xp
512 333 ram
8mb 80gig 7200 hard drive
5600fx video
albatron kx-600 mb
AverTv Studio pci capture card
Winxp Pro

Please any help would be greatly appreciated
vifa

[FulciLives]

Well I have the AverTV Stereo which is ... to the best of my knowledge ... exactly the same as the AverTV Studio except the AverTV Stereo lacks the FM reciever.

I've had great success for the most using VirtualVCR to capture in AVI format. You can use HuffyUV or PICVideo MJPEG ... I use PICVideo MJPEG on the 19 (out of 20 with 20 being the best) quality setting.

I then convert to MPEG-2 using either TMPGEnc or CCE (long time TMPGEnc fan but recently I've been using CCE more often).

Works great for me.

Please note that this card does internal scaling so for full NTSC D1 resolution you should capture 704x480 instead of 720x480

Also if you are doing half D1 you are better off capturing at 720x480 and then resize to 352x480. This gives a more proper aspect ratio (again this is due to the internal scaler) than doing 704x480 to 352x480 or doing 352x480 direct.

Although this card is capable of doing direct MPEG-1/MPEG-2 captures I only very briefly tested it this way. It does this completely with software ... there is no hardware encoding for MPEG captures ... so unless you have a very fast computer you run into all sorts of problems. My computer is simply too slow to capture MPEG unless it is VCD MPEG-1 and that is worthless for my needs.

If you are capturing straight to MPEG and gong over 4GB then my guess is you are recording more than 2 hours at a time. Either record in 2 hour chunks or lower your bitrate.

However if you insist on capturing direct to MPEG-2 then perhaps consider getting a more suitable capture card such as the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 as it is an internal PCI card that does HARDWARE encoding of MPEG-1/MPEG-2 which generally speaking is better than doing SOFTWARE encoding ... at least when doing it REAL TIME as in during the capture stage.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[vifa84]

Thanks for the reply. I would rather record straight to mpeg2 so I think I'll check out getting one of the cards you suggested. Wintv Pvr 250, I've read good things about this card. I didn't know that aver uses the software for mpeg encoding and some cards use hardware. You would think that hardware would definitly be the way to go.
Thanks,
vifa

[FulciLives]

Thanks for the reply. I would rather record straight to mpeg2 so I think I'll check out getting one of the cards you suggested. Wintv Pvr 250, I've read good things about this card. I didn't know that aver uses the software for mpeg encoding and some cards use hardware. You would think that hardware would definitly be the way to go.
Thanks,
vifa

Here is a web site all about the Hauppauge WinTV PVR series of capture devices. This of course includes the WinTV PVR-250 which does seem to be the more popular model. There is the WinTV PVR-350 which I think is basically the same as the 250 model except the 350 model also offers outputs so you can view MPEG-1/MPEG-2 on a television ... similiar to using a MPEG decoder cards such as the once very popular Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus card or their newer Xcard.

The benefit to having a dedicated MPEG-1/MPEG-2 output like that is that the quality is head and tails above the TV out of any VIDEO card but not everyone needs or wants a TV output from the computer so if you don't need it then stick with the 250 model.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[trevlac]

Please note that this card does internal scaling so for full NTSC D1 resolution you should capture 704x480 instead of 720x480

Also if you are doing half D1 you are better off capturing at 720x480 and then resize to 352x480. This gives a more proper aspect ratio (again this is due to the internal scaler) than doing 704x480 to 352x480 or doing 352x480 direct.

Can you explain how this "internal scaling" works? Say I set the drivers to cap a 352x480. What does the card do?

Here is my post: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=184977&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

[FulciLives]

Please note that this card does internal scaling so for full NTSC D1 resolution you should capture 704x480 instead of 720x480

Also if you are doing half D1 you are better off capturing at 720x480 and then resize to 352x480. This gives a more proper aspect ratio (again this is due to the internal scaler) than doing 704x480 to 352x480 or doing 352x480 direct.

Can you explain how this "internal scaling" works? Say I set the drivers to cap a 352x480. What does the card do?

Here is my post: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=184977&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

OK well I went to your thread and posted my explaination.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman