Help me make a good decision...

[jw_ne_macdonald]

Please Help... any insight will be very much appreciated!

So I'm trying to back up my family's home videos to DVD. I've found the software I like to use (Ulead products) and I was succesful using my Geforce 4 ti4600 as a capture device. But the quality seems like it could be just a tad bit better, and I want to get this done right the first time. So I tried a couple of $50 dollar cards and returned them both after realizing that they were much worse (especially the Aver PCI EZMaker)... set me back $30 after shipping and restocking fees.

So I decided to look into this more and I've narrowed my search down to 4 alternatives:

Adaptec Videoh PCI (2410) versus Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250?

and Canopus ADVC 100 versus Datavideo DAC-100?

What do you guys think?

I would prefer more feedback on the first two as I would like to capture directly to MPEG-2.

I have one important need:
I need to be able to have full control over the I, P, and B frame sequence while the video is capturing. I am not sure I this is possible using a hardware MPEG encoder... Can anyone clarify this for me? In particular I would prefer to capture I frames only.

I would also prefer a card that is capable of capturing at least 9800 kbps. Does anyone have any experience in capturing at similar rates with either of the two MPEG cards?

If anyone has any other cards to suggest to me please feel free... This is just where my research has lead me so far. Maybe I'm totally wrong in thinking that these will do what I need them to.

Thank you for your time... I never knew that finding the right card on my budget would be such a headache!

[Sulik]

I would definitely pick the PVR250 over the Adaptec from what I've heard the Adaptec isn't very good, but the PVR 250 has pretty good support.

However, it sounds like what you want is really an ATI AIW-type board.
It will have no problem going to much higher bitrates than pure HW encoders, and I-frame only capturing is very easy on the CPU.

I can capture full resolution 720x480 interlaced I-frame only with my AIW 9700Pro, P4 2.6C @ 15Mbps using less than 10% of the CPU.
I've also heard than the next version of MMC will allow up to 20Mbps capturing (it will probably be possible to even hack it to more than that in the registry).

[Forum Troll]

I have both a Ti4600 and the Hauppauge PVR 250. The PVR 250 has a preset setting for encoding MPEG2 at 12Mb/s, and you can specify whatever bitrate you want in the settings. I mainly use it for capturing to VCD from a VCR. However, it's almost useless if you need to edit your captures. Editing an MPEG2 destroys the timecode, and gives you out-of-sync DVD burns and errors galore in authoring programs. So, if you need to edit your final capture, stick with the TI4600 and capture to AVI using the HuffyUV codec. This way you can edit with no problems, and then use TMPGENC to convert to MPEG. That program has great filters to remove noise and such. This is what I use to capture my laserdiscs for conversion to DVD.

[jw_ne_macdonald]

Thanks for your advice guys...

Now that you mention it, I was looking at some ati products... has anyone ever used a TV Wonder Pro along with a Geforce 4?

I must be sounding a bit odd after saying that my Geforce 4 was working, yet I'm looking for something different in the same consumer range.

I guess I should mention a few more of the issues I was having with it:

1) Macromedia protection kicks in at random no matter what capture program I use. No, I'm not trying to copy Holywood stuff, this occurs on my home videos which are on regular old consumer VHS tapes.

2) When this card gets hot the video capture goes tits-up, yet oddly the software doesn't report any dropped frames when this happens so I'm guessing that this is a hardware issue. (ti4600's get really hot as you may know. I put one of those big thermaltake heatpipe coolers on it with arctic silver)

3) Overall quality is grainy, line infested picture with color artifacts.

All of these are known issues with the card which I have heard others complain about as well.

Forum Troll, you haven't noticed this problem? I've tried every single nvidia WDM driver with absolutely no luck. My card's a Visiontek if that makes any difference.

I thought that it might have been broken at first, but after seeing so many similar posts on the same issues I think that's just the way it is. Nobody had any solutions other than pray for driver updates.

So here's a question... Can I do any better than what I've got for under $100. Possibly the TV Wonder Pro if it is in fact compatible with Geforce 4 as the ATI website claims? I really don't want to go so far as to replace my Geforce with an AIW so I thought maybe TVW would be a good compromise.

If so, that is all I really need... just a good clean video capture card and the rest my system can handle (software encoding)...