suggestions for for tuner/encoder?

[feh]

Are there 1 or 2 capture/tuner cards that are considered best? I've been to the product reviews page, and can't really determine if there's a clear winner.

I currently have an old Hauppauge PCI tuner card. It works fine, but I'm tired of capturing to AVI and then converting to mpeg2. Those AVI files just take up too much space.

What I need to do:
- be able to capture from a cable feed
- be able to capture from my analog camcorder
- encode (on the fly, in hardware) to mpeg2
- the resulting mpg needs to be DVD compliant for burning, hopefully
without any AV sync problems
- hopefully less than $100

I'd be using this with an XP system. PCI or USB; I can deal with either one.

I'd appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!

[andkiich]

I like the ATI AIW cards myself.

[SaSi]

I have been capturing to AVI with ASUS vivo board for 3 years now. My main concern was not encoding but dropping frames and CPU stretching.

I recently bought a Pinnacle PCTV deluxe USB2 tuner/encoder.

It does capture to MPEG2 via USB, you can burn a DVD with the capture, however it only encodes to CBR and this means that to keep the quality high, the bitrate must be quite high.

It captures full PAL (720x576) or full NTSC (720x480) at full frame rate without any problems and good quality at 6-8Mbps. You can use the feed directly in DVDLab (for example) and compile with relaxed compliance though. The audio appears not have CRC, something DVD specs dictate. My player played the DVD fine. One hour video.

I would recommend this (although a bit more expensive than $100). Bear in mind you will be probably better of with re-encoding again.

[lordsmurf]

Capturing MPEG-2 on the fly is the tricky part of the request. It immediately eliminates most cards.

Look at an ATI All In Wonder. That's my choice card.

[snafu099]

ADS usb DvdExpress $99-us
analog input
usb2
2-15mb bitrate
cbr/vbr
"audio lock"
hardware mpg
dvd compliant output

http://www.adstech.com

[MrMungus]

I've been getting and testing a bunch of cards to do what you're talking about -- some MPEG-2 capture and some Firewire capture with on-the-fly software encoding.

You can do either hardware encoding as you've mentioned but you might also be able to do software encoding on the fly if your computer is fast enough (all the info about encoding below will be about on-the-fly encoding, not capture and convert).

I tried the Avermedia card ($50) but that's nothing more than a BT878 card with software encoding.

I tried the Videoh! card ($129) and it does do hardware encoding but it doesn't let you select antying other than "good, better or best". Fine for some people but I need more control than that.

I tried the Hauppauge PVR-250 card ($149) and it works well. The only problems I've had with it are when I have a "bad" tape that the MPEG-2 encoder can't handle for whatever reason (even with TBC on the VCR *on*). This results in files that play fine on the computer but when converted to DVD result in a loss of audio synch.

Right now I'm testing the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 device ($179). This is a separate capture box that connects to your computer via USB 2.0. The setup is easy, the capture software allows full control over the paramaters, and, most importantly to me, it's portable (that might not matter to you).

The other way I've created MPEG-2 files on the fly is using Firewire input via my Sony DVMC-DA2 analog > digital converter and using Ulead DVD MovieFactory to do the software MPEG-2 encoding. This works for me only because I have a computer that's fast enough to do software encoding on the fly. You could probably do the same with something like the Canopus ADVC-100 analog > Firewire converter which is around $250. The benefit there is that if your computer is powerful enough to do on-the-fly software MPEG-2 encoding, you can use it for that *and* you can use it to encode to AVI if you ever have content you want to capture then edit. This way allows the most flexibilty (since most of the MPEG-2 capture cards/devices don't let you encode to AVI) and the ADVC-100 seems to be a good product (and lots of people here use it so you'd have lots of people to answer your questions).

So the question is: How fast is your computer? If it's powerful enough to do software MPEG-2 encoding? If so, I think I'd opt for the analog>firewire converter.

[SaSi]

I tried the Hauppauge PVR-250 card ($149) and it works well. The only problems I've had with it are when I have a "bad" tape that the MPEG-2 encoder can't handle for whatever reason (even with TBC on the VCR *on*). This results in files that play fine on the computer but when converted to DVD result in a loss of audio synch.

Interesting issue. I have exactly the same one with the Pinnacle PCTV. I have some older tapes that have suffered from my older VCR that mangled the tape. When playback reaches the curled and twisted part, the capture device stops capturing.

Even more interesting is that when I disable the TBC on the VCR, playback continues properly and despite the messy look of the video, eventually it resumes with normal playback.

[CrAzEdPeddlaR]

I've been an ATI AIW user for the past 4 years, and am thouroughly satisfied with it's performance.

You can capture in any format you desire, mpeg, avi, compressed avi, and it has inputs for s-video, composite, stereo sound, and coaxal. I currently have the ATI AIW 9000 Pro, it might run you a bit over $100, but it's definately worth it.

Using the ATI MMC (ATI TV) to capture right to Mpeg-1 or Mpeg-2, at a res of 720x480 is as easy as breathing. And the ATI MMC has a schedular, so you could be away from your computer for a year, and it would record every single show you wanted it to....., mind you, you'd need a lot of HD space.

I have some pictures of captured and encoded video on my post, "how to capture video", if you're interested.