leadtek tv2000xp deluxe

[ruteger]

Greetings all
this is a lil post with regards to my experiences with capturing , encoding and authoring some dvd stuff , firstly however i would like to extend my hugest thanks to all those marvellously generous individuals who take the time to

a) run this site , saviour of my frayed psyche , im sure my decent into madness would have been complete without this site

b) reply to all of the various problems issues and questions related to this passion we all seem to share called video perfection ,

the time, consideration, effort and downright niceness with which these 2 groups deal with everyone who lands at this site is stupendous . be it someone curiously starting out a little investigating or an advanced user with a specific and gutwrenchingly bastard problem , everyone is so helpful and nice , the human species could learn alot from you all ....and when i consider someone not human its a hella compliment

now on with my attempt to briefly outline my experiences ....firstly the tv2000xp deluxe ....great card , suckass software . the ONLY thing which caused me to not attempt to fly to leadteks head office and insert it into someone there was WINDVR ....the best capture software EVER in this yak herders humble opinion , and i tried almost every capture software there is ...., this is the only one i could get to capture into mpeg2 trouble free with my setup, others may have success but being an anal retentive i wanted highest bitrate etc etc and the PVR that came with the card just doesnt seem able to handle it for me ...terrible results for about 3 months

the biggest hint ive got with the leadtek is that even with WINDVR it seems best to capture no more than 2 hours straight on this card , well in my experience anyway , ....perhaps just the size of the file but im pretty sure its the card screwing the recording up ....but again and as with all opinions in here its just a simple eediots one

now with TMPGENC , another complete saviour for me as without it i wouldda just had the basic capture and cut out the ads etc and whack it onto dvd and dont get me wrong that would have been fine for most people as the quality of the capture in WINDVR is superb , but it is old vhs im talking about (ren and stimpy to be precise- happy happy joy joy)
and with all the beauty of TMPGENC ive been able to make it look really really good ...well i think so anyway . I tested many of the settings and had a few interesting results i wanted to share
1) the "noise reduction" filter is the best feature for me and the setting im using for my stuff is 90-3-90 ...and oh your god , the difference is quite large , the video doesnt have that grain and fuzz over everything , just brilliant ...the only downside for most is that this filter added about 40 minutes to the encode time ...but time is an illusion anyway , lunchtime doubly so
2) i couldnt tell the difference between closed or open GOP , but may have effects elsewhere but not with authoring the dvd so im happy
3) i think the combination of filters can affect each other so if u use the cg animation quantize , u need to reduce the contrast a little more than usual ....its all about testing in my mind
4) TMPGENC WILL determine the correct interlace / non interlace and if it determines interlace it will also determine the correct field first ...BUT ONLY if u use the wizard, which still gives u full control over settings , just some stuff like that is simpler. and it will also output the video and audio seperate , yet again this is no problem as using tmpgenc dvd author it picks up the audio whence u load the video trak
5) i have no issue with tmpgenc doing the audio in PCM as it does what i consider a great job and with all my other buggerising around beats figuring out another audio program
here are some of the settings and filters i use to get a capture worthy of the quality of the program and good enuff for this anal retentive
8000KBps , PCM audio (1536KBps)
ghost reduction / noise reduction / sharpen edge / simple colour correction
GOP = 1 x I picture + 14 P pictures which gave me a noticeable difference above having any B pictures in there - no B pictures but only coz i have the highest bitrate set
quantize as CG/Animation (it is animation afterall) + output YUV as YCbCr as this really brings the colours back and i also let TMPGenc normalise the audio
and above all of this all i can really suggest is that every source is different and everyone sees through their own eyes so the key for me is testing testing testing ....find out what the filters will do to your specific project
well thats all i really came to say(he said perusing his mammothly long post hoping it would not be tooo long to be posted or for anyone to read but hoping it may help someone out at some point )

well take care all and happy videography

PS if i got anything wrong or skewed , as an eediot is bound to do , please feel free to voice it but be gentle

[bartonarmy]

8000KBps , PCM audio (1536KBps)
Why PCM audio (1536KBps) and not MPEG-1 Layer2? Or was MPEG-1 Layer2 bad? Will your PVR record in 352 x 480 pixels MPEG2 which should be better.