Conexant CN878?? BT878?

[LSchafroth]

I've been reading the Capture Guide V4 at http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html

It mentions the BT878 chipset a lot but I cannot find anything on the Conexant CN878. I have a PCTV PCI card using this chipset.

I'm trying to figure out the best resolution to capture my Hi8 Analog home movies. I would like to encode them to Half D1 if possible.

I was just curious which chipset I reference in their guide. I'm trying to get all the details on the exact resolution to capture and which codec to use whether it be Huffy or PicVideo.

I've tried CCE, TMPGEnc and Mainconcept. I keep falling back to the SLOW TMPGEnc since all the others have issues with bad results.

Thanks!

LS

[pchan]

BT878 and CN878 are the same chip. Brooktree made the BT878 chip. Brooktree was later bought over by Connexant. I am using the Pinnacle VCD Studio capture card that uses the CN878 chip. I couldn't use the driver that came with the card becuase the installer didn't work on Xp Pro. The BTWINcap driver works for me.

I use Picvideo mjpeg codec and avi_io capture software. I capture the full resolution 768 x 576. I set the Picvideo mjpeg codec compression quality to 19.

[LSchafroth]

BT878 and CN878 are the same chip. Brooktree made the BT878 chip. Brooktree was later bought over by Connexant. I am using the Pinnacle VCD Studio capture card that uses the CN878 chip. I couldn't use the driver that came with the card becuase the installer didn't work on Xp Pro. The BTWINcap driver works for me.

I use Picvideo mjpeg codec and avi_io capture software. I capture the full resolution 768 x 576. I set the Picvideo mjpeg codec compression quality to 19.

What does the '2 lines of more then 240' do in the PicVideo settings? when i turn that off the captures look very nice. The last time I experimented with VHS to DVD the encoded files awlays looked grainy or blocky. I've never found the best settings for Capture and encoding.

Do I capture at 640x480 or 704x480 then resize down to 352x480? Or just cap directly to 352x480?

I don't get enough time to experiment for long periods of time. I then forget all the results and trial and error I did the last time.

LS

[SatStorm]

For those cards the easy way is to capture the higher you can and then resize to whatever you wish.

The long way is capture at 688 x 480 or 696 x 576, add boarders to reach 704 x 576 / 480 and resize from there. For the NTSC users another alternative is to capture at 368 x 480, resize to 344 x 480, add boarders to reach 352 x 480 and encode to whatever you wish.

If all those sounds to you tuff, then simply capture at 768 x 576/480 and resize to whatever you wish. You gonna see a loss compared the other methods, only when you have a perfect input signal (VHS / SVHS NOT included) with perfect cables

[LSchafroth]

For those cards the easy way is to capture the higher you can and then resize to whatever you wish.

The long way is capture at 688 x 480 or 696 x 576, add boarders to reach 704 x 576 / 480 and resize from there. For the NTSC users another alternative is to capture at 368 x 480, resize to 344 x 480, add boarders to reach 352 x 480 and encode to whatever you wish.

Why are you capturing at 368 then resizing to 344? that is a difference of 24 pixels. I thought it shjould always be divisble by 16?

Thanks!!

LS

[sacajaweeda]

LanczosResize(344,480)
AddBorders(4,0,4,0)

[SatStorm]

For correcting the aspect ratio...