better tv card vs poor tv card/

[glk2000]

hi everyone
i was wondering what is the different between a better tv card and a poor one.
all i want to know is when recording a tape to pc would it have a major difference in quality even if i were recording in the same format.
eg
better tv card and "vcd quality"
poor tv card and "vcd quality"
would the better tv card have a major difference in the quality when its record? because my tv card is driving me crazy i keep comparing same format with downloaded files with my own, now im just wondering if its because my tv card is crap.

[redwudz]

What IS your TV card? Without that information I don't see how anybody could answer your question. But in general a cheaper card has a cheaper tuner module, other than that, it depends on what card it is.

[junkmalle]

And what's wrong with your captures? Analog noise? Compression artifacts? Too dark? Bad colors? Dropped frames? Bad A/V sync? Corrupt files?

[glk2000]

my tv card now is "Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP" and im using winfast PVR to capture the tapes into pc first and than burn it on a dvd disc each episode i want to capture is 45mins and capturing as "vcd quality" its about 450mb i dont want to capture to avi,mpeg2 n other format because it turn out to big and i got way to much episode to burn i expect to capture about 7-8 episodes into 1 disc and it is possible as some people think you cant, i just want to know what i need to do to get good quality but still have a small size file, best to be within 400-500mb for a 45mins episode

[glk2000]

its none of those problem all it is, is the video problem, there is a fair bit of those " little squares" sorry i dont know what they card in terms or video, but it makes it abit blury

[Nelson37]

I'm pretty sure this specific card was the one investigated long ago, but much of this is true with almost all cards.

Problem 1 - most cards capture at, or around, 640x480. This is NOT user-selectable. To get to VCD resolution, the card internally resizes using a real-time algorithm. This resize is not of the best quality.

Problem 1a - at VCD resolution, you are throwing away half of the video to start with.

Problem 2 - some cards, and specifically yours, apply a noise filter at resolutions below 360x480. Again, this is NOT user selectable, and the filter is not of the best quality.

Problem 3 - you are using real-time, software only MPG encoding. Plus the real-time resize, AND the real-time noise filter.

Problem 4 - most cards tuner ADDS noise to the video. use composite or s-video connection to avoid this problem, and get a stronger, cleaner signal.

The VCD's you download, were probably done with a very similar card. But, captured at full resolution, as AVI, then 2-pass VBR encoded after a hi-quality resize, de-interlace, and noise filter, if needed. VCD often needs a lot of smoothing to look decent. No opportunity to do so on a real time encode.

[glk2000]

so does that mean its not the fault of the tv card, but more of the way i capture the video at first? say if i capture as dvd quality and then encode to vcd would that make a difference?

[junkmalle]

so does that mean its not the fault of the tv card, but more of the way i capture the video at first? say if i capture as dvd quality and then encode to vcd would that make a difference?

Probably. But keep in mind VCD is a low quality format. It's usually full of macroblocks if you look at still frames on the computer. If your source has noise (even a very clean broadcast TV station or analog cable) you will get more macroblocks than using a DVD rip as a source. With a non-realtime encode you can apply spacial and temporal filtering to reduce the noise. You can also use higher motion search parameters.

Some of the better cards do have realtime filtering -- Hauppauge PVR series, ATI All-in-wonder serires. This can help to some degree.

Since you are making DVDs you can compress to variable bitrate MPEG2 with a 352x240 (352x288 PAL) frame size. A realtime (ie, while you capture) single pass VBR compression will probably get you better results (although unpredictable file size). A non-realtime 2-pass VBR compression will get you better results and a known file size. A 2-pass VBR encode, even at the same 1150 kbps average bitrate as VCD will likely look much better.

If you are in an NTSC country you'll have to deal with deinterlacing. Even in a PAL country you may have to deal with deinterlacing for live video content.