Best TV Tuner to buy to capture digital cable to a lossless format(huffyuv)

[leecm]

I did quite a few searches but couldn't find an answer specific to what I'm asking.

I'll be capturing from a digital cable box, and I want to capture it with a lossless codec, most likely huffyuv, then later encode that to xvid. After reading up on how to get the best quality tv rips, it seems like this will get you the best video quality. Is that correct?

Anyways, which PCI capture card should I buy that is capable of doing what I'm trying to do? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[drewzor]

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[Nelson37]

No, No, No.

How the video gets to the cable box is totally and completely irrelevant, what comes out of the box is NOT a file, it is video. How it was formatted when it got there is meaningless.

Huffy capture will generally give you best possible quality, however Huffy is only an intermediate format. You must then encode this to something else for storage purposes. It is worth noting that while Huffy is good quality for capture, and lossless, it is NOT designed for playback and may show video glitches which are not really in the file, these will be gone in the final encode.

Huffy caps will require fairly lengthy re-encode, with your goal being Xvid this is really the only way to go. Real-time Xvid captures are not yet truly feasible, though they soon will be.

Real-time MPG, is quite possible with a Hauppage or ATI card, with a reasonable fast processor these can be indistinguishable from a re-encoded AVI.

[drewzor]

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[Abbadon]

Hello,

Because you want to capture without compression, I would recommend the following card:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SBT-TVFM&cat=VID

Its chip has been in the market for a long time and it is well supported by many applications, very cheap too.

Here is another option, with a phillips chip:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SBT-TV&cpc=SCH

Buena suerte.

[drewzor]

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[leecm]

Thanks for the responses so far, guys.

Abbadon, I actually have a cheap card that uses the philips 7130 chipset. Will the video quality be good once I capture it with huffyuv and encode it to xvid?

I haven't bothered trying yet, because when I connect the card to the cable box via yellow composit, the video quality doesn't look that great to begin with. Would it look different once captured with the huffuv?

BTW, the card I have claims its max resolution is 720x576.

Thanks again for your help, guys!

[Nelson37]

It's real simple.

The TV does not read an MPG stream. It gets analog video thru coax, composite, or S-video, these being what you can capture on the PC. Doesn't matter if it came into the cable box on postcards, what comes out that you can lay your hands on is simple analog.

Component, DVI, HDMI not currently feasible on the PC.

It is possible to get a converted box with Firewire out and do a true digital file transfer, but that is a whole nother animal.

If you are going to capture and then re-encode, your capture should be of the highest possible quality, Most Especially if your re-encode is to an already lossy format such as Xvid. This is basic technique. If you wish to throw away significant amounts of video while capturing, then throw away even more when re-encoding, that is an option.

Best possible would be uncompressed, followed by a Huffy or other lossless codec, then a Maximum Bitrate possible, I-frame only, MPG2. MPG1 would be a complete last resort as it does not support interlacing.

Drawbacks to the Huffy captures would be the huge file size, and potential dropped frames due to the massive throughput. The dropped frames also complicate IVTC for re-encoding. A 15 Mbit, I-Frame only MPG2 with no dropped frames will be visually very close to the Huffy capture, at about one-quarter the size. Throughput is lowered enough as to usually eliminate dropped frames, making this a viable option, though re-encoding is slowed. It is also possible to IVTC while capturing in some cases.

Should also point out that if you wish to capture channels that are above 125 and/or are truly digital, then you do not need and cannot use a "tuner" at all, all you need is a capture card with S-video input, composite should also be there as a secondary choice.

[DarrellS]

I'm not familiar with the ATI TV Wonder Elite TV Tuner PCI card but if it's anything like the ATI AIW 2006 Edition AGP card, it captures in DivX as one of it's default settings so XviD should not be a problem.

Looks like ATI is doing away with support for both PCI cards and with Windows 2000 compatible cards.

[drewzor]

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[guns1inger]

The conversion to analogue doesn't add back anything lost in the original mpeg encoding, however what you have is no longer mpeg2 - it is analogue - and subsequent encoding to mpeg2 will only diminish quality.

If the capture was coming from a internal DVB card, so what was being captured was the original stream, then you would be correct is saying leave it be. As the feed is coming from an external box, it should be treated in the same way you would treat any analogue source.

[Nelson37]

The uncompressed capture does not ADD anything back in, the importance is that it does not LOOSE any additional data. Doing the compression in real-time, while capturing, makes it impossible to do a two-pass encode, limits filtering, all sorts of issues.

Not that it can't be done, with a good capture setup, real-time MPG2 can be very acceptable. I've got it to the point where re-encoding no longer offers any real benefit. Exceptions to this would be when I want an unusually small file size while keeping reasonable quality, or extensive filtering or resizing needs to be done.

XVID or DIVX capture very processor intensive, much more likely to have quality or frame droppage issues, methods of de-interlacing likely not optimal, altogether much more problematic. If you are going to re-encode anyway, then make your capture the absolute best it can be, which means as nearly precisely an exact copy of what was received as is possible.

[DarrellS]

I have always captured with Huffy or Lag but I am tempted to capture my football games this year in MPEG2. It seems to be the best capture from my ATI 7500 card and if all I need to do is cut out commercials, I can do that without recoding, whereas with Lossless AVI, I have to recode after editing.

Then again, I'll probably want to encode to MP3/XviD and play in my 5140 so Huffy or Lag would be my best bet. I'll just have to use a deinterlace filter when I convert to XviD.

I have always felt the same way about capturing straight to DivX or XviD but I'm curious to see how it works on my brothers new ATI 256MB 2006 Edition card since it comes as a default setting. Maybe with a 3GHz P4 or higher processor with 2GB of memory and a 256MB DDR video card, It might capture alright. I think the biggest problem with lost frames with the ATI cards was onboard sound but we both have PCI sound cards. I couldn't capture AVI at all until I bought a sound card. It was always out of sync and looked like the video was in slow mo although MPEG2 captures were flawless. Everything seems to be alright since I bought the sound card or I should say since it was given to me.

You're point about not being able to deinterlace during capture pretty much makes it pointless to even try to capture as DivX though since you'd have to re-encode anyway.

Lossless AVI it is.

[Nelson37]

DarrelS, aren't you the Denver fan? I did NOT like the Drive, the Fumble, and you know they raised the goalpost verticals several feet the next year?

Anyway, football was my original goal with capturing, I now do real-time MPG with my Radeon 7500, my test case is watching the lineman's legs at the snap, if you can get those non-blurry and non-pixelated, its a beautiful thing.

You CAN de-interlace at capture, you just have little control over methods. Re-encoding just became too much hassle, with little quality improvement over the real-time.

Last year I only had to use Shrink on two games, the other 14 fit on one disk after cutting commercials. Some I had to cut almost right up to the snap, the commentary is not generally something I want, anyway.

Hope to see you guys in the playoffs and kick your butt, though just getting there will be enough for me.

[DarrellS]

I like the Broncos but I was a Cowboy fan for 40 years until they hired Terrell Owens. To me, that was an act of treason and I will not root for the Cowboys again untill Jerry Jones kills over from a heart attack or they apologize to the fans and get rid of Owens.

I guess since I live in Phoenix again that I'll root for the Cardinals. They have the talent to get to the Superbowl if like the Cowboys, the owner stays out of the way.

I'm a big college fan and the only games that I capture are Oklahoma Sooner games.

So you're a Raiders fan (or Chiefs, Chargers) ?

[Nelson37]

Cleveland Browns, the best team in the NFL that has never been to a Super Bowl, robbed 3 times by the Broncos. AAARGH!

I agree with your feelings on Owens, players like that give the game a bad name and IMO are just not worth it, regardless of talent.

[DarrellS]

Anyway, football was my original goal with capturing, I now do real-time MPG with my Radeon 7500, my test case is watching the lineman's legs at the snap, if you can get those non-blurry and non-pixelated, its a beautiful thing.

Looks like I'm gonna have to capture my games in MPEG also. I can't get the MMC software to capture AVI in sync. It plays in sync in all of my software players but when I go to cut out the commercials, it's out of sync.