Hauppauge PVR 150 MCE VHS Capture...

[jpslash]

I recently purchased a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 1062 MCE PCI TV Tuner card. Im running XP MCE 2005, therefore I use Media Center and all works ok. But I want to backup some old VHS tapes to DVD, and I just cant seem to find any capturing software that works with this card.

Ive tried various software programs and all either have no video or audio, wont recognize the card, or just have crappy quality. Ive tried windows movie maker, virtualdub, Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3&10, Pinnacle Studio 10.5, FreeVCR, WinTV 2000, and many more. All seem to have some sort of issues with the card.

The most promising ones were Windows Movie Maker and Virtualdub. WMM would capture a beautiful picture, but no matter how hard I tryed I could NOT get the audio to capture. Great video, just NO audio. I read that there is a Hauppauge program called "audioselect.exe" that fixes this problem with WMM, but I cant seem to find it anywhere. It was supposed to be on the Driver CD for the card, but it was no where to be found on my CD. I looked for a download as well, but I never found such. Does anyone know where to find this "audioselect.exe", or know where I can download it?

Virtualdub acted like it was going to work as well. The playback during capture was looking good both audio and video wise, but the finishing result had NO video. The audio was there and working fine, just no video. I figure its because of the cards hardware mpeg2 encoder. Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Ive tried everything else in between, I disabled Media Center and tried everything, I uninstalled/reinstalled/updated drivers, and many other things. I even contacted Hauppauge, but it has been over 2 days since and still no reply.

The only thing that actually worked was the bundled software Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3, but the quality was just terrible. MovieFactory 10 looked like it was going to work, but it wouldnt back up my tape because it was "Copyright Protected". It is an original store bought VHS copy, and Im sure it is copyright protected. Is there any way to get past that copyright protection crap?

Anyone willing to help would be MUCH appreciated...Im sick of messing with this card.

Thanks...

[jagabo]

What was wrong with WinTV 2000? I have a PVR-250 and WinTV 2000 ignores Macrovision. Maybe they "fixed" that for the 150?

[SHS]

Not that I know of and WinTV2000 should ignores macrovision even with the 150.
Hmm I don't recall there being MovieFactory 10 or did you mean MovieFactory 1.0 and if was ver 1.0 it will not work any way.
audioselect.exe will not help on hardware Encoder that tool only come with AVI capture card.
Ulead Movie Factory 3 thur 4 mst have the plugin drivers ver 5 dosen't.
Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3, 4 and 5 have alway look terrible try burning a disk but you may not have setup rigth to record in Hardware MPEG Encoding Mode it may be using AVI mode.

[jpslash]

Thanks for the feedback...

Opps, I meant Ulead Studio 10 not MovieFactory 10. Sorry, My bad. Anyway, WinTV 2000 wouldnt recongize my VCR. It just didnt work for me. I dont really like that software anyway. Ive always hated WMM, but it the video part seems to work VERY well with the Hauppauge card. I would be very happy with it, but I just cant get any audio. Maybe its the card's hardware encoder, but why does the video work so well?

Hauppauge says the card will work in WMM with the audioselect.exe. Check it out for yourself, scroll down about a 1/3 of the page and read "Controlling the audio source with Windows Movie Maker". Heres the link:

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/faq/support_faq_pci_winxp.html

Can anyone send me this audioselect.exe file so I can at least try it out? If you know where I can download it, please let me know.

Has anyone had any luck with WinTV 2000 and VCR capture? Guess I could mess with it a little more.

Thanks for the help guys....

[jagabo]

The part about audioselect.exe is under the "WinTV PCI boards and Windows XP" section, not the "WinTV-PVR boards and Windows XP" section.

What exactly did you mean when you said WinTV2000 didn't recognize your VCR? Did you press the little green button (between the up and down channel buttons) to switch from tuner to composite to s-video inputs?

[jpslash]

The part about audioselect.exe is under the "WinTV PCI boards and Windows XP" section, not the "WinTV-PVR boards and Windows XP" section.

Ahh, I see now. I found this forum post: http://www.shspvr.com/smf/index.php?topic=9267.0 (on the last reply) and I never realized that it was in the wrong section, all is clear now.

What exactly did you mean when you said WinTV2000 didn't recognize your VCR? Did you press the little green button (between the up and down channel buttons) to switch from tuner to composite to s-video inputs?

I didnt really give WinTV 2000 much of a chance. Yeah, I pressed the "little green button" and all of that, but I couldnt get a picture. I gave up quick and went on to the next software. I just figured it would be crap anyway, since most bundled softwares are. But, Ive read a bunch of good things about it and Im going to give it another try tonight.

Thanks a BUNCH for the help...

[jagabo]

WinTV2000 isn't a great program but it works. The quality you get out of it will be the same as with any other program -- the PVR-150 is doing the compression to MPEG2. The software is only saving the data to a file and/or displaying it.