Capture quality/resolution

[eyghon]

Hello all,

I'm traing to capture some home-made videos. The original is on my Hi8 tapes, using Sony camcorder. Recently I have obtained TV card Philips WDM TV Tuner (or so it says in my system info). I'm using it in combination with Radeon 9200 SE, also running with WDM drivers.
When I playback videos directly on my PC, using either Composite or S-Video video connection, playback quality is surprisingly good. The problems occur when I try to capture video. It works fine on lower resolutions (up to 352x288), which unfortunately makes for low quality. But whenever I try to capture with higher resolution (preferably 720x576) I get lots of unwanted artifatcs all over the image. I have been experimenting with various compressions, including huffyuv and pure uncompressed, all giving me results similar to the image below:




So far I have tried using a few different capture software (some of them were shareware or demo), like FlyTV Platinum (supplied with TV card), VirtualDub, honestech VHS to DVD 2.0, iuVCR, VirtualVCR. With VirtualDub I was unable to even capture any video at higher resolution. I've read something about it not supporting WDM since it's VFW based software, so I was trying to fix that, but VFWtoWDM wrapper is impossible to get.

So, basically I need help with those two problems...getting VFWtoWDM wrapper (I don't think it's illegal to distribute that, if it is just ignore it), and help with image quality/artifacts on capturing video on higher resolution.

[eyghon]

Somebody? Anybody?

[edDV]

Your computer can't capture that fast. It is loosing pixels then clumps of pixels then lines. It is close since the lower half is OK. These errors can also be due to tape dropouts if limited to portions of the tape most often at the start or end.

Solution isn't easy. Options:

1. Capture up to the limits of your system.
2. Enhance your computer to capture higher bitrates.
3. Use an existing computer that is sufficiently powerful with fast drives.
4a. Use a hardware encoding device that will work with slow computers (i.e. MPeg2 or DV hardware encoding device)
4b. Use a DV camcorder with pass through encoding. These may be rare in find in Slovenia.

[edDV]

PS: TV card Philips WDM TV Tuner probably has no encoding capability.

[eyghon]

I'm not sure about hardware encoding capability of my TV card, but here's a screenshot of supplied software...


I tried all of them, and whenever my resolution goes above 352x288 I start loosing pixels. Today I tried capturing TV signal and same thing happened, so I'm guessing video source is not a problem.

And a question about upgrading my system...what is most likely the weak link?
* graphics card - to my understanding this has little to do with actual capturing
* hard drives - I'm using WD 80GB with 8ms buffer and Samsung 160GM with 8ms buffer, both 7200rpm
* RAM - 2x512MB 400MHz in dual channel
* CPU barton 2500+ mobile (I tried normal and overclocked to 3200+)

~ eyghon

[jagabo]

The weak link is probably your capture card.

You might try putting it in a different PCI slot.

[eyghon]

Well, preview/playback itself gives me totally clear, smooth picture, much better than I expected from Hi8 tape.

While lossless capture might have problem with drive speed, basic encoding should not, but I have identical result from both. And if it would be capture card problem, I imagine I would only have problems with compressed capturing (weak hardware encoding) and uncompressed should be fine.
At least that's the way I see things...

~ eyghon