Capture software for TV wonder

[ct991]

I'm trying to find a good capture program to use for my TV wonder PCI to capture at 640x480. I've tried PowerVCR and it was working great but it splits the captures into 600MB chunks and when I join them there is a noticable defect in the movie at the point where it was joined. No matter what program I used to join them, there was still a defect. I no longer use this program for this reason.

I tried the ATI MMC software and it won't capture more than 240 vertical lines. (320x240, 480x240, 640x240, etc.)

I then tried VDub but it won't capture higher than 320x240 with my card. If I could get it to work with a higher resolution then it would be perfect.

Does anyone have any suggestions? For instance, does there exist any VfW drivers for the TV wonder...or is there another WDM compatible program that will capture at 640x480 with the TV wonder?

[macleod]

if you liked the quality of powervcr and want to "fix" the 600 mb chunking issue, this is how you do it:

Go into the registry (click run from the start menu) and type in regedit, then....

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CyberLink\PowerVCR II]

"MaxRecSizeMB"=dword:00000fa0
"AudioPlayLine"=dword:000000a
"AudioRecLine"=dword:000000a
"AllVideoSize"="288#384 x 288#360 x 240#360 x 288#480 x 480#640 x 480#720 x 480#720 x 576#"

Basically the tweaks just set things correctly. They set the start volume and record volume at a max of 10 and set the maximum recording file size to 4000mb. And lastly they added 480 x 480 size to the list of video sizes. Then to top it all off cyberlink released an update in April that would allow you to schedule records with an online tv guide type interface called CyberEPG. That was just frosting on the cake. In addition the software came with a built in video trimmer which allows you to trim out commercials without re-encoding the whole file.


An avi alternative would be iuvcr. I've recently been doing video caps and I am almost back to the point where I am going to use powervcrII for my video caps. It at least is a real time solution.

[pixel8or]

Hi,

Been playing around with this stuff for a couple months and have been meaning to be more active here. Mainly just been doing a lot of reading.

I've got the ATI TV Wonder VE on a Duron 700/384MB ram/7200rpm HDD/WIN XP System. I've done a lot of tweaking on my system... Abit kt7a/nvidia geforce 2 mx/soundblaster live.... so I've had all the problems and managed to get 'em solved.

I got fed up with anything ATI software related and have had good success with iuVCR/tweaked drivers, and VirtualVCR/btwincap drivers, which is what I'm currently using.

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/index.html

http://www.digtv.ws/index.php

I can capture 640x480/29.97/Huffyuv and not drop a single frame. 720x480 I loose a few frames and get some occasional white streaks.

I've mostly been playing around with making mpeg-1s, DivX and getting screen caps. Just now starting into (S)VCD. I don't have a stand alone DVD, just the one in my computer.

A sample frame from one of my captures, run through VirtualDub with deinterlace and smooth, is here.

[Fozzee]

Hi
Just a couple of comments on the registry settings for POWERVCR.
I have been tinkering with the audio settings. If I change them to the suggested settings this happens. When u switch on the application you have to enable your line in manually rather than it doing it automatically. And if u add 480 x 480 or 480 x 576 the preview screen goes indistinguishable but it does capture ok.
But this is a good program and I capture at 640 x 480 in MpegII with good results.
Cheers

Fozz

[tellysurv]

Hi,

Been playing around with this stuff for a couple months and have been meaning to be more active here. Mainly just been doing a lot of reading.

I've got the ATI TV Wonder VE on a Duron 700/384MB ram/7200rpm HDD/WIN XP System. I've done a lot of tweaking on my system... Abit kt7a/nvidia geforce 2 mx/soundblaster live.... so I've had all the problems and managed to get 'em solved.

I got fed up with anything ATI software related and have had good success with iuVCR/tweaked drivers, and VirtualVCR/btwincap drivers, which is what I'm currently using.

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/index.html

http://www.digtv.ws/index.php

I can capture 640x480/29.97/Huffyuv and not drop a single frame. 720x480 I loose a few frames and get some occasional white streaks.

I've mostly been playing around with making mpeg-1s, DivX and getting screen caps. Just now starting into (S)VCD. I don't have a stand alone DVD, just the one in my computer.

A sample frame from one of my captures, run through VirtualDub with deinterlace and smooth, is here.

Hi Pixel8or,
When you installed the btwincap drivers, did you have to uninstall the TV Wonder drivers or do the btwincap drivers automatically remove or install over them? I'm pretty new to this and am trying to figure out what I'm doing and what I need to do to get everything optimized.
Thanks,
Chris

[pixel8or]

When you installed the btwincap drivers, did you have to uninstall the TV Wonder drivers or do the btwincap drivers automatically remove or install over them?

I wish I had a straight answer for you. One of these days I'll start writing down all the tweaks and different things I try so I can reference them. As it is, I basically keep messing around until things work.

The btwincap site says this (remember, it's always good to read the directions):
---
"Before running the installer, you must have installed the old drivers of your card, or have listed the Video Capture card in Device Manager under Other Devices.. (A yellow question mark). You must also have your capture card installed inside your computer.

Start the installer. The first screen offers to Install the driver or to Uninstall ANY already installed driver associated with the Brooktree capture card. The last option should ONLY be used if you want to reinstall ANOTHER DIFFERENT DRIVER , it gets rid of all the old drivers associated to the Bt848/Bt878 , and it should be used if you want to reinstall the original driver that came with your board. You MUST NOT uninstall any driver to install this one."
---
Now... I did that. But whenever I rebooted I kept getting the "new hardware found" message and Win XP wanted to install software for the Tuner and Crossbar devices. According to the website those are not needed with the btwincap drivers, they are incorporated with the drivers. Out of frustration I installed them... it still worked, but it seemed a pain.

So... the last time I did a clean install of XP (I've learned that if you're going to mess with DV you can plan on regular clean installs of your OS- Doom 9 speaks of this), I left out the ATI drivers and just pointed the driver install to the btwincap folder... or else I ran the installer after everything else was in... don't remember exactly.

Sorry, probably doesn't sound like the most technical reply, but, like I said... I just keep trying till I get it. Anyhoo, Device Manager now shows:

Conexant's BtPCI WDM Audio Capture
Conexant's BtPCI WDM Video Capture

No tuner or audio/video crossbar... all is happy and I don't get "new hardware found" when I reboot. Which, thanks to WinXP, is now only once every few days or so and not twice or more every day like in the old Win98 days.

The BtInstaller.exe has an option to remove anything associated with Bt8x8. You may want to run that, reinstall the ATI stuff (drivers only, no MMC) and then run the btwincap install. There are a lot of Q&A's at the web site. Look through those, too.

And remember, to use VirtualVCR you have to go into Settings and make sure everytihng is right for your system. NTSC/PAL, Composite/Tuner source, etc.

Good luck. Just keep at it... oh, and maybe keep notes.

[FiEND]

the 3rd party drivers here put a large black band on the left side of my captures, which I hate.

i use iuvcr from www.iulabs.com - it's a fantastic program, especially since I schedule records and leave my computer for weeks. it has a couple bugs recently but nothing that cant be worked out.

doesnt require any special drivers installed. give it a try, has a 15 day trial.