Close to smash my pinnacle PCTV pro card to the wall , HELP!

[candyman1337]

Hi guys ,

I'm new to this forum , but I just signed up because I'm into major shit with my pinnacle PCTV pro card.
I just started capping , so I don't have much experience on this matter.
I do have much experience when it comes to DVD ripping => SVCD.
so that *might* help.
OK, this is my problem :
I have tried official pinnacle drivers, but also the Btwincap drivers....
I tried vdub, virtualvcr, windvr, powervcr 2...
In vdub I tried to capture with Btwincap drivers with a res 480x576 , hufyuvv and picjmpeg , YUY2 or RGB24...
I tried windvr with settings 720x640 , 6400kbps etc....
IT ALL COMES TO THIS :

I get a shitty output, I mean not really shitty but , when I convert it with TMPGenc or CCE , to set it to SVCD standards , then I burn it using nero, put it in my DVD , the result is not that good... it's driving me berzerk !!!
All my other SVCD's play fine with very high quallity satisfaction.
My system info :
AMD Athlon XP 1500+
512MB ram
gforce2 gts pro
pinnacle PCTV Pro
60GB HDD IBM 7200rpm
running on windowsXP pro

please help me out, what could I try next ...??? should i give up this capture card and get me something else or what is going on here ?
I appreciate any replies on this one, because it's been 10 days now , an not a single capture on CD that's fair of quallity.
thanks in advance.
greets

candyman

[ironwood321]

What are you capturing? TV, Video etc? How are you capturing? What is the orignal quality like? What res are you capturing in? What are the steps you are going through in detail? In what way are the captures bad?

[candyman1337]

i am capping TV.
I tried vdub YUY2 or RGB24 tried both, res. 480x576 with hufyuv and picvideo also tried both..
The original qual. is normal cable , so good.
The caps are bad in that way , that sometimes the video contains blocks... not sharp...
I also tried WINDVR , realtime capping to MPEG2 , 480x576 , 6400kbps
and afterwards re-encode it with tmpegenc 2pass vbr, gives me the same.. blocks in the video , bit crappy picture.

[BJ_M]

how does it look before encoding ?

and what encode settings are you using ?

[candyman1337]

before encoding it looks fine, but sometimes it seems like the video is interlaced , however it's PAL , but I've read somewhere in this forum, that it only "seems" interlaced on computer and afterwards when you play it in DVD it's ok.
I tried tmpgenc 2pass vbr max 3000 average 2000 and min. 300
I also tried DVD2SVCD with the AVI , using CCE to encode the video 4pass VBR but both give me the same result, blokky scenes and below satisfactory.
darn it's getting late it's about 2.00hr at night here in Belgium , lol

[Bruce Simpson]

The PCTVPro isn't a bad piece of hardware, although it has some compatibility problems with certain other peripherals such as the CMedia sound chips.

I'm using the PCTVPro here and getting great captures.

You say the captures themselves aren't bad but turns bad after you encode them to MPEG -- that could be a number of things:

1. your encoder settings need work

2. there's some fine-grained noise on your TV signal. It only takes a tiny amount of noise on the video to massively increase the bitrate required for encoding. Since MPEG has a bitrate ceiling, the result is that noisy video becomes badly pixelated.

3. check your deintlelace settings if you're using resoltuions higher than 288 vertical (PAL) -- getting the field order wrong can mess things up badly.

The PCTVPro is not a bad piece of bottom-end hardware, it's just a shame that Miro/Pinnacle write such lousy drivers and applications -- and that their software support consists of little more than setting up an online discusssion forum where customers can comisserate amongst themselves at the almost total lack of concern on Pinnacle's part that there are so many people grump and dissatisfied with their software.

[candyman1337]

I've got another question, with virtualVCR, is it possible to overcome the 4GB limit ? the application crashes when i reach this file size.... or could i use some setting , that uses an automated split of the files or something?

[candyman1337]

hi ,

been fiddling arround with the filters in vdub, looks much better now, using anti noise etc..