Capture with Pinnacle PCTV 5 Vison Full Version software

[CornelisJ]

I need some information about the PCTV 5 Vision software that comes on CD with newly bought Pinnacle PCTV cards.

I have a Pinnacle PCTV Pro TV card for about 1 year. I downloaded the new PCTV 5 WDM drivers from Pinnacles website. These drivers come with PCTV Vision software that is limited in functionality. On my PC (with celeron 1GHz processor) I can only record in MPEG-1 format with a resolution of 352x288. The full featured PCTV vision software is avaliable in the Pinnacle online shop for 29 euro.

I would like to capture to AVI in higher resolutions (i.e 768 x 576) using the PicVideo MJPEG codec that I have. My question is if this is possible with the full version of PCTV 5 Vision.

I know that it is possible with 3rd party software like Virtualdub or VirtualVCR, but with these programs I cannot always tune the TV-card accurately on all TV station, and some TV stations (with NICAM sound?) give very noisy sound, probably because the stereo sound decoder on the PCTV pro cannot be controlled correctly.

[CornelisJ]

Nobody? My question is:
Does the retail version of PCTV Vision allow to record with higher resolutions and 3rd-party video codecs.

[Jack_G]

Hi, I have the full version of PCTV vision and am NOT very satisfied with it. Yes, you can can capture at higher resolution but if you want to capture uncompressed or with other codec I really suggest you use IuVCR. (I get a very clear picture with the tuning-feature and never had any problems with the soundquality) I allways capture 480 x 576 uncompressed and convert to SVCD with TMPEG and it really looks good. The SVCD option in pinnacle studio is not very good (for me at least).

Jack

[CornelisJ]

Thanks for your reply.
Can you please tell me if it is possible to select a 3rd party video codec for recording with the full version of PCTV Vision?

For your information, I have tried the demo of iuVCR. It is possible to tune very accurately on TV stations. I still have the sound problem with 2 out of 30 stations. These are both Belgian stations, and I think the reason for the noise is that these stations use NICAM for stereo sound. I do not have the noise problem with PCTV Vision.
(PS: the audio noise dissapears when I select "Audio AES Digital In" via Video => Crossbar, but I have to select this setting by hand everytime I tune to a station with NICAM sound).

What I like about PCTV Vision is that names are assigned to all stations, and that it automatically switches the sound decoder to NICAM mode.
If it is possible to select 3rd-party codecs for video compression I consider to buy the full version.

[paulgab]

I used to use PCTV Vision during my first few days of playing with my PCTV-PCI card. But I got frustrated soon due to A/V sync problem whenever I capture with it. As far as I remember, there is no provision on the prog to use other compression codec, eg. huffy, mjpeg etc. And same is true with their Studio7 software.

[Hong Kong Phooey]

@paulgab. Regarding the A/V sync, is that the infamous "after 20+ mins" the A/V goes out just enough to cause a problem?
It seemed everywhere I checked out mentioned the newer version 5.x WDM drivers had this issue, at least 'til the "full retail" drivers were released,(love to know how we aussies are supposed to get it locally).

Due to that & being a Win98 1st Ed user,(haven't bothered installing XP yet, happy with my current capture setup), I d/l the older VFW drivers V4.02a from pinnacle's site. Some people seem to regard these older drivers as having better picture quality, though I'll probably have to use my pinnacle CD drivers to get it running in XP.

CorneliusJ. Why don't you use the vision s/w to do your tuning & then once you've made your settings, don't use vision again,& use one of the 3rd party alternatives for capturing with? I didn't think there'd be much difference with the TV s/w,after all, they're all using the same drivers, aren't they?

[CornelisJ]

CornelisJ. Why don't you use the vision s/w to do your tuning & then once you've made your settings, don't use vision again,& use one of the 3rd party alternatives for capturing with?

This method does not seem to work with the new 5.x WDM drivers... If I leave PCTV Vision and start a capturing program (i.e. Virtualdub, VirtualVCR), the TV card is always tuned to the same station, i.e. the station with the lowest frequency. I think this method did work with the older 4.x VFW drivers.

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Yep, thats what I was referring to, as thats what I'm able to do.
Incidentally, has anyone ever tried the V4.02a drivers on XP?
It's just that when I d/l them originally, it ironically stated on Pinnacle's site that they were supposedly only tested for XP only.
They worked fine in Windows 98, as you'd expect for VFW drivers, but I would've thought these 4.02a VFW based drivers wouldn't have worked in XP too. Another false boast by Pinnacle?

[rawi82]

you have to choose the "source" tab in VDub and than you can tune the station manually. It worked for me with the 5.1 WDM-Drivers. I´m not able to capture with more than 288 lines anyway.
But iuVCR works perfectly in all resolutions and with all codecs as it uses the hardware directly.