Answers to some Happaugue PVR-250 questions

[Tiribulus]

Hi folks,
When I first got my PVR-250 I had no end of woe with A/v sync issues. With help from Barnabas here and SHS over @ www.shspvr.com I have since completey resolved this issue and offer the following observations which are pasted from a post I also made @ shspvr.com:


"I haven't been here in a few weeks so I' thought I'd throw an update your way.
Since using program/cbr exclusively I have not had one single out of sync issue for weeks on end having done scores and scores of captures. I can capture @ 720x480/8000 cbr/160-48 audio/ for three hours straight with absoloutely perfect A/V sync after editing. Saturday mornings I capture 3 straight hours of cartoons from 8am to 11 and edit out all the commercials. No problem at all. Also tried it on my livingroom machine which is built on an Abit KT7a Raid (via chipset) and it works perfectly as well. The point here is to encourage those having issues. I had weeks of trouble with capturing with this card when I got it and now it is a dream come true. The only thing is it would never play nice with Windows 2000. XP works perfectly. Those high bitrate captures compress down to divx beautifully too BTW. Captured the Excorcist last night @ 7000/cbr 720x480. almost 7 gig file. After Divx recompression is 1.4 gigs and 99% as good as the original mpg2.
After getting these things hammered out I'm 100% happy with my PVR-250. Does exactly what I need. I should add that I have 400 dollar Sony VCR I bought as a floor model for 75% off and my captures with this card are at least as good as recordings with the VCR.
Tiribulus "

Recently I upped my video bitrate to 8000/CBR/Program with even better results. Also Barnabas told me to try the Graphedit and
Prefilter Tweak by disabling all the prefilters and upping the sharpness in graphedit and he was indeed correct that this enhances the quality noticably as well. He also told me to try using a lower horizontal rez, but since it works fine with 720 that's what I've been using.

Tiribulus

[matt-o]

I also have the pvr 250 card and would get good captures in sync until I edited the commercials out. all the sync issues after editing went away as soon as I switched the the Program setting rather than the DVD setting. After this revelation I am totally satisfied with the card. I have used many other cards and done all the other capture methods.. and I LOVE now being able to do real time good quality captures even on a lowly celeron 366 with no problems. I do not use this card to view TV on the PC which is not the strong point of this card. for decent real time captures for editing to DVD it is ideal..