hardware for realtime lossless capture

[miamicanes]

Can a brand-new PC with Athlon 64/X2-4200, a gig of RAM, a Fujitsu MAU 15k SCSI hard drive (for Windows), and a 250-gig 7200RPM IDE drive capture NTSC video from s-video at the full resolution and fieldrate from a "dumb" card (like the Brooktree-based ones), compress it using HuffyUV, and dump it to the IDE drive in realtime without dropping frames or stuttering?

I've been flirting with video capture for about 8 years now, but it seems like PCs have FINALLY caught up with the demands of realtime video capture without having to rely on mediocre realtime hardware MPEG compression to compensate for a slow CPU and/or bottlenecked hard drive. Is this the case? Or do the demands imposed by realtime lossless capture STILL outstrip the capabilities of even a fairly high-end new PC? In particular, it would seem that having a pair of cores and SMP-aware OS like WinXP (that can juggle non-SMP apps among the available CPUs) would finally solve the issue of dropped frames once and for all (fixing situations where the hardware is fast enough, but something distracted Windows for a fraction of a second and made it drop a frame or two anyway).

I know there are cards that can do realtime MPEG-2 capture in hardware, but I still like having the flexibility to defer the encoding until later, and re-encode it differently if necessary. Hopefully, a system like this can rip through a HuffyUV file in near-realtime anyway (at worst, twice as long). An ideal case would be the ability to capture and dump in realtime as Huffy, with a second thread starting the MPEG-2 encoding in the background at the same time, and automatically combining the two CPUs to finish the job quickly once the capture has finished.

For the most part I'm content with my current capture card (AIW 8500DV), but I'm kind of being forced into a change because I *really* like the Aspire X-QPACK "sff-like" case... but the ONLY micro-ATX socket 939 motherboard with AGP slot I've found is the PC Chips A21G (the rest are all PCI Express). Frankly, I've owned 3 PC Chips Mobos over the years... and regretted the purchase of every single one of 'em

[thecoalman]

Can a brand-new PC with Athlon 64/X2-4200, a gig of RAM, a Fujitsu MAU 15k SCSI hard drive (for Windows), and a 250-gig 7200RPM IDE drive capture NTSC video from s-video at the full resolution and fieldrate from a "dumb" card (like the Brooktree-based ones), compress it using HuffyUV, and dump it to the IDE drive in realtime without dropping frames or stuttering?

Easily, just about any computer that's present on today's market can do this. The computer I'm currently using is able to capture uncompressed AVI without a hitch and it's below those specs. Most of these issues such as dropping frames result from poor quality material and not system limitations. If you have a poor source doesn't matter how good your computer is. This has to be fixed before it gets to the card.

[Bjs]

Sounds like a backward decision , so just go with the second option .

I use avermedia usb2 capture device , and no other capture devices have come close in video picture quality .

I even have installed the avertv gold pci , and it comes a close second .

Both can record in compressed avi , but why would you , just re-encode the video later or adjust the setup before capture .

I miss using the asus vivo's , and the abililty to use virtualdub for capturing and processing , but they dont even come close in video quality .

Virtualdub is now retired to the "avisynth / video filter / audio extraction kit" , for my motion menu's .

Then again , manufacture's of hardware are quickly dropping driver development for anything below xp os .

[thecoalman]

Both can record in compressed avi , but why would you , just re-encode the video later or adjust the setup before capture .
.

Reencoding results in quality loss could be one reason. I know it's not much but it's present especially when your dealing with a high quality source. AVI is also a much more receptive format for extensive editing such as adding filters, if you want to maintain the best quality possible an AVI using a low compression codec such as DV or Huffy is preferable to editing MPEG. If your just trimming the edges without reencoding the majority of the video then mpeg capture is fine.

Here's an extreme example because of the bitrates, the top clip was encoded directly from the source AVI, the bottom clip was reencoded from a AVI.

The 3000CBR MPEG encoded from the AVI, Lot's of macroblocking:


The 3000CBR MPEG encoded from the 8000CBR MPEG, a real lot of macroblocking:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=257651

[miamicanes]

To tell the truth, I have to admit that I haven't done much tweaking ever since I got a DVD burner ~2.5 years ago. Back when I did SVCDs at 352x480, I used to endlessly agonize over MPEG-2 compression settings, and often tied up my PC for days at a time re-rendering things until I was happy that I'd packed the most minutes of video at a reasonable quality onto the disk. In fact, most of my old SVCDs probably have better video quality than most of the DVDs I've burned lately (mostly letting MMC capture to MPEG-2 on the fly at ~6000kbit/sec VBR and burning whatever I got).

The main appeal of the BT8xx cards is precisely the fact that their only real limits are defined by software, and there's tons of software for both Windows AND Linux that knows how to drop the formalities and communicate with them directly (plus what appear to be some spectacularly good open-source WDM drivers). So regardless of what evil schemes Hollywood might cook up and get Microsoft to get along with to make everyone's lives miserable, there's always the possibility of booting up the PC with a Knoppix CD and happily doing it anyway

Now, if only they'd make a BT8xx-descendant that can pull off the same trick with YPrBb at 480p60, 720p60, and 1080i60 (probably using some lossy intermediate storage format, since 720p60 and maybe 1080i60 would generate too much data to deal with as HuffyUV). Actually, for current systems, the task wouldn't be much harder than capturing 480i60 was with the systems of five years ago... THEN I could vidcap 1080i60 TV shows, deinterlace them, resample them to 720p60, and THEN watch them (instead of relying on the cable box's crappy strategy of treating it like 540p60 and resampling).