Software capture alternatives to CapDVHS?

[Golem]

I have used for many years CapDVHS for recording HD & SD TS's through firewire on an old XP comp dedicated only for this operation and fell in love with the simplicity. I'm finally getting ready to replace (upgrade) it with Win7 capable hardware and find CapDVHS is not compatible with the 64bit OS.

My question is -- Is there another software as simple as CapDVHS that can capture raw streams through IEEE-1394 or USB? I've been looking at both WMC and MediaPortal but unfortunately both seem to require a tuner card. I do have an ancient MyHD MDP-100 which has also been in use for many years on the same comp but find often I'll be using it and CapDVHS simultaneously so a firwire or USB capture software is still required.

Would also like to continue use of VideoReDo TVSuite v.4.20 for editing of captures (currently .TS). I just tested this with the Win7 sample .wtv and although it is supposed to be a supported wrapper/encode unfortunately was unable to open it (does play fine in ZoomPlayer).

Any insight on the cap software much appreciated.

[Brad]

If you are using a Motorola cable box as your source device, you would also need Win7 x64 compatible drivers for it, which don't exist.

[jagabo]

If you can get drivers, you can use a filter graph in GraphEdit or GraphStudio.

[Golem]

Thanks for the replies!

Spot on vaporeon800, Moto box.

I think the only reasonable solution will be to go with a second tuner combined with Win7 and WMC. This makes even more sense when I begin hearing of the difficulties many have trying to use firewire with Win7.

[jman98]

64 bit drivers do NOT exist for this, so do not let jagabo's well meaning post give you false hope. The original author of CapDVHS has no interest in updating his software for 64 bit Windows. In desperation a few people tried to hire contract programmers to write 64 bit Win drivers for the program and all those attempts were abandoned in failure. For what it's worth, CapDVHS has been reported to work fine on 32 bit Win 7. Note that you can't run a virtual machine with 32 bit XP to solve this either. VM's don't have firewire support at all because nobody is willing to pay Apple's licensing fee for the technology for a VM.

I ended up buying a Hauppauge Colossus card to do my recording since I can't use CapDVHS with 64 bit Win 7. I have no regrets. I also no longer have Comcast as my cable company so I no longer have the old cable box that could be recorded with CapDVHS. Most cable providers no longer allow firewire output through their cable boxes. If I remember correctly the FCC changed the rule that required that they allow this. When I was with Comcast they were always trying to get me to trade in my old cable box that supported CapDVHS.

[usually_quiet]

Would also like to continue use of VideoReDo TVSuite v.4.20 for editing of captures (currently .TS). I just tested this with the Win7 sample .wtv and although it is supposed to be a supported wrapper/encode unfortunately was unable to open it (does play fine in ZoomPlayer).

As long as the channel is marked copy-freely so that the WTV files are not encrypted, VideoReDo should be able to edit recordings that have been converted from WTV to DVR-MS using the free utility included with Windows 7.

[Golem]

Just a quick update.

I decided to install Win7 32bit since I only had a spare 4GB of DDR2 of which which I might have to reduce to 2GB (possible failing stick). So in the meanwhile, as I contemplate a second tuner to purchase, decided I might compliment the MDP-100 with CapDVHS. After a bit of a struggle I finally succeeded in getting the following to work >>> Moto RNG150N feeding through firewire to CapDVHS under Win7 (32). What was necessary was to install the IEEE-1395 legacy driver and use the Moto 6412 selection upon tuner driver install. The kicker to get this package working was being sure to reset the STB (RNG150N) after CapDVHS and associated driver were installed.

Happy capping!

[Brad]

Reset the STB = power cycle?

[Golem]

Reset the STB = power cycle?

Exactly. Just unplug power for a minute or so.

[dellsam34]

I desperately needed to resurrect this thread as I'm almost having the same problem with WinXP/7 dual boot 64bit, The only difference is that I'm trying to record to the D-VHS deck from the hard drive thru firewire a compliant file using CapDVHS, Capturing from the tape works fine in these 64bit platforms, Any ideas why I can't print to D-VHS blank tape?