How is the Conexant CX23883-39 “broadcast decoder” chip? Or CX2388X-XX

[Joscraft_05]

I bought a Terratec Cinergy HT PCI MK2 some time ago and was pretty happy with the results compared to my old Pinnacle PCTV pro with a BT848 chip.

Anyone know if those Conexant chips are good compared to the BT878 and Philips SAA713X chips?

I tried finding something about hardware MPEG2 in my card but I don’t find nothing so it doesn’t seem to have hardware MPEG2 in the analog outputs.

My workflow is with a S-video cable and virtualdub in lossy huffyuv YUY2 4:2:2 at 720x576.

[Sharc]

I bought a Terratec Cinergy HT PCI MK2 some time ago and was pretty happy with the results compared to my old Pinnacle PCTV pro with a BT848 chip.

Anyone know if those Conexant chips are good compared to the BT878 and Philips SAA713X chips?

I tried finding something about hardware MPEG2 in my card but I don’t find nothing so it doesn’t seem to have hardware MPEG2 in the analog outputs.

My workflow is with a S-video cable and virtualdub in lossy huffyuv YUY2 4:2:2 at 720x576.

My best guess is that the chip as such should be ok as it is similar to the CX23102 which is used for the Hauppauge USB-live2, but it comes with a 2D/3D comb filter which was missing in the CX23102. The filter should help for composite video. Of course it much depends on how the chip is actually used on a particular board/capture device.

[Joscraft_05]

I bought a Terratec Cinergy HT PCI MK2 some time ago and was pretty happy with the results compared to my old Pinnacle PCTV pro with a BT848 chip.

Anyone know if those Conexant chips are good compared to the BT878 and Philips SAA713X chips?

I tried finding something about hardware MPEG2 in my card but I don’t find nothing so it doesn’t seem to have hardware MPEG2 in the analog outputs.

My workflow is with a S-video cable and virtualdub in lossy huffyuv YUY2 4:2:2 at 720x576.

My best guess is that the chip as such should be ok as it is similar to the CX23102 which is used for the Hauppauge USB-live2, but it comes with a 2D/3D comb filter which was missing in the CX23102. The filter should help for composite video. Of course it much depends on how the chip is actually used on a particular board/capture device.

I made a test comparing it to my firewire card with my digital 8 camera to see how much the difference is from a digital camera to analog and back to digital vs using firewire wich is digital already and there is not a lot of conversions going on vs using the analog ports.

Capture from the Terratec analog card via s-video at 4:2:2, deinterlaced with bwdif and converted from 4:2:2 to 4:2:0 because the Staxrip program doesn't let me to deinterlace with 4:2:2 and fixed with qtgmc in "progressive repair details" to fix some minor things like aliasing or little interlacing artifacts from the bwdif/yadif filters:

[Attachment 78237 - Click to enlarge]

Capture from firewire at 4:2:0 by native because of the DV codec and deinterlaced with QTGMC:

[Attachment 78238 - Click to enlarge]

I made those captures with the screenshot option of the VLC player.

[oln]

The main issue with these in my experience is that they at least with the default setup stretch/crop a little at the edges. I'm not sure if there is a way to fix it. Don't think the cx2388x pci-e cards have that issue but not sure (it's those pcie-cards where some have a 3d comb filter and despite the similar naming the chip is somewhat different). Like other conexant chips they also don't work well at all with unstable video input directly from vcrs. Main useful thing of them I guess is the ability to use the modified linux driver that lets you use them as a cheap analog-to-digital converter for digitizing raw signals so you can use them for vhs-decode or software define radio or other things.

[Joscraft_05]

The main issue with these in my experience is that they at least with the default setup stretch/crop a little at the edges. I'm not sure if there is a way to fix it. Don't think the cx2388x pci-e cards have that issue but not sure (it's those pcie-cards where some have a 3d comb filter and despite the similar naming the chip is somewhat different). Like other conexant chips they also don't work well at all with unstable video input directly from vcrs. Main useful thing of them I guess is the ability to use the modified linux driver that lets you use them as a cheap analog-to-digital converter for digitizing raw signals so you can use them for vhs-decode or software define radio or other things.

Obviusly the colors are a bit better with the firewire capture but you think the analog capture card is good or have a problem with colors?

I bought it as a replace for my old BT848 card and was a big improvement that it had a better chip, audio in and native drivers for windows 7.

I still don't have analog camcorders but i'm planning to buy a Hi8 XR cam so that's why I bought this analog card for analog captures with s-video. My digital 8 camera doesn't work as a capture device because it only have output ports so analog to DV is out of my mind (for now).

However I don't see the card is doing itself any compression with virtualdub and huffy 4:2:2 I see it very good (but in the end of the day I convert it to 4:2:0 while deinterlacing).

[pandy]

The main issue with these in my experience is that they at least with the default setup stretch/crop a little at the edges. I'm not sure if there is a way to fix it. Don't think the cx2388x pci-e cards have that issue but not sure (it's those pcie-cards where some have a 3d comb filter and despite the similar naming the chip is somewhat different). Like other conexant chips they also don't work well at all with unstable video input directly from vcrs. Main useful thing of them I guess is the ability to use the modified linux driver that lets you use them as a cheap analog-to-digital converter for digitizing raw signals so you can use them for vhs-decode or software define radio or other things.

Try http://dscaler.net/index.php - DScaler was the most advanced way to control Bt/Cx chipset - sadly it was abandoned and quickly become obsolete...

[Joscraft_05]

The main issue with these in my experience is that they at least with the default setup stretch/crop a little at the edges. I'm not sure if there is a way to fix it. Don't think the cx2388x pci-e cards have that issue but not sure (it's those pcie-cards where some have a 3d comb filter and despite the similar naming the chip is somewhat different). Like other conexant chips they also don't work well at all with unstable video input directly from vcrs. Main useful thing of them I guess is the ability to use the modified linux driver that lets you use them as a cheap analog-to-digital converter for digitizing raw signals so you can use them for vhs-decode or software define radio or other things.

Try http://dscaler.net/index.php - DScaler was the most advanced way to control Bt/Cx chipset - sadly it was abandoned and quickly become obsolete...

I noticed that using VirtualVCR with default settings I get far better colors than default settings with VirtualDub.

Here an example from VirtualVCR default settings:

[Attachment 78254 - Click to enlarge]

Capture with VirtualDub default settings:

[Attachment 78255 - Click to enlarge]

[Bwaak]

@Joscraft_05, have you set this frame as a background and then made a screenshot?

[Joscraft_05]

@Joscraft_05, have you set this frame as a background and then made a screenshot?

Yes I did a screenshot with that option from VLC. I was seeing the difference in the preview of the capture software too. But is not the best example.

I made another test better from the same exact position beetwen firewire, VirtualVCR and VirtualDub.

Capture from firewire:

[Attachment 78256 - Click to enlarge]

Capture from VirtualVCR:

[Attachment 78257 - Click to enlarge]

Capture from VirtualDub:

[Attachment 78258 - Click to enlarge]

Those may or not may be good examples at all also I didn't deinterlace the videos these screenshots are from raw AVI samples.

As far as I can tell VirtualVCR does a better job with the picture quality from my tv tuner card with the CX2388X chip.

[lollo]

As far as I can tell VirtualVCR does a better job with the picture quality from my tv tuner card with the CX2388X chip.

An appropriate capture software as VIrtualDub, VirtualVCR or AmarecTV has no impact on the intrinsic quality of the picture, it should just insure a video compliant to specifications.

What you may see is a difference in the video levels because the procamp settings or other.

[Joscraft_05]

As far as I can tell VirtualVCR does a better job with the picture quality from my tv tuner card with the CX2388X chip.

An appropriate capture software as VIrtualDub, VirtualVCR or AmarecTV has no impact on the intrinsic quality of the picture, it should just insure a video compliant to specifications.

What you may see is a difference in the video levels because the procamp settings or other.

Yes. Default settings in virtualdub just gives me weird colors while in VirtualVCR default settings show a better configuration of colors, brightness, contrast…