Video-IN capture quality with a GeForce 4

[Fredrik_A]

I've got a Geforce 4 Ti4200 VIVO card with a Philips 7108 chipset and plan to convert some old VHS tapes to DVD. However, before I start I wonder if there will be a big difference in quality if I buy a more "professional" video capture card. I've never compared my Ti4200 card with another card one so I don't really know how big the differences are.

What are the noticeably differences (colours, noise, sharpness?) between the capture cards? Is it possible to adjust some of them during the post-production?


Fredrik

[TheFamilyMan]

I use the same type of board for capturing VHS/8mm tapes. My final DVDs look as good as the orignals in terms of detail, but there are subtle differences in color that aren't noticable unless you do a realtime A/B test comparing the source with the DVD. My card has two major problems that yours may also have. The first is that the card senses the composite video input as being "overdriven" which results in overly bright scenes being almost completely whited out. I solved this by placing a voltage drop circuit in line with my composite cable; this solution is/was posted somewhere in the forums. The second is that reds are saturated such that all pure reds "glow". This was solved by using a color filter in the MPEG conversion program (TMPGEnc) that reduces the red component. I'm sure these problems effect my results, but I'm pretty happy with them, and the card also rocks for gaming. I sure others around here might think I'm full of it since I'm kludging my card/capture to get good results, but I happy with my price/peformance ratio. And a bit of advise: learn about using software and/or hardware video noise filters in processing your projects, their use can make a noticable quality improvement in converting VHS/8mm to digital.