Firewire Card vs TV Tuner card..which will give me best cap

[Divxwannabe]

Topic says it all...

Cheers

[makntraks]

Topic says it all...

Cheers

Can't possibly see how this can be done with the bevy of information you have so kindly supplied.. Topic heading or not... Face value of your statement is that you haven't a clue... why should we (I)????

makntraks

[thor300]

Firewire and tv-cards are not used for the same thing usually so its hard to say. Firewire dont cap video, so unless you are talking about connecting to a digital videocamera the answer to your question is that TV-tuner is best.

[Divxwannabe]

[b]Well thanks for your warm welcome Makntraks

OK, I have a DV camera. I have been attaching it to my computer to capture via RCA cable to my TV Tuner card. My editing software is Ulead vstudio 6se, however I normally capture via the PVR software that came with my winfast tv card, settings on optimal, I then edit burn to DVD. For play back via bog standard dvd player attached to tv. I regard the results as good but I have nothing to compare against..

In my effort to improve things, I am curious as to whether a dedicated firewire card would improve image quality for eg. My DV camera supports firewire..
My sys specs are
AMD XP1600
512 meg ddr ram
60 gig HD 7200 rpm
ATI Radeon Graphics Card 9600xt
Leadtek Winfast xp deluxe tv tuner card

Thanks for your help

[lenti_75]

go for firewire. normally you use the tuner if you want to capture analog video. since you have minidv, go for digital...
and something else....60G is king of small....[/quote]

[FulciLives]

When you have a digital cam be it Digital8 or DV (aka miniDV) then you should use FIREWIRE because your video and audio is stored on the tape in a digital format and using FIREWIRE (aka IEEE 1390 aka i.link) will simply transfer your digital data to the computer with NO loss in quality since it really is just a data transfer.

This results in a DV AVI file which can be type 1 or type 2

I don't work with DV AVI so I don't know which type you want but I think some programs require type 2 such as VirtualDub etc.

Anyways once you have it on your computer you can then do some post processing (such as editing etc.) then convert to whatever format you are aiming for such as MPEG-2 DVD spec or whatever (VCD, SVCD, DivX etc.)

The PCI TV tuner type card you are using is really meant for analog video to digital conversion but since you have a digital cam you really should use FIREWIRE since that will give you the best quality (i.e., perfect copy).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Divxwannabe]

Thanks Lenti..

Yep 60 g is small now, hard to believe but...

I take it I will see image quality improvement with a firewire for capture....

They are relatively inexpensive now..

[thecoalman]

Go digital. When using firewire you have a lossless transfer. It would just be like copying it from one hard drive to another. If you use a capture card the camera is converting it to analog which in turn is converted back to a digital by your computer.

DV-1 and DV-2 are essentially the same. The difference is that DV-1 has a single combined video and audio stream. DV-2 splits the audio stream from the video. It results in a larger file. I stick with DV-1 as I can always split the audio via software if need be.

[Divxwannabe]

Thanks all, I am heading out to buy a firewire card...

Now, my ulead vstudio6 se has mpeg capture on the fly when used with a firewire card...Has anyone had experience with this..Settings for optimal qual (trying for the highest qual poss given my sys-output to DVD)..??

[makntraks]

[b]Well thanks for your warm welcome Makntraks

OK, I have a DV camera. I have been attaching it to my computer to capture via RCA cable to my TV Tuner card. My editing software is Ulead vstudio 6se, however I normally capture via the PVR software that came with my winfast tv card, settings on optimal, I then edit burn to DVD. For play back via bog standard dvd player attached to tv. I regard the results as good but I have nothing to compare against..

In my effort to improve things, I am curious as to whether a dedicated firewire card would improve image quality for eg. My DV camera supports firewire..
My sys specs are
AMD XP1600
512 meg ddr ram
60 gig HD 7200 rpm
ATI Radeon Graphics Card 9600xt
Leadtek Winfast xp deluxe tv tuner card

Thanks for your help

Your're welcome! I guess...hehehehehehe
I apologize for the condescending tone of my response, it's just that if you had given MORE information I would have been happy to tell you how to get set up.. I have a similar setup and 1394 is the way to go..
FWIW - good luck and happy capping..

makntraks

[thecoalman]

Not sure about the settings available on Videostudio, i'm using Mediastudio Pro 7 which has virtually limitless settings. I use the NTSC DVD preset for final output. I only adjusted the bit rate from constant 6000 to variable 8000(may be a little bit of overkill) and use AC3 audio at 256 Kbps. I render directly from Mediastudio because Ulead DVD Workshop gives you the option of not rerendering compliant files. So i'm only rendering the origianl avi to mpg once.

It's my understanding that loss of quality will result from rerendering a movie file, particularly a mpg. If you plan on editing your original footage capture it in AVI format edit it then render it to mpg. If you plan on burning it directly to disc then capturing in mpg should be fine as long as Videostudio doesn't rerender it.

[Divxwannabe]

Makntraks No offense taken....


thecoalman This has been a great thread and has cleared up issues...memo to self-Avoid re rendering...

[Divxwannabe]

Another issue, one that confuses me. I capture in MPEG2 using my TV card and PVR software....fine...I then plonk that in Ulead for production to DVD, why does it go through the rendering thing all over again, as in its mpeg 2 right, project settings are same as source, output is same as source and yet...it does the biz all over..very time consuming. Like hours.

Your thoughts?

[alstatr]

Divxwannabe,

I've had the same experience when capturing TV shows off of my ATI 9700. I capture in MPEG2 and then put it into Ulead (although I don't use it anymore, I use Vegas Video 4) and it rerenders it again, sucks because it takes forever. I am pretty sure it is because the capture is not DVD complaint and that is why Ulead doesn't like it. Vegas Video excepts pretty much every format but of course after editing or when I want to burn to DVD to play in a DVD player it needs to rerender to DVD complaint MPEG2. Like I said I'm pretty sure this is whats going on.

Hope this helps,

Kevin

[FulciLives]

Womble MPEG2-VCR will allow you to do some simple editing but will not re-encode except for sometimes right at the edit point(s) but at least it will not re-encode the whole thing.

TMPGEnc DVD Author will also allow you to import then edit an MPEG-2 file but you can only edit on keyframes (I-frames) so that means you can only edit like once every 15 frames, give or take.

Womble MPEG2-VCR will let you edit anywhere although if your edit is not on a keyframe (I-frame) then it will need to re-encode but JUST at the edit point.

For your DV cam you are better off with DV AVI capture but for analog stuff that you capture to MPEG-2 well I hope you find this info helpfull.

Or you can capture to AVI with your TV card then use Ulead and it will render from AVI to MPEG-2 which will result in better quality than if you use that method with a MPEG-2 capture.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman