IMO the best way of capturing with PV-231 / PV-233

[glinckens]

I have been experimenting with my PV-231 card like crazy the last weeks, and have come to several conclusions:

Skittelsen's registry setting are as optimized as it can be, so not much to gain in quality from the registry, but:

The card does a better job of capturing at VBR than CBR. It seems that at VBR the bits are better distributed over the picture than at CBR. This is allocation of bits _per frame_, not an average of several frames.
Example: when I set the quality slider to 4, I get a mpeg with an average bitrate of 1100 - 1200 kbps. When capturing the same video at 1150 kbps CBR it looks worse.

Sounds easy: when you get more quality for the same amount of mb's per minute, why not capture at VBR all the time?
The problem is that we'll want to play it in a DVD player, and Mpeg-1 VBR is far from any standard.

What works best is to remux the VBR MPEG-1 file with Tmpgenc. Use the "simple multiplex" tool and select the mpeg file both as video and audio source. Select "mpeg-2 super videocd (VBR)" as type and click start.
The generated file is VBR MPEG-1, but _marked_ as SVCD. Burn this file as non standard compliant SVCD disc with Nero.

Every SVCD-supporting DVD player I tested plays these discs perfectly, with better quality than standard VCD's. The player sees that it's a SVCD disc and suddenly is very forgiving when playing VBR. Also, SVCD's MPEG-2 seems to be MPEG-1 "backward" compatible, so no problems there.

Try it yourselves and please give feedback.

[geniv]

how do you capture in VBR there's no option for that in in the cap program.?

which other vendor's driver and app is compatable with the PV233?

[glinckens]

Edit the win200f.ini in your application directory and edit this line to:
Quality_Enable=1

You then can select "constant quality" in the settings dialog. This enables VBR. The quality slider determines the maximum bitrate.

I use the driver and app of the Grandtec GrandVCD 2000 Plus. See http://www.grandtec.com.tw/EN/download/download.html

[geniv]

hehe thanks, for the help. btw: do any of the other cap programs from the other vendors offer any new features or quality differnce? or just mearly a better looking user interfeace?

[glinckens]

The difference is the look of the user interface and there are differences in software version. The GrandVCD 2000 plus has the best looking app. But it is also the app that has the most new version releases. Other vendors still have software from 2000 while the Grand has more recent software and drivers.

[Tony Yip]

Can you use Skittelsen's registry settings with the
GrandVCD 2000 plus drivers and apps?

[geniv]

that grandvcd app looks like the one for the PV231. I got the PV233 with tv tuner. not sure if it will work peroperly.

btw: the "VBR" or constant qulaity setting capture. it didn't work so well for me. I did the INI edit and then cap with the slider in 4 and I was getting a file about 60% the file size of my vcd but the quality is alot worst and the video is jerky.

[markm]

I see the same results with both the Grand and the 3Demon capture apps. Even with a quality setting of one, my max bitrate never seems to hit 1150, and the quality isn't that hot. Blocky, and outright errors in the encoding.

I'm curious of the bitrate setting in the registry is the MAX bitrate to use for VBR. Most VBR/CQ setups have a max setting. If 1150 is the max, then VBR won't buy anything but smaller file size in some cases.

The card can actually do 3 modes, CBR, CQ, and max-VBR. I wonder if the constant quality mode and max VBR modes are getting mixed up. ie; if when you enable constant quality, you're really enabling max VBR, then we'd see what we're seeing. I would have expected a constant quality capture at 1 to be fairly high bitrate since the card is capable of it. Instead it's capping at less than VCD bitrates. Something's not right.