Newbie experimentation in the capture labs

[v8roksu]

Hi There
Im an newbie to vidcapture (Techie background but I havent experimented much in this area).
Our vhs player just bit the dust, so with my trusty BT878 capture device (playtv pro), I am setting up to do vicapture with whatever tools I can.
Ive got some demos, like power vcr II, windvr etc, but generally dissapointed with these commercial releases. I dont know if anyone else has seen the audio "sync" issues with pvcrII, but I certainly wont be buying this. Windvr seems to work nicer, is less bloated, and its nice to see this works with the remote control (havent tried with pvr actually).
Tried girder for remote, but failed badly to work it properly.

Anyway, so apart from that Ive got the codecs, huffy etc, and vdub which I tested and works nice, gives you lots of advanced control.

Anyway, My issues with vidcapture besides diskspace usage!! is that of the quality of my incoming video. I dont know if it has anything to do with my case, psu etc (and ive have had a different motherboard and case etc - a quality asus case) but I have experienced "interference" not terrible but noticeable. I have an aerial socket going to the external aerial but never had any great issues with it.
I moved my pc to where out tv socket is and the quality seems better, but not perfect. Im not sure how I should go about optimising my tv reception.
It seems better on some channels, worse on others.
channel 43 (antenna) is worse for the uniform "diagonal lines", whereas ch 50 is worse for overall recption but watchable. The other channels really arent too bad, but seems a bit silly capturing to super-dooper quality if the input isnt top notch, but I guess lower capture settings will make it even MORE unwatchable!
I know my capture card isnt the best, bought at a show for a mere £40 and that was several years ago, but it seems to do the job in my hand built AMD2000+/ASUS 333 case alongside my video card Riva TNT 64.

Stuck with the pixelview drivers, as the opensource drivers failed me dismally on windows 2000 (seems to be missing the tuner part of the components that it otherwise installs).

So where was I? oh yeah, if anyone has any optomisation suggestions, I'd be glad to here what you think.

So do any of you guys regularly use capture for recording tv progs? Id be keen to hear what you are up to. Or is it just a gr8 idea until you settle with how easy it is to just stick a vhs tape and record.
I was wondering, as I know how to create svcds now etc, how much effort to record into cdrw disks and watch on our external dvd player, while im umming and arring about buying another vid player....mind u a faster cdrw than 4x (hey what about a dvdrw) sound like a gr8 idea too. Having done this before ive seen the writer spend over an hour recoding before it EVEN gets round to writing so could be a bit of a pig.

Cheers
Tony
www.v8rocks.com

[FoolishBrett]

Nice post, some good questions. I'm on the outside looking in. Sometime I want to be able to capture and have been wondering about how.

Hopefully you will get some good responses.