help with Hauppauge Win-TV Go card!!!!

[briansmccabe]

Hi everyone -

I have a Hauppauge win-tv "go" capture card, and I read somewhere recently that this card can actually capture in DVD-compliant resolution. VirtualDub denies me when I try to, and I am assuming it's because i am using some lousy drivers.

My questions: A) is it actually possible to capture at DVD-compliant resolution with this card? B) What driver (if any), when running WinXP Home, can do this? and finally, C) What exactly *is* the actual DVD-compliant resolution? I have seen many figures, including 720x480, which baffles me because it would not maintain the proper aspect ratio (if my feeble math skills are correct).

THANKS VERY MUCH IN ADVANCE!

Brian mccabe

[jdizzy40]

One suggestion, if you just bought this, take it back and get the WIN PVR 250. Has on-board "hardware" encoder chip. Takes the load off your CPU and makes some nice MPEG-2 files, comes with remote too. Convert to DVD structure using TMGENc and IFOEdit and if needed DVD Shrink for authoring and compression. I've found this set-up to be no nonsense and repeatable everytime. No audio/video sync issues. You won't be happy with that card for long.

[Ironballs]

I agree jdizzy40, the 250/350 is the better option, but you don't have to TMPEnc the MPEG2 to get a dvd compliant MPEG. Just make sure the settings are correct.

Mind you I have a 250, but wish I never bothered and got a standalone dvd recorder instead.

Cheers

Ironballs

[jdizzy40]

Not to get off post, I use TMGENc to demultiplex and get the m2v/mpa files and then run through IFOEdit.

[briansmccabe]

thanks folks, but I bought it about six months ago so for the time being, i am stuck with it. In addition to that, beleive it or not, I am looking to capture in AVI, and *not* mpeg of any kind. I edit in Adobe Premiere v6.0, and that prog really dislikes mpegs. so, again - thanks for the input on the better cards ( I readily admit that my card is low-end, but if I can do DVD-resolution, I will be happy).

any other suggestions?

thanks again,

brian mc

[jdizzy40]

Well Brian, I bought 2 of those cards a couple of years ago, not really knowing why at the time. It's taken me several years and several dollars to get to the point where I'm at now. I finally found what works for capturing TV and burning to disk. Not having to re encode makes for little if no hassle with the end product.

[briansmccabe]

I don't have any objection to re-encoding. It's either that, or track down decent mpeg-2-editing software. I'm not exactly in a position to do that (unless you know a some good freeware), and besides - I'm also not in a position to buy another card for the time being.

brian mc

[sterno]

If you're using the Hauppauge drivers you're stuck at 320x240 or something like that. Install the btwincap drivers, they let you capture at higher resolutions. Off the top of my head I don't remember what the real limit on the WinTV Go card is.

DVD supports a few different resolutions, what most people mean is 720x480 (for NTSC). 720x480 and 352x480 are both legal DVD resolutions, and your DVD player makes them in to a 4:3 picture to send to the TV.

[fourthquark]

I capture from my WinTV-Go using PowerVCR II v3. I capture using PowerVCR's built-in "NTSC DVD" capture profile. This produces a 720x480 constant bit rate MPEG2 file with 224kb 44.1kHz. audio. The video paramenters nominally fall within the DVD-standard but the audio parameters do not (DVD-standard audio is 48kHz). Unfortunately PowerVCR does not seem to have an option for capturing audio at 48kHz sampling rate.

I use the term "nominally" above becauseI recently tried authoring a DVD from one of the PowerVCR-captured MPEG2 files, using Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2. and MovieFactory decided the video was not DVD-standard and re-encoded it!! It took 4 hours (on a P3 1GHz) , so I'm sure it re-encoded both the video and the audio, not just the audio. So either the PowerVCR MPEG2 video is not DVD-standard, or MovieFactory made a mistake, or the re-encoding was the result of incorrect MovieFactory project settings on my part. I haven't used MovieFactory very much so the problem may be related to project settings. However, there are several other posts on MovieFacory re-encoding supposedly DVD-standard video, so I'm not sure where the problem lies.

So it looks like my WinTV-Go can capture at 720x480, unless PowerVCR is doing some type of upsampling that I'm not aware of. Are you using the VfW drivers or WDM drivers with your WinTV-Go? I am using the WDM drivers from the Hauppauge website. Maybe that's the problem?

[briansmccabe]

thanks for all your help, everyone. I think what I am going to do is reformat (for a variety of reasons) and install the btwincap drivers. I have a mountain of vhs that is waiting for conversion. Thanks again!!

brian mc

[SatStorm]

I have a variation of this card, wintv primio fm
Also, I use W2k not WinXP, but the are about the same.

On a non VIA chipset, you can install the vfm2WDM wrapper and use Virtualdub to capture @ any resolution, using the "preview" mode.
I do this 2 years now, only 2 - 3 framedrops every hour, never had also lipsynch problems....

There are 3 DVD framesizes you can use: 352 x 576/480 (the best alternative), 720 x 576/480 (overkill for analgue capture, but some people like it) and 704 x 576/480 (same like 720 x 576/480, but some systems like capture that way more).

Virtualdub is the best program for PCI winTV cards in general.

[briansmccabe]

I've experimented with the vfw2wdm wrapper and have not had any luck getting it to work, although I am 100% certain is due to user error. I find these drivers et al very tricky to install properly. I want to avoid having to use one of these wrappers if possible only because I am so inept at installing them. I'm hoping the btwincap driver is a WDM driver which will let me use it with VirtualDub at whatever capture rate I want.

thanks for the info on what constitutes DVD-compliant resolution, too.

brian mc

[fourthquark]

briansmccabe,
I made the same decision - too much fussing around to get the wrapper working and setting it up. Keep your life simple and stick to the Hauppauge WDM drivers only. Why not just find another capture program that works with WDM drivers? There are several freebies out there - look in tools (virtualvcr comes to mind immediately). Use another tool to capture, then use Virtualdub to edit.

[Scobo]

I use Ulead Movie Factory 2 with the Hauppage WDM driver to capture direct to MPEG2 at 720x576.
This program also does direct-to-disc recording which records straight to DVD+RW in real-time with no authoring just like a set-top recorder.
It allows you to set the encoder to match your CPU power with quality settings from 1 to 15.
This program produces the best quality real-time MPEG2 capture I have seen yet.

[fourthquark]

Scobo,
Have you tried MPEG2 captures with WinDVR and PowerVCR? How do they compare against Moviefactory MPEG2 captures?
How much flexibility does Moviefactory provide for capture settings? E.g., can you set the capture for half-D1 instead of full-D1, and can you control the bitrate.
Are the MovieFactory captures fully DVD-standard (icluding the audio portion which must be 48kHz)?

[Scobo]

To fourthquark,
Yes I have tried WinDVD recorder and PowerVCR but much prefer UMF2.
I didn't find the picture quality as good and had audio sync problems as well as system lock-ups with those programs.
UMF2 has a range of DVD compliant capture templates (audio at 48KHz) as well as VCD and SVCD in PAL and NTSC formats.
You can't change the settings of these templates from within the program other than changing from MPEG to LPCM audio and the field order from A to B but you can change all the other settings such as bitrate and resolution by editing a file called CapMPTyp.ini located in the program folder.
You can change the resolution to half-D1 this way.