Capturing program

[littlecramp]

I use to have a leadtek winfast win2000xp where i can encode the TV or s-video/composite input to whatever video format that i had specified as long as I had the codecs.

Now I upgraded my TV tuner to Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 which use a hardware-based encoder for mpeg1/2 only. Is there any program where I can still do the encoding to other format ?

[FulciLives]

I use to have a leadtek winfast win2000xp where i can encode the TV or s-video/composite input to whatever video format that i had specified as long as I had the codecs.

Now I upgraded my TV tuner to Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 which use a hardware-based encoder for mpeg1/2 only. Is there any program where I can still do the encoding to other format ?

The WinTV PVR-250 is a MPEG-1/MPEG-2 hardware encoder. That is all that it does.

So you have 2 choices in your course of what to do:

1.) Use a bitrate that will target your end result. For instance if you want to capture something with the intent of burning it to a DVD and you know ahead of time that it is approximately 90 minutes long you would use a bitrate of approximately 6000kbps video to make it fit the DVD disc.

2.) Capture at a VERY high birate and re-encode later. The WinTV PVR-250 can go up to 15000kbps for video. This is such a high bitrate that although it is using lossless MPEG-2 compression the capture uses SO little compression that it is akin to capturing with something like the PICVideo codec or even the DV codec. In other words you will have a clean enough capture that you can then re-encode if you want (using a 2-pass VBR or multi-pass VBR method) to fit your target be it DVD or SVCD etc.

I know someone that does it the 2nd way and it works out pretty good for them. I've seen some stuff and the quality is very good once re-encoded in a 2-pass VBR for DVD spec.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[littlecramp]

Im asking for the type of program which enable the recording of the Tv card .

[dphirschler]

Up until today, I thought only the 350 had the tuner, not the 250. I just discovered that the 250 and 250 both have tuners thanks to the capture card section of this website. So, now I wonder what is it that makes the 350 different?


Darryl

[littlecramp]

PVR 350 have hardware decoder as well, a s-video/composite A/V output

[littlecramp]

PVR 350 have hardware decoder as well, a s-video/composite A/V output