Avermedia PCI Card BT878 OR NEC 7130? Help! Hi8mm Capture

[tjfiles]

I just purchased an Avermedia EZ DVD Capture card with the BT878 chipset to convert movies from my Sony Hi8mm camera to my Win XP comp. As you guys already know, there are two versions of the card. The BT878 has video imput to the card and then the audio runs into the computer's sound card line in. The NEC 7130 has adio inputs and a firewire port on the capture card.

I could only find the BT878 card at office max, but can buy the NEC chip version on the web from officemax for the same price. By chance does anyone have both cards and can give input on which captures quality is better?

I am very happy with the BT878 card and would recommend to anyone with a decent system and a little time to fiddle around with other software as the NeoDVD is crap. I know the BT878 card drivers have more testing behind them, but should I return it and order the NEC card for the following reasons:

1.Audio goes directly into the card, rather than the sound card line in (maybe better audio sync?)
2. Also has a firewire card when I finally have the money to blow on a new DV video camera


This forum has been great as I have was able to buy the inexpensive card, get it up and running with the included drivers (have not tried the BTwin cap drivers yet) and I used Virtual VCR. AVI capture looks great, better than the original movie. When I encode to MPEG 2 or DivX 4.1, it does not look as great, a few ghosting and over all quality loss, but of course the file size is much smaller. I don't have a DVD burner yet, that's the next step.

THANKS in advance for yout time and any info...

[tjfiles]

Many views, but no posts? Come on guys, somebody must have some input here?

Thanks

[Anonymous65]

I did a test between the old BT878 chip and the new CX23xx chip, and the new chip performs very poorly compared to the old chip.
See the test here: http://steve.kittelsen.com/cx2388

[lchiu7]

I did a test between the old BT878 chip and the new CX23xx chip, and the new chip performs very poorly compared to the old chip.
See the test here: http://steve.kittelsen.com/cx2388

I use a BT878 chip capture card (Hauppauge WinTV PCI) that works pretty well for me. I use it primarily to record television using IUVCR. I record in 720x576(PAL) and PicVideo MJPEG codec. I can capture 2-3 hour shows with no frame drops. I have also used it to capture from the s-video input from my camcorder

The key issues with these BT878 based cards is as you say, they need to use a sound card to do sound capture. I had all sorts of problem with VIA based chipset motherboard and C-Media onboard sound. I would get crackling all the time and poor audio. In the end I bit the bullet and got a Athlon 2400+ on a SIS based MB, SB Live 5.1 and problems have gone.

The other issue is synchronisation of audio/video. It took me a while to get this right but iuvcr for me at least, was the best in terms of maintaining sync. I set the master stream to audio. I also tried VirtualVCR but that program was not as flexible in terms of scheduling recordings as well as having sync problems. I have also tried PoweVCR which is okay in terms of sync but the realtime mpeg2 encoding is not as good as Mainconcept or TMPGENC

YMMV but those are my experiences

Larry

[DVDDave]

tjfiles,

have you had any audio sync problems with the card available at office max? i may wanna try one tomorrow. how is the video quality?? is it equal to the original vhs tape??

thanks for your input!!!!!

[Anonymous65]

Unless you get a capture card that has the audio and video clock locked (hardware, like the Canopus ADVC capture devices) you will need to do the audio and video synchronization in software. Virtualdub and IUVCR can drop or add video frames to stay in sync with the sound card clock. Normally this works just fine and there will only be a need to drop/add 30 frames or so every hour for a standard sound card. You will never notice these frames dropped over a duration of an hour. VirtualVCR (and there is a filter for Virtuabdub as well) can resample the audio clock to match the video clock. This means the video is the master stream and no frames are dropped or added, but the audio sampling is adjusted in software to match the video. I currently use this in VirtualVCR and it works perfectly.

[tjfiles]

Steve, thanks for the link and info. Great page and I was glad to see the EIA resolution charts, makes it easy to compare the video stills. I would like to see a link from DVDrhelp to your website. Maybe we can make that happen if you don't mind the traffic and plan to keep the page up? I think people would really benefit from it.

[tjfiles]

DVD Dave, I would definitely recommend the capture card from office max. The BT848 card that I have has a picture of a baby in a brown dinosaur costume on the box, so look for that in the store. It's definitely worth the 50 bucks, but remember to keep in mind it is an inexpensive card and is not going to give super high quality results, but I am very pleased. Probably perfect for VHS transfer.

Looks like you have a beefed up system, so I would think that would help for when doing a long movie with high processor loads. I have the standard built in soundcard on my dell, and used the line in on it. Only a trace of audio sync issues on about an 1 hour long capture from Hi8mm.
Make sue the audio levels from your card and capture program are not too hot and make sveral tests with your capturing before you do the long movies.

As far as quality goes, I was very impressed. The AVI's look great and honestly they look better than when I connect the camera to the TV. Don't even bother with the NeoDVD software. It's pretty much a joke. I think it mades for someone that does not know or want to know much about computers and just wants to plug it in and get a decent capture. Very little adjustments, and the quality is better with the other capture program. And I'm still using the avermedia drivers, go figure!

I have found the capture quality is not just the card but also a function of all the little tweaks and things combined. QUALITY OF THE SIGNAL, software (drivers and capture), cables, computer system, etc. Garbage in, garbage out. I cleaned the heads in the camera with a head cleaner tape and that helped remove almost all of the little noise specs or things in the video and give it a nice clean look. Obviously use a decent 4 head VCR. High quality cables, the shorter the better if you really want to try to get some cleam video. Don't rush it and expect to spend some time testing and playing around with things.

[Anonymous65]

tjfiles,
my web site should be able to handle quite a bit of traffic, so I don't mind any links to the site..

steve

[mpiper]

I also have the AverMedia EzDVD capture card.

I have a question:
I have the version with only video capture, requiring a separate audio connection. I bought it about April 20th.

I thought this was the BT848/878 chip, but when I try to install the BTWinCap drivers, Win XP says no compatible hardware is installed. DO the new cards have the other chipset? If not, how do I get the card and drivers to talk to each other?

Thanks,
Mike

[Anonymous65]

If the card is installed in your PC and there are no drivers for it, it should be listed in your hardware list with a question mark next to it. Right-click on the device and select Update Driver. Manually point to the location of the driver on your hard drive and it should install the drivers for the card. If the card is not listed at all in your hardware list, then the card is not talking correctly to the PC. Try another PCI slot or free up some IRQ's.

[mpiper]

The card is actually installed and working with the original drivers (AverMedia) and recognized, etc. But when I try to install the tweaked drivers (BTWinCap) I get a message saying there is no compatable hardware. I have tried "update drivers" and pointing to them, and manually installing them, and have even removed the original drivers and let windows install wizard redetect and tried to point to the BTWinCap, but nothing works. Only the stock drivers.

That is why I am wondering if my card has a different chipset. Is there a way to find out what chipset the card has? without cracking open the PC again? Because if I have the NEC 7130, that might explain it. are there any tweaked drivers for that chipset?

Mike