Which way to go...WINTV PVR or ATI AIW 128 PRO (AGP)

[jfurno]

I would appreciate it very much if anyone has and suggestions or comments on which of these 2 video capture cards is best for capturing from my camcorder to VCD and what limitation these cards have for future expandability.

[geniv]

I don't suggest the WinTV PVR. unless you don't really care about the capture quality.

in a word it's pretty aweful. I got the Real Magic DVR. and from a comparison between that and the WinTV PVR the REal Magic DVR is supposely 2x better quality capture..

I cureent is testing the DVR and the quality is not that good. my 2 year old SNAZZI is better mpeg1 quality.

for encoding picture quality I would have to say the PV256 is the best. (also testing that)

[jfurno]

What about the ATI AIW card...do you have any experience with that card and if so, what are its advantages and disadvantages, and of caorse how well does that capture.
Also what would be the best capture for going from an anolog 8mm camcorder to VCD ????? Thanks

[hotmat4]

Hi, I have the ATI AIW Pro 32MB AGP. I've had a few problems with the card but it takes a while to sort them out. But when this card works, it works. The quality of capturing AVI is great, but I'm limited on my 500mhz Intel Celeron. But the MPEG2 capturing is the best if u've got a high performance system 1ghz+ PC at big area. Could you give me ur system details so I can advice you a bit more.

The MPEG1 capturing is not bad, higher bitrates and big size the better. I've been fine capturing at 352x288 (PAL) at 3mbs/sec. The quality is fine to code to proper VCD. But I advice MPEG2 capturing on it. If you use 2mbs/sec+ with bigger size than 352x288 (or if ur NTSC). If you use the SVCD sizes or higher, u'll get the best results using B and P frames. I can only use I frames using bigger sizes.

What are u planning to use this card for??

[jfurno]

Thanks for the info. I have a 1.2g Athlon w/ 256 SDRAM and 2-20g 7200 RPM HDs...... What I really want to do is transfer all my 8mm camcorder types to "very good" VCD quality to watch on TV. Secondary reason is the watchin TV aspect of the card. I am a beginner but do not want to make the first mistake of buying the wrong capture card.
Thanks for all the help.

[hotmat4]

If you want to encode ur Camcorder 8mm tapes (sorry to metion this in the other post), though I havent done this yet, I think the ATI card would do well. You get the extension box which has the yellow, red and white connectors for it. The ATI capture software should do it great. I advice encode to SVCD size and 4mbs/sec+ with B and P frames, (not just I frames) and then decode down using DVD2AVI using the HuffyUV codec (AVI) and then back up to VCD using TMPGenc.

[sommersby]

I also had a PVR card about a year ago and took it back the next day, poor quality direct recording and my $40 dollar tuner card had just as good avi captures, I recently bought an AIW card, $100 at best buy with rebate and gift cert, and have been very happy with it.

[energy80s]

I would warn against going for the ATI AIW card. I have one (cost me £140) and its rubbish! The Macrovision coding chip is totally f**ked up and activates when there is NO macrovision signal present - even on live TV and camcorder footage. Also the WDM drivers don't let you capture to AVI. And as for support / updated drivers .... well ... it really is a waste. I only wish I knew then what I know now about the card. The only capturing I can do with it is from Digital Satellite as an MPEG1 file, that's why I had to buy another (old) capture card to get decent video captures.

[mpack]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-11-20 09:04:42, energy80s wrote:
I would warn against going for the ATI AIW card.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

There is a cure for the "psuedo macrovision" problem - just download the latest official driver, which fixes it.

I have to say though that I do have some sympathy for your point of view. I'm a developer, and ATI developer support used to be very good, providing detailed tech info ect. So, a year ago I would have been a big fan of ATI, but their increasingly shit record on tech support is beginning to wear me down: nowadays you can count yourself lucky to get an acknowledgement of your email, never mind an actual *solution* to your problem!

Also, dropping support overnight for the VfW capture interface - still THE standard video capture interface on PCs - struck me as pretty arrogant and short sighted.

It isn't true though that no VfW equals no AVI capture. You can capture to AVI using WDM, *if* you have WDM compatible capture software.

[darkelf]

I've been using an AIW PRO (the old 8meg RAGE PRO cards) under win2k, and it's been working fine.

since you have the 2xhugeDiskSpace, I am assuming that you are capturing to AVI (either uncompressed/huffy/mjpeg)? instead of directly to Mpeg1 or mpeg2?

I realize that this can be a huge commitment of diskspace (I've been running a little over 30gig/hr with Huffy 2.x installed) but if you are doing any kind of editing, and you have all of that diskspace, IMHO it's much better to get a big f-off file of decent quality and use TMPGEnc to convert to VCD-mpeg1. Cuts down on the garbage-in <-> garbage-out issues.

I have a Thunderbird/266-1ghz, with only one 5400rpm 60gig maxtor, and I doot have any problems captureing at NTSC, with 44100hz-mono audio. (and I'm using a card that's been OBSOLETE for TWO YEARS)!

My only problem (that I attribute to the age of my capture device's unsupported beta drivers, is that it accepts ONLY 320x240 input size. Doesn't look too bad when berned to VCD.

Since you are looking for a much newer card, I would suspect that this problem is gone.

Go with the ATI, the included DVR software isn't bad (even with the RAGE128 models).

Hope this helps...

[energy80s]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-11-20 11:57:44, mpack wrote:
There is a cure for the "psuedo macrovision" problem - just download the latest official driver, which fixes it.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Does this definately work? I wasn't aware of a new driver release. I'll have to try it out.