High-quality yet cheap hardware MPEG2 capture/encoder...

[PC Master]

Features I'm looking for...

Encodes MPEG2 real time via hardware (not software).
720x480 (DVD) resolution.

What would also be nice is if the board would allow interface to the encoder chip in such a way that you could transcode AVIs from your PC into MPEG2 with the hardware codec on the card.

If anyone knows of a good, cheap card that can do this, please post here. Thanks.

[lordsmurf]

The words "cheap" and "hardware" don't go together.

Hauppauge. Some new AVer cards.

Hardware MPEG is overrated.
You can get equally decent results on ATI and others too.

[DaveS]

what will qualify as cheap?

[SatStorm]

https://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCard=&mpeg2=1&searchconnection=Any&pr...&Search=Search

[PC Master]

Why is hardware MPEG2 overrated? Assuming I don't have the CPU power do do software encoding (you can't do decent software encoding in DVD resolution real-time on less than 2GHz I'd guess), why would this be a bad option?

Cheap would qualify certainly as <$100, prefferably cheaper, but I'm aware that things probably aren't down to the sub-$50 range just yet.

[Capmaster]

I've been perfectly happy with my Snazzi III USB2 MPEG2 hardware encoder

[lordsmurf]

Why is hardware MPEG2 overrated? Assuming I don't have the CPU power do do software encoding (you can't do decent software encoding in DVD resolution real-time on less than 2GHz I'd guess), why would this be a bad option?

Cheap would qualify certainly as <$100, prefferably cheaper, but I'm aware that things probably aren't down to the sub-$50 range just yet.

People think hardware is "better". It's not. It's just not using CPU. The end. I've seen plenty of bad hardware MPEG2 encodes.

If you need less CPU use, go for it.

But don't do it because it's "better". Look at the quality for quality, not the kind of encoder.

[DaveS]

Cheap would qualify certainly as <$100, prefferably cheaper, but I'm aware that things probably aren't down to the sub-$50 range just yet.

in that case, check ebay for a used happauge card (250 or 350) .. I don't have either of these, but you can look them up in the capture cards section...there may be another card or two...do a lot of research before you spend

also, it would be worth downloading a demo of procoder express and see how well that runs on your machine...for only $50 and maybe $100 if you want quality encoding, it would be a great option if you don't need real time...not sure of the exact price of the express but it's somewhere in that range & is a great encoder

[SHS]

lordsmurf getting the High End Feature like what Canopus has is all most in impossable at low cost but take in count how well of decent of a results are from the Hauppauge and min other clone Hardware encoder I say it PQ very good but you are just to dran pickly .
Sure I and min other here would I like to see more Advanced High-End Improvement Pre-Filtering features like below build on Hardware Encoder.
Digital 3D Y/C Separation
Digital 3D Digital Noise Reduction
Digital 3D Frame Synchronizer
Digital Line Time Base Corrector (TBC)
Digital Auto Gain Control (AGC)
Digital Tuner
Ghost Reducer
Chroma Processing
REALtime Video Crop with Resize mode
Hardware DCDi (Directional Correlation Deinterlacing) or maybe Hardware Motion Adaptive Deinterlacing
12 Tap or better
Full Audio codec support LPCM, MPEG Layer1/2/3, AC3 (DD2.0).
MPEG-1, 2, 4 and maybe even possable DivX with all codec features.

But nobody to today has employs advanced Hardware Deinterlacing or Motion-Adaptive Deinterlacing nor Progressive Film capturing record at 23.97 or 29.97fps and for PAL as well.
Well other then AVerMedia new 500 and 550 which base one of older Canopus Hardware Encoder but I'm not sure if that V-Sharp De-Interlace technology is Hardware Encoder or Decoder thing being I haven't look at any Example clip from nor have one of thoses device so it hard to say weather it real deal being non of Canopus Product has this back then.

But in any case in Japan can you find some of above stuff if not all of it but it come as price which are not cheap to get but the bad thing is it only work with Japan OS.

PC Master I'm sorry to say but very few device allow for that kind transcode and thoses device usely cost more $500 to get that kind of feature.

Alos buy going with Hardware Encoder you have lot more option like diff OS, diff PVR or Recording only package some free some not free and have able to do other with it recorder your show with worry about drop frames. etc, etc.

[disturbed1]

.................

But nobody to today has employs advanced Hardware Deinterlacing or Motion-Adaptive Deinterlacing nor Progressive Film capturing record at 23.97 or 29.97fps

You've been wanting a card that does that for awhile now.
http://www.stream-video.com/drcstream.htm

The DRC-Stream platform has advanced video processing features such as Motion Adaptive de-interlacing, 3:2 and 2:2 inverse telecine, 3D motion adaptive noise reduction, and motion adaptive scaling. Standard audio features include 8 channels of 7-band parametric EQ (each band can be configured as EQ/gain, Shelf, or Butterworth), Dynamic Range compression/expansion and independent gain controls.


Not cheap though (starts at $900 and goes from there).





For $100 or less, you would get better results using a simple TV tunner then using TMPG, Mainconcept, or Canopus Procoder Express to encode the captured avi. The lower priced hardware MPEG capture cards do a decent job at high/mid bitrates (4000+) with cleaner sources. This coming from experience with a DVCII ($250 new) and Canopus MVR1000 ($600 new). As much as I like Canopus products, the DVCII is a better product namely because there isn't enough quality difference between the two, and it is much cheaper.

If your running an Intel CPU with an Intel chipset motherboard, you can win an ebay auction for a DVCII @ ~ $40-$90. There are install headaches with this device though, which garners it's hatred by most users.

I only use my DVCII for SAT captures for my girfriend's TV shows, and quickly burn to DVD so she can watch them later. I've attempted to do a few VHS captures, but could never get the quality I wanted. Even when I used the Canopus card and it's 3d noise filter. Had the same quality as the DVCII with just less detail. I always capture VHS with my DC30 pro at 704x480 7MB/s MJPEG, then edit and filter with AVIUtilities.

So, if you have a pretty clean source that doesn't need cleaned up/filtered, you could find a good buy at ebay, if you have dirty sources, invest in a good avi capture card and a good software encoder that total ~$100 for both. Even ATI's Video Soap can produce decent results, if you have the CPU power.

[wingnut]

Hi there,

might I suggest you instead buy a set top DVD recorder?

Buy a good model with a good encoder chip (I believe Lord Smurf made some recommendations recently). If you make sure it can record onto RW media (DVD+/-RW or RAM) you can then edit and produce the final version on your PC with DVD LAB menus etc.

As for your point on AVI to MPEG via an encoder, put a firewire card into your PC and get a recorder with firewire in then you can play out of the PC (using premier/edit studio or whatever flavour of NLE you like) and simply record at a high quality setting on the recorder.

Cheers

Edz

[mats.hogberg]

My somewhat limited experience with my Hauppage PVR250 has left me impressed - not better qualitywise than software encoding, but, it's not affected one bit by what the rest of my computer is doing. No matter what I do, I can always capture/view. To me, that makes all the difference.

/Mats

[SHS]

Yes I know about that one disturbed1 but it only seem be only able capture max 640x480 from spec sheet.
Be side I was think more long the line of what Holo3DGraph on has board from Faroudja know as FL2300 chip which dose a far better job at Deinterlacing.

[lordsmurf]

"Faroudja" ... I bet that'll cost a pretty penny.

[SHS]

Yup a very pretty penny

[SaSi]

I bought a h/w MPEG capture device NOT because my CPU could not handle real time capture, but because I got fed-up with dropped frames every 10 minutes or so which cause loss of audio sync.

Initially I got a Pinnacle PCTV-USB2-Deluxe. Despite the long name, the package was garbage. The board captured well, while it lasted, but the s/w was unusable. It turned very hot (to the extent I had to place a 12cm fan on top of the bare board to keep it warm (instead of very hot!). Even when it worked, I had to take extra care and go to extremes to capture above 5Mbps.

When it died, I tried a Hauppauge PVR USB2. This one is good and runs moderately warm. It is rated for MPEG-2 capture at a max of 12Mbps, giving decently good picture quality. However, I tried to create a new custom setting and selected VBR, Average = 15Mbps and Max=20Mbps. The board accepted this happily and gave bigger files - and excellent picture.

Bear in mind that normally, a descent MPEG encoder can achieve a non-visible-quality-degratation encoding with a bitrate of 8Mbps. But this is for s/w encoders that can be more clever than h/w.

BTW, I have not tried to find the max bitrate for the Hauppauge, but it also accepted a CBR setting of 35Mbps. I don't use it since it's just a waste of HD.

Honestly speaking, I get better results capturing from my ASUS ViVo card with any of the available capture utilities to AVI, using Hufyuv. It also saves me having to load the captured MPEG-2 file to VirtualDUB-MOD and edit out all the unwanted parts - commercials - save again to AVI and then re-encode to MPEG-2.

But, the external h/w MPEG encoder allows me to capture while I do MPEG-2 encodes, author a DVD, record a DVD (usually test burns on RW), and browse the net - all at the same time. With the s/w capture solution I must leave the PC alone.

A year ago I thought how nice it would be to be able to feed the AVI to an MPEG-2 h/w compressor and get faster than real time encodes. I then realized that even if someone built such a system - and perhaps someone has - it would not be able to do a multi-pass encoding, therefore by definition the result would be inferior - unless the encoding was in constant Quantization mode with the drawback of making the final file size an unknown.

To cut a long story short, getting a good h/w encoder is more expensive than getting a new PC. And there are plenty more things you can do with a fast PC than with a H/W MPEG encoder

[SHS]

That odd SaSi both PCI and USB2 only have MAX bitrate of 15Mbps are check the biterate with Womble MPEG-VCR info tool or some else for real bitrate? as far I know of it just reset back to default setting.

[SHS]

Well this start to really get interesting now it seem that ATI final got there duff and made there own Hardware MPEG Encoder "ATI Theater 550 PRO" you can see an picture at http://www.guru3d.com/

[SaSi]

That odd SaSi both PCI and USB2 only have MAX bitrate of 15Mbps are check the biterate with Womble MPEG-VCR info tool or some else for real bitrate? as far I know of it just reset back to default setting.

I have verified the 15Mbps CBR setting via the DVD-Lab bitrate viewer. And the file size showed a 15Mbps encoding.

It's interesting to redo this at 35Mbps and check that again. I didn't originally.

BTW, USB-2 is rated at 480Mbps. 12Mbps is the rating of USB 1.1 In any doubt, read http://www.everythingusb.com/usb2/faq.htm.

[SaSi]

Did another test at 35Mbps and another at 50Mbps.

Opened the files with VirtualDUB-MOD.

The first showed average bitrate of 34234kbps and the second gave 48534kbps. File sizes were 290Mb and 375Mb for 60 seconds or so of video.

What's interesting is that the second file had severe problems when I tried to play it back with VirtualDUB some parts were apparently lost (a few frames here and there) as if I had dropped frames. Most likely the 50Mbps transfer rate chocked the HD. During capture the LED went on and stayed on.

Now, in case you may wonder why on earth should I want to capture MPEG-2 at 50Mbps, well I don't. Just an entertaining excercice. But, for me, most important is that if something works descently well past it's design specs it's something well built. In contrast to the crapy Pinnacle PCTVDeluxe!

[PC Master]

Wow, quite an explosion on the topic. To sum it up -- Yes, I know software encoding, when done properly, can give better results. I also know that doing this real-time would take more processing power than I have available for my HTPC.

As for a set-top DVD recorder -- I've got one, but wanted to add video input recording in real time as an option to my HTPC. Luckily, it's only something that was optional. I'll just have to use Huffyuv or something and automatically transcode later if I want to record something for some reason. Most of my stuff will not be coming from such a video input though.

Thanks for all the tips and attempted help. I now return to my attempts to build a PC (not a mini-itx) into a VCR.

Hmm, on a side note, does anyone know of a cheap place to get a 2-slot PCI riser card?

[SaSi]

Hmm, on a side note, does anyone know of a cheap place to get a 2-slot PCI riser card?

You should know! You are PC Master!!!

I am afraid you are not going to succeed in the riser card issue. If you are looking to insert a riser card on a normal PCI slot and then stick two PCI cards on to the riser board, then it doesn't work that way. Each PCI slot has it's own IRQ bound and works independently of the others.

Theoretically, Windows 2000 allows IRQ sharing but whenever I had two PCI cards sharing the same IRQ (e.g. VGA and Ethernet or Ethernet and Audio) one interfered with the other badly.

To build a low profile PC, I would recommend to select an appropriate low profile motherboard (most of the mini-ATX are suitable) with it's own riser card that comes with the MB.

Finally, the prices for the bare bones HTPCs (case, psu, MB and front panel instrumentation kit) have dropped so drastically that you would be probably getting something better for less money and trouble if you looked that what is available.

The MSI product range is excellent if you are looking for a Cube shaped PC and Asus has a fine looking low profile version (alas, at an Asus price )

[lordsmurf]

Well this start to really get interesting now it seem that ATI final got there duff and made there own Hardware MPEG Encoder "ATI Theater 550 PRO" you can see an picture at http://www.guru3d.com/

Is this another PCI Express, Windows Media Center only type board? Maybe it'll be cool in a few years, but people like me cannot even test it out.

[PC Master]

SaSi> The IRQ sharing can be overcome by one of two methods...

1) A secondary PCI controller that is on the riser that handles all the IRQ stuff itself and makes the sharing work properly. These cards are expensive.

2) The second type of working risers has a cable with a card edge for each slot you wish to adapt. The riser is inserted into one PCI slot, and then the extra lines (the independant IRQ lines and such) are pulled from each slot as needed. This is what I'm interested in.

I already have all the components I need, and am building myself a custom case (out of a VCR) and so I really don't want to bother with any of the Flex-ATX or Mini-ITX stuff.

[hrlslcbr]

@lordsmurf: The ATI Theatre 550 Pro is a new chip that will be available in a PCI and a PCI-Express version from manufacturers like MSI, Gigabyte, Sapphire, etc.
It works with Win XP, 2000, and Media Centre Edition and has a suggested retail price of $99 USD. So what's wrong with it??
Read this if you want more info: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mmedia/display/20040915020208.html

[lordsmurf]

Nothing if it'll run under Windows XP and a standard PCI slot. We'll see if it's as good as a Theatre chips of the past.

[hrlslcbr]

Nothing if it'll run under Windows XP and a standard PCI slot. We'll see if it's as good as a Theatre chips of the past.

Yep, I hope it is a good chip, because I'm going to buy it

[vhelp]

.................

But nobody to today has employs advanced Hardware Deinterlacing or Motion-Adaptive Deinterlacing nor Progressive Film capturing record at 23.97 or 29.97fps

You've been wanting a card that does that for awhile now.
http://www.stream-video.com/drcstream.htm

The DRC-Stream platform has advanced video processing features such as Motion Adaptive de-interlacing, 3:2 and 2:2 inverse telecine, 3D motion adaptive noise reduction, and motion adaptive scaling. Standard audio features include 8 channels of 7-band parametric EQ (each band can be configured as EQ/gain, Shelf, or Butterworth), Dynamic Range compression/expansion and independent gain controls.


Not cheap though (starts at $900 and goes from there).





For $100 or less, you would get better results using a simple TV tunner then using TMPG, Mainconcept, or Canopus Procoder Express to encode the captured avi. The lower priced hardware MPEG capture cards do a decent job at high/mid bitrates (4000+) with cleaner sources. This coming from experience with a DVCII ($250 new) and Canopus MVR1000 ($600 new). As much as I like Canopus products, the DVCII is a better product namely because there isn't enough quality difference between the two, and it is much cheaper.

If your running an Intel CPU with an Intel chipset motherboard, you can win an ebay auction for a DVCII @ ~ $40-$90. There are install headaches with this device though, which garners it's hatred by most users.

I only use my DVCII for SAT captures for my girfriend's TV shows, and quickly burn to DVD so she can watch them later. I've attempted to do a few VHS captures, but could never get the quality I wanted. Even when I used the Canopus card and it's 3d noise filter. Had the same quality as the DVCII with just less detail. I always capture VHS with my DC30 pro at 704x480 7MB/s MJPEG, then edit and filter with AVIUtilities.

So, if you have a pretty clean source that doesn't need cleaned up/filtered, you could find a good buy at ebay, if you have dirty sources, invest in a good avi capture card and a good software encoder that total ~$100 for both. Even ATI's Video Soap can produce decent results, if you have the CPU power.

I'd love to see some de-interlaced sample clips from this.

SaSi wrote:

A year ago I thought how nice it would be to be able to feed the AVI to an MPEG-2 h/w compressor and get faster than real time encodes. I then realized that even if someone built such a system - and perhaps someone has - it would not be able to do a multi-pass encoding, therefore by definition the result would be inferior - unless the encoding was in constant Quantization mode with the drawback of making the final file size an unknown.

I would say that if your talking about VBR, then chances are you will have
quality issues with this route, but I think that w/ a CBR (since your aim will
most likely be DVD anyways) would probably work in this scenario.

I have the PVR USB-2 model also, but haven't yet tried it. (I'm too busy,
and lazy I guess)
I got it (not to replace my already "quality buff encodes", but for when I'm
strapped for time or hd space or just plain lazy, (and other reasons) that's
all.

I wouldn't mind seeing a few sample from the USB-2 though. I didn't get
my Analog Cable that I was going to get a few weeks ago. (they told me
that my wire burnt out - - yeah right. Like I'm gonna believe that, when
there was no power to the darn wire (they turned it off) ) Anyways.
So, I'm still on Antenna for the time being.

-vhelp

[SHS]

There rigth here vhelp http://www.stream-video.com/digitaldemo.htm but bear in mind that the card can only do 640x480 I belive if recall rigth when I ask them about a few years ago.

[Alan69]

Why is hardware MPEG2 overrated? Assuming I don't have the CPU power do do software encoding (you can't do decent software encoding in DVD resolution real-time on less than 2GHz I'd guess), why would this be a bad option?

Cheap would qualify certainly as <$100, prefferably cheaper, but I'm aware that things probably aren't down to the sub-$50 range just yet.

What LS said and then some. You'd be better off to simply get a faster MB and processor, an ATI all in wonder for encoding MPEG2, and use the processor to transcode your AVIs. They simply don't make a great whopping card to make a slower system do what you want that is cheap, because it makes more sense to simply buy a faster MB and CPU. Most of the cards that can do things similar to what you want are expensive, and to go into high end systems, not to make a 'K6-2 250' able to do MPEG2's..

A new barebones and older ATI card would be less than $200, and you'd also have the extra speed for everything else not just encoding. The cheapest 'card' to do the things you want is generally a MB and simpler capture card.