Whats a good STABLE 3rd party Software for Hauppage WINTV GO

[DAVE440]

Been using the Hauupage supplied software for my wintvgo pci card and it works ok for the most part but has some bugs. There is a single moving horizontal line at the very top of the recording that might be information but not sure. Its not there when just viewing but shows up when record is pressed...and on playback. It spoils the recording from a quality standpoint. Also my system tends to reboot on its own just after startup every now and then. It was very stable prior to installing the hauppage card and software.

Ive tried ChrisTV and it was ok but i couldnt get the audio to sync with video and even with deinterlace filters it had lines in the recording.

Any suggestions for a good 3rd party application for viewing and video capture (mpeg 1 and 2 at least) would be appreciated. Free preferably or if not free at least a demo i can try to see how it works before purchasing.

Also looking for a source to download an mpeg2 codec for recording with the hauppage or any software I should use. For Mpeg Hauppage only comes with mpeg1 capability.

Thanks,
Dave

(system info follows - I have 2 pcs so i'll list both. Please recommend which motherboard is best to use. I can swap parts as needed to make the best system)

Hauppage WINTV GO PCI Card (currently installed in the following system)
ECS K7VTA3 V.6 motherboard
AMD 3000XP 2.1G
768 DDR RAM PC2700
80G WD 8mb cache HDD
52x24x52 CDRW
PNY Gef4 MX440SE 64DDR 4x Video card
Running Windows 2000 Professional with SP4 and IE6 SP1

Also have
Asus A7V8X-X motherboard (bios flashed to latest 1013)
Sempron 2500+ 1.75G
256 DDR PC2700
120Gb Maxtor 8mb cache HDD
Inno 3D Tornado Gef2 MX400 64mb SDR 4x Video Card
Running Windows 2000 Professional with SP4 and IE6 SP1

[fmctm1sw]

Powervcr will do straight to MPEG. I tried it but didn't like it. It was available for $10 a while back...

[jameshgross]

Try http://www.shspvr.com/ for all things Hauupage.

[SatStorm]

WinTV go, is based on bt8xx. So:
- Best drivers for this card: btwincap
- Best capture utility for this card: With wrapper virtualdub. Without wrapper VirtualVCR
- Best solution to capture realtime mpeg 2 with this card: Mainconcept 1.4.2

Don't use the tuner, only the video in. The sound goes to the audio card

[DAVE440]

Thanks to all for the replies.

Satstorm which of those two shouldn't I use the tuner on....or both?
And why? Tunerd oesn't work well? Not stable? Bad record quality?

Do either of them have schedulers or IR support? (not that use
of the remote is critical)

Also I'm not exactly sure what "wrapper" refers to.

Sorry for all the questions but this is my first capture card and
I need to get up to speed. I know its not by any means a high end
piece and my next will be hardware encoded but I'd like to get the
best quality and usefulness I can out of this one for now.

Any additional info you can provide would be helpful.

Thanks
Dave

[lordsmurf]

Try http://www.shspvr.com/ for all things Hauupage.

My thoughts too.

[DAVE440]

I've been looking at that Hauppage link but there's not much specifically aimed at wintvgo. I could be wrong...but seems wintvgo might be an older product that was repackaged with a remote and new pvr software so they can continue to sell what's already been produced and also offer a low end solution for tv viewing and pvr recording. Maybe thats why they're so inexpensive now. Most of the forums over there are geared towards the hardware encoded cards like pvr150 250 350 etc.

I found some info in "Other hauppage cards" forum on that site I'm looking over but not much info on 3rd party applications for wintvgo.

Would still appreciate any additional info anyone can offer.

[SatStorm]

www.shspvr.com is about those cards from Hauppauge that have mpeg 2 realtime
There is no much info about bt8xx cards (wintvgo,wintvprimiofm,wintvcinema,etc)

With the btwincap drivers you won't be able to use the tuner. Those drivers don't support the tuner, but rise the capture abilities of the bt8xx(x)chipset to the maximum.

In case you wish to use the tuner, better stick with the original Hauppauge drivers (which gonna limit your capture abilities and you gonna have field order issues once here and there)

Older versions of Windows used drivers called vfm. They changed that for wdm. If you have wdm drivers and you wish to use applications based on vfm drivers, the only way to do it is through vfm2wdm wrappers.
Virtualdub is based on vfm drivers. So,your wdm drivers must be "translated" to vfm using wrappers
Virtualvcr use wdm drivers. So, you don't need any wrappers

btwincap are 3rd party universal drivers for the bt8xx chips. Only when you are lucky the tuner works...

[DAVE440]

Super info! Now I'm getting a better picture of the situation.

I'd heard about the btwincap drivers but didnt know they didnt support
tv tuner apps.

I'm running windows 2000 pro and I believe I'm using WDM drivers.

I was hoping to transfer some old video tapes and do some editing
with this card but the quality with the hauppage software was a bit too
grainy at720 or larger, plus that broken moving scan line at the very top of the screen ruins any ideas of video transfer or archiving.

I didn't get that scan line using ChrisTV and had a bit better video capture
but audio sync problems and lines that no amount of de-interlace or
other filtering would solve. It was a 30 day demo so I can't use it
on this PC anymore to test further but maybe I could install it on my other one and mess with it some more...perhaps with the btwincap drivers if they'll work with Chris TV.

If I try the btwincap drivers and a 3rd party application such as those you mentioned do I need to uninstall the hauppage software...and if so...will the drivers uninstall also or do I need to look for those in the registry and manually remove them?

I was able to leave the hauppage software in for both DScaler tuner and ChrisTV tuner/capture without incident (although perhaps leaving it in...might have been part of my audio sync problem as Christv was probably using the hauppage drivers). I wonder if it wouldve worked better with the btwincap drivers...hmmm...

[lchiu7]

I have a WinTV PCI card (PAL version) that also has the BT8x8 chipset. Under XP Pro SP1 I just use the standard drivers from Hauppauge and it works fine. For capture I use IUVCR and capture in MJPEG format using the Picvideo codec.

This works pretty well for me. The card is connected to my cable system and basically I can tune and record any of the cable channels that come in that are not scrambled. For scrambled channels I route the video and audio out from the cable box into the video and audio in on the Hauppauge card and record that way.

I can do other work (browse, even encode MPEG2) while capturing and not drop frames. This is on a Athlon 2400+ so your system being faster should have no problems. I do make sure of two things though

1. Capture device is the master on the secondary IDE channel
2. When encoding MPEG2 using say Mainconcept I always set the priority of Mainconcept to be below normal (done from the Task Manager) so it doesn't hog all the CPU

I record interlaced video since that's how it's transmitted and hardly ever deinterlace the video since my output is usually DVD (not Divx). So on my regular TV I watch an interlaced picture from the DVD player and on my projector the DVD player outputs a progressive scan picture from the video

Larry