TV tuner soft that actually works.

[reboot]

Have the Pixelview Pro card, Conexant Bt878 chipset, and I can cap in any number of programs, that's not an issue (although the original drivers with the card suck!).
It caps nicely at full D1 res in Mainconcept, virtualdub, and others, however...
I tried DScaler, and at least half a dozen other "tuner" apps, and they all fall short one way or another in the capture dept.
DScaler caps ONLY into it's installation folder. Total crap AFAIC.
A few of the others simply crash, can't seem to find channels, or don't have enough options (for me).
I don't mind paying for a good app, I just want one that will change channels properly, and will cap at full D1, NTSC 29.97, with 48khz stereo.
Please give me some recommendations on what really works.

[winifreid]

windvr

[reboot]

Tried that. It only allows for Composite or S-Video input. Doesn't work with my card for whatever reason. Can't get audio either, even though I selected Line in.
Another one bites the dust.

[winifreid]

Are you using the default drivers for your card? Have you tried btwincap?

[reboot]

Yup. Default drivers suck, Installed the btwincap and it works great, but...
I can capture easily in just about any app, but cannot get much of anything (other than the original pixelview software) to do any TV tuning.

[winifreid]

You may have installed the btwincap drivers incorrectly. It is not easy to do. Look at the faq for btwincap. You may have to reinstall using another choice for your tuner model. It should tune with windvr.

[reboot]

Redid all the btwincap drivers. Got them installed as per the guide. Everything works well, except for some of the tuner apps as above.
Mainconcept PVR works well, but will only allow it's own built in avi codec, I can't choose, however it's cap in full D1 mpeg-2 is nice quality, but I'm gonna run out of hard drive space quickly
Tried ChrisTV (yuk!)
Tried WinVDR (playskool interface).
Tried a few others, some didn't recognize the tuner, others gave huge audio lag, ad infinitum.
DScaler really works well. I like it, except I cannot figure out how to get it to save it's avi WHERE I WANT IT!
It insists on saving it it's own installation folder.
If there's any way to change that...

[edDV]

For a different approach suggestion, I use ATI AIW for utility recordings and cable box + Canopus ADVC-100 when I want quality. The ADVC will scale 7.5 IRE black to 0 IRE DV/DVD digital levels during capture. Also the Canopus can directly feed the Mainconcept MPeg2 encoder for real time encoding.

The nice thing about the ADVC is I can connect it to any computer with a IEEE-1394 port and adequate disk space. Realtime MPeg2 encoding requries a fast CPU (min 2.4GHz Celeron, recommend >3GHz P4)

[reboot]

Settled on Mainconcept PVR. I still don't like that I get no codec choice though...It's mjpg codec is good quality (when set to max), and doesn't chew up that much disk space.

[edDV]

mjpg codec? Are you sure?

I thought is was MPeg1/2 like the rest of Mainconcept's line.

[reboot]

Nope. It specifically uses the mjpeg codec.
I imagine if I uninstalled that codec, it may select the mpeg-1/2 instead...

[winifreid]

mjpeg is a picvideo codec that produces an avi. mainconcept only produces mpeg 1 and 2 - at least that is what there website says.

[reboot]

Then Mainconcept is renaming the picvideo codec.
I quit using it anyhow.
Tried Showshifter...the new one sucks.
Went back to Showshifter version 2.10.2235 and it works EXCELLENT with almost any codec, and the deinterlace filter.
One complaint. It MUST break files up into chunks, largest being 1990meg. On very long TV captures, this results in a whole bunch of files.
I wish it would just allow me to cap one big file instead
(I have a habit of capping 12-15 hours at a time overnight).

[SatStorm]

I don't know a single user that use btwincap drivers and manage to make the tuner work on a bt8xxx card.

Mainconcept PVR may make the tuner work for a while, but if you use it that way, soon or later gonna crash and the only way to make it work again is Format C: (that program has many bugs - unfortunatelly)

Basicly, better use an external tuner (like an old VCR) and capture as usual through S-Video / Composite

[winifreid]

I finally got windvr to work with btwincap. I haven't used it for very long, so I don't know if it will start crashing. But I have not really seen any improvment in quality of my captures over the stcok leadtek drivers. Other than being able to use vdub at full res what are the advantages?

[pchan]

reboot,

I have a Pinacle Studio VCD (BT878) capture card. Use btwincap driver, PICVideo MJPEC codec and AVI_IO capture program. It did a decent capture and absolutely no audio sync issue. I have since used DV camera and firewire.

[SatStorm]

When you capture @ 480 / 576 vertical lines at bitrates lower than 4000kb/s, it simply doubles the first field (240/288 lines).
When you capture with bitrates more than 4000kb/s , then it capture both fields but blend them, so you have awful ghosting effect to the picture.

That's why I gave up on winDVR 3.0

[mgh]

I have pixelview tv pro using btwincap drivers in both Win 98 and Xp (dual boot)-can tune flawlessly in both- in btwincap try selecting the philips pal-secam tuner-which is working for me-pal b tuner works in dscaler for me.
satstorm-you are wrong about btwincap drivers-as is stressed on the btwincap site you need to sweat to get your tuner selection right -obviously i sweated!!
I get my TV through cable.

[reboot]

The original drivers on disk, happen to be the same ones available for download from pixelview, and they suck. The BTWincap drivers work perfectly, with all sorts of software. I've tried every one in the Tools section, under Capture.
Showshifter (although I hate it's purple and orange scheme) does work really well, once one reads the setup manual, and get's settings right.
It also does do pause and play live TV rather nicely, something the others crap out on.
Dscaler does OK, using Phillips NTSC-M for me, but again, only saves in it's own installation folder. No option to save anywhere else
I use Virtualdub(mod) for my VHS caps, and will probalby stick with Showshifter for my TV caps, unless I can find something a little less play-skool looking that works as well.
Going to try avi_io just for fun.

[SatStorm]

@mgh: You are the first person I know that manage to make the btwincap drivers fuctional with a tuner!

Why don't you write a guide and post it in our forum?

[winifreid]

It seems the trick is to pick the right tuner selection during install. There is a guide how to do this on his website. I think it will install automatically with some cards and OSs, but I had to pick mine manually and was lucky in picking one that worked. Mine works with Dscaler and windvr. But, as I said, I don't see any real improvement over the leadtek drivers.

[reboot]

On my Pixelview PlayTV PRo, the BTWincap drivers picked up the tuner automatically.
I've since switched to virtualdub (using picvideo mjpeg) for all my avi caps (now that I found it's TV Tuner options) , and WinDVR 3 for mpeg-2 at full D1. Does a very nice job, with no dropped frames like some of the other capture progs/codec's I tried. Intervideo's mpeg-2 encoder/capturer (whatever it's called) does a nice job for me.