Pinnacle Studio PCTVpro?

[Kyle]

How good is the video capture for Pinnacle Studio PCTVpro compared to the AIW cards and wintv cards (and others)?
I'm currently looking for a card to capture at 480x480 to make SVCDs.

At CompUSA, they're selling it for $30 ($90 - $40 instant savings - $20 mail in rebate). I was about to buy a Win TV GO pci card for $50, but now I'm not sure which to get. I want to end up buying the card with the best quality.

[vhelp]

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Hope this helps

[dphirschler]

I just bought the Pinnacle PCTV Pro from CompUSA and I love it. It makes great quality captures and is stable (so far). I am using it on a 300mHz AMD right now (soon to upgrade to a 1.4gHz). But even at 300, it captures 352x240 with huffyuv and only consumes about 30% processor. Interestingly, I had to go down to 24bit color to avoid some wierd horizontal bands in my captures. This also happened with my ATI TV Wonder VE, but I didn't discover why until last night with the new Pinnacle board. I wonder if this is related to DirectX 8.0? I never saw this until I stepped up from 7.x.


Darryl

[PatMar]

Sorry but the Pctv card can only capture 320x240 max.
This card isn't for Video Editing but for watching TV.

If you want to capture with an higher resolution then use an normal Video Editing card and no tv card.

[Kyle]

Cant you use 3rd party software (like Virtualdub or AVI_IO) to capture at higher resolutions?

At http://www.vcdhelp.com/reviews/pinnaclepctvrave/pinnaclepctvrave.htm , the guy used a Studio PCTV Rave (which i'm guessing is similar to the Studio PCTV Pro) to capture above 320x240.

[dphirschler]

That's crap! I've captured (using Virtual Dub) in 352x240, 352x480, 480x480. I am quite certain many more resolutions are available too, but 480x480 taxes my processor too much right now. I will give a full report after Christmas.


Darryl

[PatMar]

check the following link±
ftp://ftp.pinnaclesys.de/Web%20Documents/General/Video%20Editing%20Basic%20Knowledges.PDF

here you find information about the maximum resolution and more for video editing.

[therick]

PatMar, you are talking about the PCTV...I think that Kyle is talking about the PCTVPro...if you look on the capture card reviews at this site, you will see that

"you can capture with this Card at the highest PAL
Resolution with VDub or AVI_IO But you must disable
Preview or Overlay. Use PIC MJPEG Codec with 19 setting
Then convert to VCD or SVCD. Looks much better then
RealTime Cards like WinTVPVR or MP10 or Dazzle."

so highest PAL is probably greater than 320x240....and never trust what a company says about a TV card...Can you name 1 TV card that come with software that sctually utilizes it capabilities?

[Ronin2]

It's Pinnacle's S/W that is limited. I can easily capture at 704 x 576 (PAL) through a PCTV card using AVI-IO and Pinnacle's standard driver. My system is a Celeron 850, 256Mb PC133 Memory and a dedicated W/Digital 7200RPM 40Gb Hard Drive for capturing. You do have to turn off the preview and overlay to achieve these results.

Ronin2

[Berthil]

I'm capturing 768x576 with PCTVPro and AVI_IO, 1,2 Mhz AMD Athlon, seperate IDE ATA 100 Disk and huff compression without problems or dropped frames. Quality is good, it represents the quality of the original material.

[PatMar]

the hardware of the PCTV and the PCTV pro is only different with the sound.
with the Pctv card you have mono sound with the Pctyv pro card it is stereo sound.

the hardware capture is 320x240 maximum.
sure you can adjust the size software settings but it doesn't work correctly.

PS I work for Pinnacle so don't tell me what the hardware and software of Pinnacle can or can't do.

when the resolution and codecs are changed then you will get dropped frames.

[Kyle]

I got the card this morning and using VirtualDub, I was able to capture high quality 640x480 video with stereo sound. After 30 minutes, I had 1 dropped frame. I don't think that's that bad. (1.3 ghz P4, 256 mb RAM)

[ReefShrimp]

"PS I work for Pinnacle so don't tell me what the hardware and software of Pinnacle can or can't do."

This statement is so lame. Did you write the software? Were you one of the engineers that design the hardware? Or are you just doing tech support there and think you know everything?

All I know is that my PCTVPro captures fine at 640X480 without a single dropped frame, and I'm not the only one here.

[Valnar]

The Pinnacle PCTV Pro (or any BT878 card with S-video in) is one of the best cards available to make VCD and SVCD's with. Anything more expensive is not only a waste of money, but the quality may not be as good.

There is tremendous 3rd party support for this chipset and WDM drivers have been made to work in Win2K as well. In Win9x/ME, it works with VirtualDub, AVI_IO and any other VfW program that can capture up to 720x480 easily, if your hardware supports it. (HuffyUV helps a lot too) You can't compress it to MPEG1 or MPEG2 on the fly, but your results will be a lot better in AVI format on the PC, and then modify it to your hearts content.

And better yet, my PCTV Pro bypasses Macrovision. I can transfer any pre-recorded VHS tape with it. No problem. I don't even use it anymore for it's tuner, just it's capturing ability

Look here for support with Win2K:
http://www.iulab.com/

-Robert

The Pinnacle Studio PCTV is proven hardware for the purpose of video capture. It is stable and easily captures above 320x240.

PatMar--
If you in fact work for Pinnacle, you are doing them dis-service by spreading false information regarding the Studio PCTV card.

Edit: Some PatMar posts in other threads appear useful. My original post containing negative feedback towards PatMar has been removed.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: benstone on 2001-12-17 13:18:10 ]</font>