Dinosaurs

[Panash]

It not often I feel annoyed enough to make a personal comment about another forum member but dinosaurs like "next" really get to me.

What was a really interesting thread
"new REALTIME capture card Mpeg 2 - 8ms VBR"
about a new hardware capture card has been hi-jacked by this individual.

The worlds of hardware capture cards has now became very interesting, with some really good stuff comming out and I want to hear about them.

Apart from my really bad experience with the Hauppauge Win-TV PVR, I am very pleased with my Provideo SM2210 based PV256.

Now granted this is all very subjective, I personally have what I term the granny test, would your Granny be able to tell the difference, on VCD, about 50% of all grannies would probably be able to tell. On SVCD, most people would be hard pressed, and things will get better, and better until we inevitibally reach the limits imposed by the MPEG encoding system, and we are not that far away now.

The pro of software is that for the time being, we can hedge our bets until the perfect hardware is available. It is always flexible.

However, since hardware can take advantage of pipelined signal processing, it will always, in the end, be able to do the job better, at lower power and cheaper. We will soon see MPEG hardware in lap-tops in the next decade.

It takes an awesome machine to capture live video in AVI. Even using the PIC MJPEG encoders massive processors and big fast discs are required. The only other software capture/compression solution, the Ati cards, still needs an a really smokey machine. The DC10+ is £160 in the UK (US$200) and you can buy a good MPEG2 capture card for that and have the results in real time.

I have to admit that if my only objective was to rip DVDs, I would probably think differently, but to convert old 8mm analogue tapes to SVCD, the new MPEG2 capture cards haven't arrived a moment too soon, even if the results can be given a final polish using TMPGenc to re-render down to 2.6MB/s.

Come on Guys let's embrace the future and try to identify the subtle differences between each of the cards so that folks conteplating a new purchase have some decent comarative information on which they can choose a new card.

PN

[next]

Panash - I completely agree with your comments but take a moment to go back and read the postings in that thread - in order. I think you've got the wrong guy. I struck back because this goof (buggana) went off on a tirade. Go back and look to see who went off first.

My dinosaur comment only came out after I was attacked and called stupid in the preceeding post. Prior to that my only point was that as far as the difference between realtime software/hardware the lines are getting very close and in some cases blurred because of the increased power in todays computers. I do have an opinion on these ancillary mpeg harware encoders and I expressed my view. Expressing an opinion on the products themselves in general and not any individuals. Except for maybe CoCoNips - but he's cool and knows it.

Like I said go back and read the posts and make note of where the first "stupid" arrived and who posted it. There's no reason anybody should have to take that.

I too have no interested in ripping because I think its a rip off.

[alkieman]

I'll have to stick my oar in too.

With todays very fast PCs it is true that software encoding to MPEG2 in realtime is very good indeed, however, as stated it does require a lot of hardware and also renders your PC next to useless while it does the encoding. I have a 1.33Ghz 266FSB Athlon with 512mb DDR ram and it still only just handles the software encoding. using PowerVCR. The fact is the vast majority of users out there dont have the cash to spend on huge fast PCs thats why there's a general downturn in the PC market at the moment.

As for the quality, well thats very subjective to each person I guess. Now that I have the latest drivers for my WinTV PVR running on Windows XP I do believe the quality of the output from the hardware encoder chip beats the software encoding hands down at the higher bitrates. With PowerVCR at 8Mb/s theres still some evidence of blocking, not so with the WinTV PVR card at the same settings. The output is stunning to say the least. The card hasn't been without its problems, not least the appalling after sales support from Hauppauge. They released XP drivers that didn't work then went quiet on the issue and alienated a lot of former fans.

I also have no problems with audio/video synching, even on very large files although I know a lot of other people do.

My point is, you find what works for you and go with that. I prefer the hardware encoding route but it obviously depends on the drivers being optimised.

And Next, I do agree that buggana was the first to get disrespectful but you do have a habit of jumping off at the deep end sometimes judging by some of the other posts. It seems you state your case so strongly it gives the impression no one else is entitled to their own opinions.