memory requirements for capturing

[Ogilvy]

Hi, I have a quick question here....I want to capture TV programmes using “Hauppauge” TV card. If I can find software that will compress the video immediately (e.g. to MPEG), will this avoid the need for huge memory requirement? I’ve read somewhere that to capture 90 mins. TV I would need about 55GB memory, and I’m trying to avoid this. Which software do you recommend? (preferably free).
Any help much appreciated.

[mats.hogberg]

Not memory. It's HDD space that's needed.
Most Hauppage cards encode to mpg in realtime (using a built in hardware encoder). I have a setting where a 2 hour movie fits a DVD5 - about 2.3 GB/hour - but you can use up to 12000 kbps or as low as VCD specs for your captures.

/Mats

[normcar]

You only need to ensure that you have enough memory for your operating system. Capturing is not memory intensive. Usually 1GB is sufficient.

Remember!!! Any time you purchase memory, always test the memory using memtest or some other memory testing software.

[FulciLives]

I once had a P3 650Mhz (or 0.65Ghz if you will LOL) with 256MB RAM running WinXP Pro and I was able to capture Full D1 resolution (720x480 NTSC / 720x576 PAL) using a cheap TV tuner type capture card (no hardware capture so I did PICVideo MJPEG AVI capture).

Now it looks like your computer specs aren't that different from that old computer I had and mentioned above. It does appear you have a tad more RAM but a slower processor. However since the Hauppauge WinTV PVR units do full hardware MPEG capture you should be A-OK with your computer specs although it probably wouldn't hurt to upgrade to 512MB RAM but I am sure what you have is enough.

The real trick is HDD space and according to your computer specs you don't have much so if you want to spend money anywhere it should be to buy a new HDD and use it as a 2nd internal HDD and do all your captures and post processing there ... leave the main HDD alone.

BTW the "best" WinTV PVR would be the 250 model, the 350 model (which is identical but adds outputs as well as inputs) or you could go with the WinTV PVR USB2 which is a USB 2.0 external capture device (but you would need USB 2.0 on your computer which I am guessing it doesn't have or if it has USB it is probably the older version which is no good).

The WinTV PVR 150 and 500 models are to be avoided due to various "bugs" and "glitches" that Hauppauge seems unable to fix.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[normcar]

If your system is really old, and not upgradeable. I would recomend you use a capture card like the Hauppage USB2 (assuming you have USB2). This card does all the processing to capture the video as opposed to using the CPU to do the video encoding to the capturing format. This takes a lot of workload off the CPU.

However for video processing after capture, I would recommend you have more than 1 drive so the video can be processed from one drive to the other. Also mimimal memory may not be enough during video processing. I would try processing, and then look at the Windows Task Manager Performance tab, at the Peak memory usage value. You should be able to determine your memory requirements before purchasing more memory. Sometimes, purchasing more memory is the best thing to increase performance on your machine to prevent memory page swapping to the HD. This swapping will kill the speed of even the fastest system. I had a computer at work with only 25MB of memory, and I was doing only word processing, spreadsheets, and other non-CPU intensive work. However, I spend a lot of time sitting doing nothing while memory pages were being swapped to HD or being recalled from HD. Even now I see my memory usage slightly higher than the computer memory, which means I will have to close some data window or app, vs. waiting for memeory swaps. My computer even locks up when I do a query with a large results table which uses 1.5 GB of memory on a system with 512 MB of memory.

If you don't want to spend a lot of $$$, and don't have USB2, then purchase a USB2 card. Its cheaper than a new system, and can be used in a new system.

[FulciLives]

I really see no advantage to the WinTV PVR USB2 vs. one of the internal PCI models ... at least not in terms of performance.

I've heard of people using a WinTV PVR 250 in an Intel P2 without issues. I really don't think the PCI versions are any more "taxing" on a computer than the USB 2.0 version.

So I see no reason to recommend the USB 2.0 model over the internal PCI model unless one doesn't want to open up their computer to install a PCI card or don't have a free PCI card slot.

However in this case the computer is so old it most likely does not have USB 2.0 so the card that makes the most sense would be the Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 or 350 (depending on which you want feature wise or which you can get for the 250 is no longer made in PAL countries whereas the 350 is still available in such countries).

Also another BUYER BEWARE note. The PCI models (and even the USB2 model) come in a regular version and a MCE version (MCE being short for Windows XP Media Center Edition). You don't want the MCE version of these cards ... unless you are running Windows XP MCE in which case ... god bless you!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[INFRATOM]

Program you want to use must be compatible with your capture card and use certain codecs. I would suggest Ulead products it is easy to use and can do capture. edit and author all in one. Regarding capture itself .. it is a CPU hard drive combo faster CPU helps and fast hard drive makes a big difference. The amount of RAM you need depends on how many program and process is active at the same time, in these days the min is 512 it is better to have 1GB if RAM is not enough it will use HD caching instead of RAM and it will slow the procedure and could get dropped frames if you try to capture high resolution or compress too much," because" CPU will get too busy. So the less busy CPU will be and the faster hd you capture better but have to spend time processing the capture. With a fast computer you can capture mpg high bit rate at dvd spec you spend min time to cut and author. All above said look at time and cost a $200 dvd recorder with hard drive may beat all the hasstle of capture system.

[normcar]

I have a Hauppage USB2, and don't know if the other Hauppage's have internal processing, but I do know that some capture cards do not process the video. Therefore the CPU does have to process the video as it is captured, and therefore uses a lot of CPU, which may overtax some older low end CPUs. This is one of the reasons I purchased the Hauppage USB2, as well as it being a very good cost to video capture quality ratio. The Hauppage internal cards are also very good. If you have a slower CPU, you may drop frames or freeze during capture, if you get a capture card that relies on the system CPU for video processing during capture. Some processing is necessary to take the raw video feed and convert it to what ever capture format you are using. During capture, you cannot wait for the CPU to catch up on processing, as you can when processing already captured video.

[FulciLives]

Program you want to use must be compatible with your capture card and use certain codecs. I would suggest Ulead products it is easy to use and can do capture. edit and author all in one. Regarding capture itself .. it is a CPU hard drive combo faster CPU helps and fast hard drive makes a big difference. The amount of RAM you need depends on how many program and process is active at the same time, in these days the min is 512 it is better to have 1GB if RAM is not enough it will use HD caching instead of RAM and it will slow the procedure and could get dropped frames if you try to capture high resolution or compress too much," because" CPU will get too busy. So the less busy CPU will be and the faster hd you capture better but have to spend time processing the capture. With a fast computer you can capture mpg high bit rate at dvd spec you spend min time to cut and author. [url]All above said look at time and cost a $200 dvd recorder with hard drive may beat all the hasstle of capture system.[/b]

All the above is also mostly garbage once you are using a hardware MPEG capture/encoder ala the Hauppauge WinTV PVR series.

Look people please do not give this thread creator bad advice. Poor guy/gal has a shitty ass computer and wants to do some captures.

The Hauppauge cards will do the trick with the hardware he/she has AS IS.

Don't confuse the poor person now! :P

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

Please show some respect for fellow users. This is an informal warning.
/ Moderator Cobra

[normcar]

It's not garbage. Because how many people do not want to do some kind of video processing once they have captured the video? Even eliminating commercials for long term storage requires some processing. And he may already have a capture card, and the original question was about memeory. Sometimes it is a good idea to actually answer a question without assuming many other things. Many times, I have asked questions and gotten useless answers, because someone was acting with a totaly invald assumption rather than answering the question I asked. Other people than the questioner may benefit from the information gleend here. I have learned alot from reading other posts which I did not make, or was even able to add to. The info about the Hauppage is good, however I believe explaining about memory and CPU usage is also a good idea, as someone else may purchase/have/borrow a totally different capture card. If you do not fully explain your answer, and actually answer the question, then the questioner will be poorly served. Also other people than the questioner may benefit from the information gleend here. I have learned alot from reading other posts which I did not make, or was even able to add to.

I would urge everyone not to put down another's system. There may be valid reasons why they do not have the most up-to-date system. Not everyone spends as much of their $$ on systems as many here do, or for many good reasons do not have the money to purchase the best systems available.

[FulciLives]

My problem with what some people have said in this thread is simple ... they have given the impression that the computer system in question needs ... more. It does not. Granted more HDD space is a very good and proper idea yes but that would really be it ... this computer does NOT need 1 GIG of RAM (that's freakin' insanity) or any other balony mentioned here.

In short the computer system mentioned ... while not ideal ... will work perfectly fine with a Hauppauge WinTV PVR capture card/device be it a PCI model or an external USB2 model (but you would need USB 2.0 inputs on the computer).

So far mats.hogberg and your's truely are the only people making 100% sense here. normcar has said a couple helpfull things along with a bunch of BS along with ... I don't even know what that last post was all about. INFRATOM is ... well ... of base at least in this particular situation. Good advice in certain situations but not this one.

I have spoken (er, typed).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Did I mention I hate mis-information?

[INFRATOM]

What you say is good not to confuse someone but everyone express their knowledge to help, it would be nice if there was a modarator that knew all the good final answers and would delete the extra stuff but at the same time I read through many un-necessary stuff and at times come across things that I was looking for in other places its just a research and learning process.

[offline]

it would be nice if there was a modarator that knew all the good final answers and would delete the extra stuff

I don't think we would want to try to edit experiences and opinions. They differ and so does the advice. Anyway, most quickly get a feel for who the "forum experts" are, and that does not mean they are always right or that others with alternate views are wrong.

[raffie]

Doods, he means HD space, not RAM memory

nice discussion though

[Ogilvy]

I’ve created a monster! Thank you all for your help, Ive created some confusion here…
I’m installing said Hauppauge on a Pent.4 machine with 512MB RAM, USB2. With hardware encode to MPG do I still need 55GB of hard disk space for 90 minutes of TV? Seems a lot.

[FulciLives]

MPEG-2 DVD spec at MAX bitrate settings (for MAX image quality) will be about 4GB per hour.

However you can use a lower bitrate (an average of about 6000kbps will do) and that will fit 90 minutes easily onto a single DVD-R which is about 4.37GB

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Ogilvy]

Now it's clear, thank you