Captureing Video off tv

[MoDifiy]

I've been reading on this site and other sites and playing with capturing for two days now. So i decided its about time to ask for some help. I am trying to capture some shows I have saved on my Directv dvr and is raising some questions that I can't quite seem to find. I have my box hooked up S-video to my ati x800 vivo card and sound into my audigy sound card. I've had my best luck with capturing both audio and video with virtual VCR. My first question is of course is that the best method to get the videos off the device or for example are ATI cards terrible for capturing.

I'm able to capture at 720x480, but aren't tv SD broadcasts at 640x480? If I did the capture at 720 instead of 640 is there a benefit to quality or could that just make it look worse? Am I missing something?

I've also made some test captures and tried to play them on my TV via a usb port on my phillips dvp5982 dvd player and it worked, however my tv is 16:9 and it seems to add horizontal lines. I read around that .avi is a 1:1 video conversion so 720 or 640x480 is 3:2 or 4:3, but a dvd is 720x480 res and can be either 16:9 or 4:3. The player just takes care of it as i understood. Am i correct that if i keep the file in an .avi format of some sort it will leave horizontal lines on the screen unless I burn it to dvd?

I know I'm asking a lot but any help is greatly appreciated. My brain is just fried from all this reading and attempts to understand it all.
Thanks all.

[Krispy Kritter]

I'm assuming you have the x800 AIW (All In Wonder) card with TV tuner and capture support? In which case, ATI supplies their own software for capturing/recording. Not that it matters, you can use any capturing software that you want that recognizes your card.

Aside from TV specs, S-Video is only 480i. You can perform a sample capture at various resolutions to find which works best for you. The larger the resolution, the larger the file size. A higher resolution may or may not have the benefit of providing a higher quality picture. Thus creating sample files will allow you to compare and see which looks best with your setup.

The lines in your final avi files, I believe are a byproduct of how the files are encoded. I've seen similar issues in the past with files played back on my TV, but never spent the time troubleshooting to find the exact cause.

As for the format (16:9 or 4:3), you will just want to keep the AR (aspect ratio) set the same as your input type during the whole capturing and conversion process (ie: if you are capturing 4:3 video input from your DVR, then ensure you are keeping the AR set at 4:3 throughout your entire process).

[jman98]

Some DVD players are incapable of displaying AVIs correctly in 16:9 mode. Whether your Philips player is like this or not, I don't know.

Short answer - there's nothing at all wrong with capturing at 720x480 and I would in fact encourage you to continue doing this. With 2 posts in 4+ years it's reasonable to conclude that you aren't real experienced, so the short answer for you is that you won't gain anything really by capturing at 640x480 so you might as well do 720x480.

[MoDifiy]

Thanks for the replies guys. Had a few weeks of downtime due to a drive dying on my computer.

Krispy:
No its actually just a regular x800 pro with Video in and out. I tried the software, but it wouldn't let me choose my sound blaster as the audio capture. I scraped that software quick after running into that problem. So far my best luck has been with virtualvcr. I've tried various samples in different codecs and resolutions and so far i don't notice much of a difference between most of them aside from file sizes.
Jman:
I didn't think of that and that could be the easiest explanation that the dvd player isn't capable of it for avi files. Yeah I'm pretty new to capturing and best practices. I haven't really posted much because i spent most of the time just reading what people have already asked and most of the time it answered my questions as well.

I guess I'm still at a loss as to how if the image I'm capturing is 480i, which is 640x480, would be any better if my capture card is letting me do it at 720x480. I guess I'm still missing something.