Which card do you recommend for PAL capture to Huffy .avi?

[Chaoji3791]

I would like to solicit informed opinions on what is a good capture card to use for capturing analogue video to Huffyuv-compressed .avi files so I can edit and compress to MPEG-2 for DVD later.

From my research so far, I've sort of narrowed the field down to Hauppage, ATI, Leadtek and Avermedia products, but their websites are often sketchy on specs. All I want to do is capture 720x576 or 768x576 .avi files to the codec of my choice, preferably Huffyuv. I also want the option to be able to capture NTSC because I have some rare movies that are only available on NTSC VHS. I bought an ADS Tech Video Xpress USB capture device last year but I'm not happy with it because it seems to deinterlace the video pretty badly no matter what setting you use. The audio usually goes out of sync on long captures, too.

Thoughts? Suggestions? If anything I'm leaning towards the Leadtek products because they seem cheap, readily available and AFAIK can capture to full-res .avi files, but I've even read conflicting reports about this online. (I'm in Australia, BTW.)

C h a o j i

[lordsmurf]

I used an ATI All In Wonder Radeon 9200 AGP card for PAL capture in AVI.

[Chaoji3791]

OK, I've narrowed the field down to (a) what cards are available where I live and (b) what cards can capture .avi Huffyuv files and (c) which ones are good value for money and I've narrowed the field down to two choices:

* Leadtek TV2000XP.
* Avermedia Ezmaker PCI Gold.

I've ruled out all Pinnacle products because of almost universally horrible reviews online and the fact that they seem to be extraordinarily buggy, overpriced and undersupported.

Has anyone used BOTH these products - the TV200XP and the Ezmaker PCI Gold - and if so, how would you rate them against each other?

I bought an ADS Tech capture product last year but I'm not satisfied with it. It deinterlaces badly (and there's no way to just capture interlaced - it doesn't work with IuVCR or any other pro capture app I've tried), resulting in blocky video with jaggy diagonal lines. Amateurs would probably think it was OK (judging by some positive reviews on Amazon) but I'm a professional video producer and I need my analogue captures to look as close to the source tapes as possible, hence why I want a card that will capture lossless .avi files rather than M-JPEG, MPEG-2 or MPEG-1. A lot of my source tapes have video noise so the last thing I want to do is add MPEG compression artifacts to that. I would prefer to capture lossless .avis and denoise them myself before going to MPEG-2.

So yeah, any opinions on which of the two above capture cards I should use? Pros? Cons?

I've noticed that there's also an Ezmaker "Deluxe" which has its own dedicated audio inputs, so I'm thinking that this card might have better video/audio sync than the stanard Ezmaker, where you plug you audio source into the "line in" socket of your sound card. Can anyone confirm/deny whether the "Deluxe" has solid audio sync?

C h a o j i

[themaster1]

Assuming your deck will deliver a pal60 signal, i advice you two cards the which i have tested successfully with pal, secam & ntsc/pal60:

xcapture (prolink) (10 bits precision , audio support: yes, s-video,composite,tv antenna)
official site: here (in the search box type: xcapture & see details)

cinergy 250 pci ( terratec) (9 bits precision, audio support: yes, s-video, composite, tv antenna, fm, tv remote) (my current card)

[Chaoji3791]

So I ended up buying a Leadtek TV2000XP RM card. It's cheap and it can capture PAL or NTSC via S-Video or composite.

First capture - a 100-minute VHS video - went off (almost) without a hitch. I captured interlaced 720x576 PAL video via S-Video compressing to Huffyuv and the quality is outstanding. The only problem is, the audio gradually drifts out of sync. By the end of the video, it's practically 15 seconds out of sync. Probably some dropped frames playing havoc with the file. I'm going to try various "fixes" I've been reading about online. Using VDub to change the frame rate to match the audio might work, or running it through AVIMux GUI, or an AVI repair program like AVIFIXP might do the trick. There's got to be some way of bringing the audio into line with the video relatively easily, without messing around time-stretching the audio file in Goldwave etc. I'll try a bunch of options.

I'd like to try to recapture the tape using VirtualVCR or iUVCR (which apparently have settings that allow for better video/audio sync), but for some reason I can't get either app to work with this card. In each program, I click on the preview window and there's nothing, just a black frame. I've tried tweaking all the settings, but nothing works. Weird.

[ronnylov]

There is a setting "Use Smart Tee Filter for Preview" in VirtualVCR that may need to be set to make it work. Your card needs WDM drivers to work together with VirtualVCR.

Check this guide:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/capturing_VirtualVCR.html

[The_Doman]

What about the old AVI_IO?
That program always made perfect A/V sync captures for me.

www.avi-io.com

[Chaoji3791]

Thanks, ronnylov and The_Doman for your replies.

ronnylov, I tried the Smart Tee Filter for VirtualVCR and finally I have a preview window. I'll try recapturing my tape with the dynamic resampling on and see if I can get rock-solid sync this time. (Not that I don't want to try AVI_IO, but I've just been reading so many good things about VirtualVCR's audio sync features that it sounds like the best capture app to use with this particular card.)

Still can't get iUVCR to work with this card. My preview window's blank, even with the smart tee filter on, and trying to capture results in hundreds of dropped frames and .avi files that are basically blank.

In any case, I'll try a VirtualVCR capture and see if the sync improves.

[ronnylov]

The "resample audio dynamically" setting may also help in virtualvcr.
I had some problems when I tried VirtualVCR in Windows Vista (worked without problems in windows xp) and I found out that this was caused by a bad sound card driver so it may also help to make sure that the sound card is working correctly. I connect the audio signal to my sound card instead of directly to the TV card. Sometimes it is better to connect to the tv card, sometimes better using soundcard so try both options to find out what works best. Not all tv cards have internal audio input and then the only option is the sound card input.

Sometimes the synch can be lost if you have multiple recordings on the tape and there are noisy picture between them. Then you can try stop the capture before the end of the first recording and start a new capture after start of second recording when the picture has stabilized again.

[thecoalman]

The audio sync issue is pretty common with any of those cards because its not processed by the card. These problems generally don't exist for hardware based solutions. Other things that may cause that is poor video source. A TBC may or may not help, there's an explanation here as to why that may happen and what a TBC does https://forum.videohelp.com/topic246006.html#1115672 A TBC is not for you if you're on budget, they start around $300+ in the US.

I have a cheap Leadtek card myself and it worked quite well, it's hit and miss it seems for different people. Many years ago this was a very big problem but I think that can be attributed to underpowered machines. Some people experience problems with these cards and others do not. For the present I think a lot of it depends on the video source. Have you tried capturing a very clean source like broadcast to see if it goes out of sync? That will at least narrow the possibilities of what the issue is.

.
I'm going to try various "fixes" I've been reading about online. Using VDub to change the frame rate to match the audio might work,

You can't do that unless you only want to keep it on your computer. When you go to encode for DVD its going to be set back to the original framerate and be out of sync again. You can add or remove framees to get it to sync but that will produce noticeable "glitches" where the additional frames have been added or removed. The easiest thing it to change the audio.

[Chaoji3791]

Thanks for the last couple of replies. I had actually been considering a TBC, but only as a last resort because the cheapest one (Datavideo TBC100) is several hundred $.

Recaptured my tape using VirtualVCR and its dynamic resampling feature, and now the audio stays in sync all the way through to the end. Hooray.

But ...

To quickly eyeball the picture quality, I converted it to DVD with ConvertXtoDVD, all settings on full auto. PQ seems fine, but strangely flattened, like it's been vertically squished. Everything looks too wide, and all the people look like they've been on burger-and-donut diets for a month. I'll try a 2-pass encode with TMPGEnc instead and see if it yields better results.

[PuzZLeR]

Doing a search and revived this thread because I couldn't resist here:

I've ruled out all Pinnacle products because of almost universally horrible reviews online and the fact that they seem to be extraordinarily buggy, overpriced and undersupported.

And here's another bad review from me. STAY AWAY! This product contributed to the worst years of my life in this hobby - particularly the "Dazzle" line. It's amazing I still have my hair after that debacle...

It was so bad that even though I still had it, and its original box, I still couldn't sell it on eBaY for fear I'd be selling a bad product. I chose to burn it - let me tell you that the plastic components sure smelled nice when they were melting...

[Chaoji3791]

Ha ha ... I've never known a Pinnacle product to evoke such a fiery response - literally! Seriously, though, they really are rubbish products for the most part, and overpriced. My old DC10+ card gave great results, but only when it worked. Most of the time it would just crash or give me weirdo error messages like "AVI cache inside." I mean, what the hell is that supposed to mean?

My Leadtek TV2000XP RM has been awesome so far (once I figured out the best settings to use). I've been archiving all my old S-VHS tapes to DVD and the results have been excellent. Full PAL or NTSC interlaced S-Video capture to Huffyuv or M-JPEG with 48khz synced audio using Virtual VCR. If you're looking for analogue video capture, folks, look no further than this awesome card. Sure, there are plenty of cards around that capture to MPEG-2, but if you want to edit your footage and enhance it in Virtualdub, capturing to .avi with a card like this is the way to go.