480p 16x9 capturing WITH 5.1 fiber optic input options?

[yoda313]

well back to pinnacle studio 12. I did some more test capturing with the ps3. I am getting widescreen captures. However there is an odd audio popping I am getting. I am using the add on card for the ati all in wonder hd. It is the composite audio and video I am using from the ps3. Some were clear and others have audio popping.

I also noticed that they still had a white line at the bottom of the video during playback. Again this was through the pc via powerdvd using 1366x768 res. I am suspecting that it must be overscan. I will try a test burn and see if it shows up on playback on my ps3 or 360 as a real authored dvd on media.

I wish the editing was a little more precise to cut away fractions of a second. Since I'm doing cutscenes I have unwanted video of game menus that I don't want and need to trim more closely. Looks like I'll have to rely on external editing unfortunately. I'll probably use mpg2cut2 for finer cuts.

EDIT - ok I did the test burn. It looks like the white line WAS OVERSCAN. I played the disc back on my xbox 360. I did not see any white line. That was good. Unfortunately I did not take the time to depop the video so the popping sound was still there.

The only odd thing about this approach is at least on the xbox it is not perfectly centered. The game originally plays as 1.77 meaning the video "fills" the screen entirely while playing on the ps3 via hdmi. During playback of the dvd captured video there is a fine black line on the bottom as you would see on a wider video. But it is not even on the top and bottom.

Unfortunately I can't increase the zoom anymore on the tv for the xbox 360 as it is connected via vga and it only has one "fill" option that does not correct this. Ultimately I can live with this minor imperfection.

Even though this is not high definition the dvd playback looked very good. You can tell its downsampled BUT the widescreen makes it a very good analog material.

My only concern on this entire project is I don't believe I will be able to output both a fiber optic and composite audio/video signal. I have to choose one or the other on the ps3. In the end I guess I can live with that.

However I know for a fact I can achieve this with the xbox 360 as I do it all the time. The vga hd cable has analog rca cables for the tv input and I can still get fiber optic output simultaneously while playing games and movies.

At the very least I should be able to accomplish the analog widescreen digial audio capture process with the 360. I'll have to stick with stereo sound for the ps3 for the time being.

Thanks for everyones input with this - especially nelson37. Hopefully I'll be able to finally nail down the fiber optic capture and reprocessing.....

[jagabo]

I bought studio version 12 today. IT CAPTURES ANALOG WIDESCREEN!!!

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Isn't it just a matter of flagging the file as 16:9 rather than 4:3? It's the source device that's responsible for letterboxing or anamorpically squeezing the frame into a standard 4:3 analog signal.

[SHS]

as jagabo point out it dose AC3 NOW
Yes it dose depend on whatever the source input which can be 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i. It doesn't capture 1080p.
There no downconvert.
There a some samples on the review I did on www.shspvr.com look under review

[yoda313]

I bought studio version 12 today. IT CAPTURES ANALOG WIDESCREEN!!!

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Isn't it just a matter of flagging the file as 16:9 rather than 4:3? It's the source device that's responsible for letterboxing or anamorpically squeezing the frame into a standard 4:3 analog signal.

That's the issue. I've never gotten a capture program to properly FLAG a video as 16:9. I've always gotten letterboxed. Whenever I changed the source be it a ps3 or cable dvr it made no difference.

Now my only problem is getting decent sound. The darn thing pops all the time while using the ati capture add on riser card. I have tried to use the analog in on my creative fatality soundcard but can't get the darn thing to be recognized.....


ah well it's never simple is it?????

[jagabo]

I bought studio version 12 today. IT CAPTURES ANALOG WIDESCREEN!!!

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Isn't it just a matter of flagging the file as 16:9 rather than 4:3? It's the source device that's responsible for letterboxing or anamorpically squeezing the frame into a standard 4:3 analog signal.

That's the issue. I've never gotten a capture program to properly FLAG a video as 16:9. I've always gotten letterboxed. Whenever I changed the source be it a ps3 or cable dvr it made no difference.

If you plug the composite cable into a standard definition TV instead of the capture card you see a letterboxed 16:9 image inside the 4:3 frame? So you're saying Studio captures the letterboxed composite signal, crops away the top and bottom black borders, then resizes up to 720x480 before saving?

[FulciLives]

I was able to get my PS3 to give me 480i 16x9 anamorphic widescreen video but I think I had to play around with the ... Oh I'm not sure what it is called now ... the "display" or "screen" setting.

Granted this was on a H.264 video that was 720x480 16x9 anamorphic widescreen to begin with ... it wasn't that hard *shrugs*

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[yoda313]

If you plug the composite cable into a standard definition TV instead of the capture card you see a letterboxed 16:9 image inside the 4:3 frame? So you're saying Studio captures the letterboxed composite signal, crops away the top and bottom black borders, then resizes up to 720x480 before saving?

Correct - I believe. It is a recognized 16:9 file when I put in tda2.0 for authoring without any tricks. (I don't know about any "resizing" persay as there isn't any noticeable distortion or loss of quality).

@fulcilives - actually one of my widescreen cap tests was off the ps3 for HEAVENLY SWORD with the results I mentioned

[jagabo]

If you plug the composite cable into a standard definition TV instead of the capture card you see a letterboxed 16:9 image inside the 4:3 frame? So you're saying Studio captures the letterboxed composite signal, crops away the top and bottom black borders, then resizes up to 720x480 before saving?

Correct - I believe. It is a recognized 16:9 file when I put in tda2.0 for authoring without any tricks. (I don't know about any "resizing" persay as there isn't any noticeable distortion or loss of quality).

Could you post a small cap of the same source captured each way? (4:3, 16:9)?

[yoda313]

Here is a gspot screen shot and a screen shot of the widescreen video. I don't have a 4:3 image available right now.

[yoda313]

Bump!

Just thought I'd give a bit of an update here. I have since moved my pc to another room from the one with my game consoles.

What I did today was test my liteon dvd recorder with composite inputs. For the ps3 I set it to 4:3 and I was able to get 4:3 letterboxed capturing on the dvd recorder. Of course this means analog audio recording and interlaced capturing but the quality looks decent.

I think this will be a good solution for the time being. I think in the long run I'll look into getting the hauppauge hd pvr with the 5.1 recording. That will be down the road a bit though.