So... what's new with PC video capture cards this year?

[c627627]

D'oh on GSPot, but good thing I didn't yet delete the test captures. Looking at it correctly now, GSPot confirms that both original and updated drivers capture at a constant bit rate of no more than 6,000 kbps. Therefore: If you set a bit rate to lower than 6,000 kbps, then Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 will capture it just as you set it, but if you set it for more than 6,000 kbps, the card will still only capture at 6,000 kbps.


Testing then shows that Hauppauge's flagship PCIe capture card WinTV-HVR-2250:

• Cannot capture uncompressed .avi video
• Cannot capture uncompressed audio
• Although there is a grayed out .ac3 capture option, this card does not capture .ac3 audio
• The input volume is low, certainly lower than it should be with no way to adjust it in options, users resort to registry hacks, none of which worked for me.
• The drivers are buggy, blue screens of death.
• The card does not appear to be able to capture constant bit rate of above 6,000 kbps.
• When researching the card on other forums, the constant theme is how users have to spend *days* of their time trying to set basic options.
• Actual process of setting bit rates is so needlessly complex, if there were awards for making things difficult for end users... this would then be an award-winning card.


I tried not to go with AVermedia fearing exactly what happened to me with Hauppauge.



I have placed an order for ATi TV Wonder HD 650 and will report its capture capabilities.

To be fair, the positive thing about Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 reported earlier in the thread was that:
* ATi cards do not capture analog HD, only analog SD, and SD/HD ATSC and unencrypted QAM.

A lot of people reading this who haven't been capturing HD yet might be confused about exactly what this means for the future.
Maybe they *just* care about capturing TV shows to watch & delete in which case the lack of other capture capabilities of Hauppauge might be irrelevant to them.


What is analog vs. digital HD? What is encrypted vs. unencrypted QAM?

[jagabo]

To be fair, the positive thing about Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 reported earlier in the thread was that:
* ATi cards do not capture analog HD, only analog SD, and SD/HD ATSC and unencrypted QAM.

The HVR-2250 doesn't capture ananlog HD. Only analog SD, and SD/HD ATSC and unencrypted QAM, the same as the ATI card.

What is analog vs. digital HD?

For the most part analog HD is high definition component video. You can put VGA in this definition too. Digital HD is pretty much everything else. HDMI, over the air HD (ATSC), cable HD (QAM).

What is encrypted vs. unencrypted QAM?

Cable companies carry digital TV signals with QAM encoding, Quadrature amplitude modulation. Look it up if you need more details.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation

Encrypted QAM is used for most content. It is encrypted so you can't view, capture or copy it without authorization. Unencrypted (or "clear") QAM is unencrypted and can be viewed with any device with a clear QAM tuner (most HDTVs now have this). Usually only your local broadcast channels and a few others are carried via clear QAM.

[c627627]

Oh. So the only thing then the Hauppauge may have going for it is the type of channels it is able to capture simultaneously but I haven't look into what this may mean yet...


By the way Hauppauge just told me that "The card will capture ac3 audio on digital channels if it is present."

When I loaded the captures into Sony DVD Architect, it only has options for uncompressed audio or ac3, so it just automatically compresses mpeg audio from this card into ac3, I guess because mpeg audio is not a DVD disc studio standard in the US?

[jagabo]

Oh. So the only thing then the Hauppauge may have going for it is the type of channels it is able to capture simultaneously but I haven't look into what this may mean yet...

It means you can capture two channels at once. Or watch one while capturing another.

By the way Hauppauge just told me that "The card will capture ac3 audio on digital channels if it is present."

We told you this several times. When capturing ATSC or QAM you get whatever type of audio is being broadcast. Digital ATSC/QAM capture is essentially a file transfer from the broadcaster to your TV or capture card.

When I loaded the captures into Sony DVD Architect, it only has options for uncompressed audio or ac3, so it just automatically compresses mpeg audio from this card into ac3, I guess because mpeg audio is not a DVD disc studio standard in the US?

Yes.

[edDV]

Further, c627627 seems to be missing the point that digital SD or HD over broadcast (ATSC), cable (QAM) and DVD/Blu-Ray (MPeg2,VC-1,H.264) all are "captured" pre-encoded usually to MPeg2. Set top boxes and computer display cards decode these streams for uncompressed connection to an HDTV (analog YPbPr or DVI/HDMI). DVI/HDMI is mostly blocked for capture by HDCP. YPbPr capture is done only by a limited set of specialized devices.

Traditional capture cards accept encoded NTSC RF, encoded composite NTSC or encoded S-Video NTSC. So does the Hauppauge HDR line. Traditional capture cards divide into those that capture to uncompressed YCbCr and those that hardware encode to a specific codec (usually MPeg1 or MPeg2). The HVR series follows the latter tradition from NTSC video input.

The ATI AIW was one of the few cards that would capture NTSC to uncompressed YCbCr (under Video for Windows) or encode to MPeg using a combination of hardware API calls and ATI Media Center software (CPU load).

So what is all this talk about capturing HD to uncompressed? You don't want uncompressed HD. It will choke your computer. For NTSC capture to uncompressed YCbCr, use one of the traditional BT or AIW cards.

[SmokieStover]

Just to confirm, software can capture MPEG video and uncompressed audio if you have an ATi card but for some reason,
there is no software in existence that can capture MPEG video and uncompressed audio if you have a Hauppauge or AVerMedia card?


In conclusion, to make a 100% compatible DVD - I'm stuck with capturing mpeg audio and converting in to ac3 audio unless I have an ATi card.
Does that about sum it up?

You do not need AC3 audio. My oldest DVD player (Apex AD1100W) plays DVD's with mp audio just fine. TV tuner cards used: ATI Wonder Elite and Hauppauge PVR 250. On the Hauppauge card I use a audio bitrate of 256K.....for some reason it plays back louder and clearer than at 384K, regardless of the player used. Can't adjust the audio bitrate using the ATI card.

I have used Tsunami-MPG DVD Author Pro (equivalent to TMPG DVD Author 2.0) to convert the audio from mp to AC3. And believe me, the audio quality is degraded. If the source audio is good, the mp audio in your captures will be good. If the source audio is weak and poor, a VCR will record better than any analog to digital recorder.

[c627627]

SmokieStover, Mpeg audio is not compatible as far as official DVD disc standards in the US go but you are correct that most DVD players including your old one have this feature.

When capturing ATSC or QAM you get whatever type of audio is being broadcast. Digital ATSC/QAM capture is essentially a file transfer from the broadcaster to your TV or capture card.

I get it now, thanks but how would I know which bit rate the "file being transferred" has? Don't you actually have to set the bit rate yourself before capture? Capture cards don't have "auto-detect and capture at that bit rate" feature.


My old ATi also captured mpeg audio but it had the option for uncompressed audio capture as well. The only reason I always captured uncompressed audio was because then I could decide which ac3 bit rate to convert it to according to how much space I had on the DVD, and if I was making a less than a 60 minute DVD, I just left it uncompressed.

So let's stay there for a moment. 45 minutes of video going onto 1 DVD. Why not leave the audio uncompressed, why bother converting the captured audio to ac3, the DVD authoring programs such as Sony DVD architect automatically convert to ac3, unless you leave the captured audio uncompressed. So for a 45 minute DVD, why not leave the audio capture uncompressed, even though it was already compressed by the TV station, I mean the space on the DVD is there so why not, why take the extra time to wait for DVD Architect to compress from mpeg audio to ac3, so strictly for this example only, do you agree with choosing uncompressed audio capture if it's there.


Regarding capturing uncompressed video, I was referring to capturing standard, not HD broadcasts for purposes of heavily editing captured video then making the DVD out of the edits. Do you agree that to be a valid reason for needing uncompressed video capture?

[jagabo]

When capturing ATSC or QAM you get whatever type of audio is being broadcast. Digital ATSC/QAM capture is essentially a file transfer from the broadcaster to your TV or capture card.

I get it now, thanks but how would I know which bit rate the "file being transferred" has? Don't you actually have to set the bit rate yourself before capture? Capture cards don't have "auto-detect and capture at that bit rate" feature.

You're still not getting it. With digital ATSC/QAM the broadcaster is doing the MPEG encoding. They decide what codecs and bitrates to use. All the capture card is doing is taking the MPEG date they are broadcasting and putting it in a file.

[c627627]

I'll try to get it if you're patient with me:
To make a 45 minute DVD out of a capture from a non-HD channel:

The only thing I can do after starting capture software and before pressing Record is to go to settings and set the audio setting to what?

I have to choose an audio bitrate don't I or else it'll record at the default bit rate the software was installed with, true/false?

[jagabo]

The only thing I can do after starting capture software and before pressing Record is to go to settings and set the audio setting to what?

For digital QAM/ATSC capture you can set nothing but the folder and filename to which the file is saved. All you are doing is copying the file from the broadcasters computer to your computer.

[c627627]

I was not aware of this basic fact, thank you.


I have some non-HD PBS cartoon stuff that's on my DVR already. As you can imagine, what you just said is not an option for that. I do need to set bit rates for that. So everything I said does still apply to that scenario.


If I want to edit already compressed stuff like that, I'm still better off capturing it all uncompressed then making a DVD out of it?

[edDV]

I was not aware of this basic fact, thank you.


I have some non-HD PBS cartoon stuff that's on my DVR already. As you can imagine, what you just said is not an option for that. I do need to set bit rates for that. So everything I said does still apply to that scenario.


If I want to edit already compressed stuff like that, I'm still better off capturing it all uncompressed then making a DVD out of it?

So the disconnect is you understand digital SD/HD capture but wonder how to cap analog NTSC with these new cards?

Hauppauge WinTV will want to cap directly to MPeg Video and and a limited set of MPeg audio bit rates set in WinTV preferences. You don't have an option for uncompressed audio as far as I know. I don't have WinTV installed at the moment.

Most HDR users let MS MCE or other PVR software (e.g. SageTV, BeyondTV, GBPVR, etc.) control the device. The WinTV software is very limited. Advanced users would attempt additional undocumented features with GraphEdit or similar.

So, if you want uncompressed audio capture from NTSC you would use an older card or attempt sound card capture. The latter may introduce audio sync issues.

That is why most users will edit audio in the captured compressed format.

[DarrellS]

I tried the HD 650 PCI-e card for a couple of days before returning it and getting the Hauppage HVR1800 MC edition last May. If I remember correctly, there wasn't much difference between the two cards. Unlike my old AIW, the 650 would not capture in AVI. It would only capture MPEG PS like the Hauppauge.

Major turnoffs to the ATI 650 was that it did not support QAM in XP. ATI said it supported QAM in Vista but users said that Vista didn't support the card. I don't know since I'm running XP Pro. The other reason I got the Hauppauge instead was because the 650 was close to $130 and the HVR1800 was $59.99 after $40 rebate.

Had the ATI supported QAM, captured to AVI and used the old MMC software, I still would've gladly paid the $128 and been happy with the card but AMD totally destroyed the ATI capture cards. They've tried to revive the AIW card but they pretty much ruined their loyal ATI AIW base and their offering is not too impressive and a little too late. The card is the 650 on a HD3650 graphics card. The price is pretty lofty at around $200 and most vendors sell the daughter card that goes with it seperately.

[c627627]

Oh no. It doesn't capture uncompressed video? Oh crap. That's some sneaky marketing on ATi's part. It clearly says "capture or convert" in AVI what a heck. At least I might be able to return it then unopened without having to pay a restocking fee... What do they mean "capture or convert" What's capture card got to do with "or convert" part... it either captures uncompressed avi or it doesn't


This sucks, why doesn't anyone make PCIe cards that capture uncompressed video, what's going on?


So ATi Multimedia Center will not work with HD 650? I don't know what to do then I need a PCIe card, not a PCI card.

[c627627]

Wait, wait, wait: look at this thread talking about AVI captures with ATi 650:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/need-video-capture-software-for-ati-650-t314483.html


Will it or won't it, I'm getting it on Friday & need to know before I open the box....

[DarrellS]

You'll have to test it yourself to make sure that it doesn't capture AVI but I'm pretty sure that I couldn't. Maybe I just couldn't figure out the software. I only had it a couple of days.

The software that comes with it is not the MMC that you posted that works for older AIW cards. I believe it is a branded copy of Cyberlink Power Cinema called ATI Catalyst Media Center. Since you have Vista then you should be able to get the QAM channels with the software.

The card comes with AVIVO which lets you convert your captures (or any other files you have) to all the formats that ATI listed.

[edDV]

The main reason this class of card captures to MPeg2 (or dvr-ms which is also MPeg2) is their prime intended use is with PVR software, especially MCE. Cards that hardware encode work in the background. They don't significantly load the CPU or hard disk system. Multiple cards can be used with little impact on system resources.

Here is a list of 20 PCIe tuner/capture cards. On quick scan, they all seem to hardware encode.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380047&Configurator=&S...chInDesc=PCIe+

I haven't seen a classic BT or Philips tuner with PCIe interface. Maybe they exist.

You could always resort to an Aja Xena or BlackMagic Intensity Pro for high end analog to uncompressed capture. Both come in PCIe models. Neither are tuners nor supported by popular PVR software.

In my case, I use a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 (MPeg2) and a Canopus ADVC-100 (DV format) for general analog capture. My Vista MCE machine has an ATI 550 Pro (Theatrix) and a Hauppauge HVR-1600. If I want uncompressed capture I use an old BrookTree tuner card or an ATI AIW-8500DV.

[Nelson37]

Just how much "editing" do you need to do? MPG2 can be easily trimmed or commercials removed, many cutters available, I like MPG2Cut2. Saves an awful lot of re-encoding hassle.

It is also quite easy to convert the MPG2 audio to AC-3, you can choose any bitrate you want although matching the captured bitrate is usually optimal. Leaving uncompressed for a short DVD should be fine, I just got into the routine of converting everything to AC-3, If I have a short video, I put two or three on one disk.

Many years ago I had the goal of making uncompressed capture work, by the time I got there I realized it was not worth the hassle as a general rule. Given a clean source any need for filtering is eliminated, speed and quality of the on-board hardware plus software is more than adequate.

On the Hauppage, apparently most everyone who uses them extensively is not using the WinTV program. After all the Hauppage guys bitching about how horrible MMC was, WinTV is absolutely hilarious to me. No Control over anything, can't switch inputs, slow. It does install easily, no driver issues, no updates needed.

[c627627]

The audio input level is a bit low on WinTV and my card. No way to adjust it whatsoever is a big problem.


I'd like to do more than simply cut out parts, I'd like to have transitions and to be able to manipulate audio/video before making a DVD.

I have to have uncompressed capture for that. I can open the ATi 650 HD, but there goes the 15% restocking fee if I find out the hard way it can't do uncompressed video capture.

[edDV]

The audio input level is a bit low on WinTV and my card. No way to adjust it whatsoever is a big problem.


I'd like to do more than simply cut out parts, I'd like to have transitions and to be able to manipulate audio/video before making a DVD.

I have to have uncompressed capture for that. I can open the ATi 650 HD, but there goes the 15% restocking fee if I find out the hard way it can't do uncompressed video capture.

Let me try to explain the "low audio" problem but I agree it is a problem for casual recording.

NTSC MTS audio is typically Dolby B but with limited dynamic range due to a noisy transmission path. Max audio is scaled to distortion point on a typical analog TV sound amp. This combined with MTS noise might mean a 30-50dB audio dynamic range for a typical TV. Digital AC-3 broadcasts allow up to 80 to 90+dB dynamic range (fine for movie explosions). To provide for that without volume compression, you can expect nominal volume to drop more than 30dB. TV stations may tweak this up or apply light volume compression.

To deal with this most cable boxes and good HDTV sets have menu settings for audio volume compression (sometimes called night mode). These compress dynamic range to more typical NTSC levels at the extreme.

All this would be fine if the cable box audio volume compression was any good but my HD Moto box has horrible AGC pumping in high compress mode. Instead I need to set to light compression and dynamic range process in Vegas.

I haven't noticed a capture card yet that has optional DSP audio volume compression.

[c627627]

That very well may be, but I was comparing the same standard TV capture from a saved show on my DVR made by AIW 9600XT vs. Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250.

But even if there is a way to get the audio level up to what ATI's AIW used to be, there is still a question of me being denied video manipulation due to lack of uncompressed capture on the Hauppauge so off to eBay it will go.


Between tonight and tomorrow night I need to find out if I should open or return the ATi HD 650.

One way or another, I'll find out:
1. Can it capture uncompressed video?
2. If not, is there a sub $150 PCIe card that can other than the ones you mentioned which are $350-$1000 cards.
3. Once I'm certain there is no PCIe card that can, I'll just have to look at PCI solutions.


I hate to go PCI since my video card Radeon HD 4850 runs so hot, if I put a PCI card in, it blocks the airflow and makes it unstable when the card is extremely stressed. But if I absolutely have to, I take it I should go with an old ATI PCI card that still works with Ati Multimedia Center and can capture uncompressed video, any suggestions since I don't know what the old PCI models ATi had that can do this?

[c627627]

Does anyone know if ATI Mulimedia Center works with new ATi capture cards which don't come with MMC?

[Nelson37]

No direct knowledge, however at least one of the later MMC versions (9.13, I think) has an option for "hardware encoding", or "Software encoding". Hardware encoding started on the 550 cards, SFAIK. So this would indirectly indicate that 9.13 would work on those cards.

That's not much more than a guess. I do recall, however, that there were a LOT of problem reports and issues on the 550 and later cards.

[edDV]

Here's the place to ask.
http://www.rage3d.com/BOARD/forumdisplay.php?s=ce34d1f88160ca026dc986f3047f05da&f=24

[c627627]

I'll get to the bottom of this, meanwhile the reason no registry hack worked about volume level of Hauppauge's flagship PCIe capture card WinTV-HVR-2250 is because there are no adjustments for the audio levels for this device per official Hauppauge statement.

That's crazy, is there some sort of a conspiracy to not let people do basic things with new video capture cards ?

[jagabo]

Back when the PVR-250/350/550 were the top of the line cards Hauppauge's drivers were very good. About the time the PVR-150 came out they must have lost all their good programmers. It took them over year to fix some minor bugs in the PVR-150 drivers. Even with users telling them exactly what was wrong in some cases (users figured out what values in the registry were being set wrong).

[SmokieStover]

Back when the PVR-250/350/550 were the top of the line cards Hauppauge's drivers were very good. About the time the PVR-150 came out they must have lost all their good programmers. It took them over year to fix some minor bugs in the PVR-150 drivers. Even with users telling them exactly what was wrong in some cases (users figured out what values in the registry were being set wrong).

I had to lower both the tuner volume and the line-in volume on my PVR 250 via registry edits. The default values produced too loud audio with distortion damage well below peak audio levels. Some factory VHS tapes are still captured too loud when played in Hi-Fi.....so I capture them played in normal or mono mode.... a 10 minute test capture tells we which way to go.

The WinTV recording and scheduling software is adequate for my recording purposes, and is as good, if not better, than any other software that could be used for capturing purposes with the PVR 250 card.

I have one hell of a time watching live or recorded CBS HD programming with 5.1 audio that is converted to SD on my end. It is simply either too weak and unclear, or loud enough but distorted. Makes no diff if I take it off antenna via a Zenith DTV converter box or off cable using a Philips 3576H tuning clear QAM HD, clear QAM SD, or analog as converted by the cable company. The audio is fine on the talking head shows, local programming and standard definition network programming. But it plain sucks on the only two CBS programs that my wife and I watch....I'm thinking about tuning them out and renting the DVD when they are available. These are not shows we would likely want to watch again in the next 10 years.

[DarrellS]

I've never had to edit the audio to boost the volume from any capture I've made with WinTV 6 and the HVR1800. Make sure the audio slider on the left of the TV is turned up all the way. When in Digital mode, the slider is set to 50% which is way too low.

Most cards, you can control the audio capture levels with the audio card software or with Windows Volume Control. Not sure about this card since I've never needed to adjust the settings.

[SmokieStover]

I've never had to edit the audio to boost the volume from any capture I've made with WinTV 6 and the HVR1800. Make sure the audio slider on the left of the TV is turned up all the way. When in Digital mode, the slider is set to 50% which is way too low.

Most cards, you can control the audio capture levels with the audio card software or with Windows Volume Control. Not sure about this card since I've never needed to adjust the settings.

With the Hauppauge PVR 250 and the ATI Wonder Elite (550 Pro card), the audio encoding is done in hardware on the card. You can change any and every sound card and windows audio setting you want, and it makes no difference in any aspect of the recorded audio. The ATI card records at a lower volume, but the audio is clean enough to amplify on playback on a PC or from DVD to a TV.

Nothing I have makes CBS HD programs with 5.1 audio worth saving in SD format....I can just barely tolerate watching (listening and straining to understand) them.

[jagabo]

c627627, Amazon has the EasyCap USB 2.0 for only $15 now:

http://www.amazon.com/EasyCap-Capture-Adapter-Editor-Software/dp/B001BWU8US

I believe this device can capture uncompressed YUY2 video. It's an external USB 2.0 device obviously. It does not have an internal tuner of any sort and will only capture analog SD (composite, s-video) video and stereo audio. You may be stuck using only the capture software that comes with it.