Using 2 Hauppauge Capture Cards

[ddpool58]

I got my new 1800 card today and got it all installed and I was surprised to see that it apparently doesn't capture my analog cable signal at as high a resolution as my old 250 card. The highest setting is Standard DVD, which is 8000kbps but my 250 card had a setting for 12mbps which I would always use, just to get as good a picture as I could since my analog cable signal can be noisy. The capture I got today with the 250 set at 12Mbps for example gives me 9247kpbs (using MediaInfo) but a sample capture using the 1800's default profile of 8000kbps gives me 6242kbps (Standard Play profile is also 8000). So I plugged a cable connection back into my 250 card, but apparently that card isn't using the old driver, or maybe the software is just seeing the one card. Anyway, it won't show me the old settings anymore even when using WinTV2000 instead of WinTV6 that came with the 1800 card.

I've had no trouble at all with the 250 card when I've used that 12Mbps setting, which I've been doing daily for quite a while now. I get a good picture and have no trouble with audio sync. I decided to get the 1800 card because I may be upgrading to digital cable and wanted to have the digital tuner and the capability of capturing QAM channels. I also wanted to be able to capture ATSC digital, although I don't have a strong enough antenna to pull in more than a couple of stations right now.

I'd like to be able to do is to keep both of these cards installed and be able to use both from time to time, but I'm not sure how to make that work so the drivers and software see each individual card.

Is the 1800 limited to capturing analog cable at 8000? That seems odd that the older card can be set higher.

I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have for me. Thanks.

[SHS]

1800 limited to capturing analog cable at 8000

No the card is not limited to 8000 it has the same MAX spec as the older 250 card

default profile of 8000kbps gives me 6242kbps (Standard Play profile is also 8000).

If I recall rigth that sound about rigth Min 6000 to Max of 8000 or Peak Bitrate
I'm wait for new motherboard to get here the one I had die so I can't check it to besure

[ddpool58]

1800 limited to capturing analog cable at 8000

No the card is not limited to 8000 it has the same MAX spec as the older 250 card

default profile of 8000kbps gives me 6242kbps (Standard Play profile is also 8000).

If I recall rigth that sound about rigth Min 6000 to Max of 8000 or Peak Bitrate
I'm wait for new motherboard to get here the one I had die so I can't check it to besure

Yeah, I thought this card could surely capture at the best quality of the older card, but when I try to configure WinTV6 these are the settings I see listed:

Default Profile
DVD Extra Long Play
DVD Long Play
DVD Standard Play
Mpeg2 2.0MB/sec
Mpeg2 2.0MB/sec (Half D1)
Mpeg2 HQ
Mpeg2 HQ (CBR)
SVCD Long Play
SVCD Standard Play

The mpeg2 HQ is reported by MediaInfo as being 6000kbps which actually gives me 4773kbps.

There is no choice for the 12Mbps setting at all.

I didn't uninstall any software or drivers I had for the 250 card before installing the 1800, so I'm wondering if that caused a problem? Could there be a defect in this card? I bought it on ebay, but it was new, still in the original packaging. I downloaded the latest drivers, too.

Does anybody know how I can get the WinTV6 application to set the highest capture setting?

[bendixG15]

I have the old PVR 350 which has the standard bitrates but also allows you to set your own custom bitrate.
Can't you set custom rates in the 1800 ?

[ddpool58]

No, I don't see any way in the WinTV6 software to set a custom bitrate setting.

[DarrellS]

You'll need to install WinTV 2000 if you want to capture analog cable or VHS at higher bitrates. WinTV6 only has one preset, DVD 2408kbps. To capture digital channels then you'll need to use WinTV6. I tried WinTV7 which captures digital to TS instead of PS but the OTA digital tuner doesn't pull in near as many channels with WinTV7 that WinTV6 does.

[jagabo]

You might be able to fiddle with the registry to add new templates. Here are the registry entries for the PVR-250 and WinTV2000:

[ddpool58]

I have WinTV2000 installed already. I didn't uninstall it before installing WinTV6, by the way. Once I saw that the settings I wanted weren't listed in WinTV6 I opened up WinTV2000 and now they're not listed there anymore, either. I saw a brief error message pop up when I first opened WinTV2000 at that point but it disappeared too quickly for me to see what it said.

I recall that when I was trying to get a pci-e ATI 550 card to work with my Hauppauge 250 card already installed I had trouble. I took my computer back to the guys who built it for me and they had to take the 250 card out before the system would correctly recognize the 550 card. Once the 250 was put back in they both worked fine. I'm not sure why, but he said something about them being similar types of cards and some conflict with the pci bus or something. Anyway, I'm going to try running the Hauppauge software that clears everything, then reinstall my 250 card first and then take it out before trying to install the 1800 card again and see if that works.

[ddpool58]

Okay, I was able to take out the 1800 card, ran Hauppauge's program to clear all the software & drivers, then reinstalled my 250 card and it was working just fine with WinTV2000, showing the 12MBps setting that I've always used I was using that this week until I had enough time to try to 1800 card again.

Today, I ran the Hauppauge software to clear all of their software and drivers, took out the 250 card and reinstalled the 1800. Installation went fine but when I open up WinTV6, once again the 12MBps setting is missing. I don't understand why this newer card won't let me use the higher quality setting my old card used. The Hauppauge website shows that 12MBps setting on the WinTV6 page and apparently this 1800 card is capable of capturing at that setting. I just can't set it for that.

Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong or how I could fix this? In the meantime, I'm uninstalling the 1800 and reinstalling the 250 again.

I'd appreciate hearing from anybody that has had this problem before. I've sent a message to Hauppauge support and I'm hoping I hear back from them in the next couple of days.

[DarrellS]

I would definately stick with the 1800 since it is an atsc tuner card.

The WinTV software is the problem and the hcwclear program since it does not get rid of everything. I used the hcwclear and then installed the drivers for 4.8a, WinTV2000, WinTV6 4.8a, the radio and signal monitor. When I opened up the TV to check the MPEG settings, a channel was already playing and under MPEG settings, nothing was there (before at least I had one setting). All of my channels that I had set before were still there. As long as the hcwclear will not completely clean everything from the registry, there is no way to get it to work right. I tried to install the original CD and it would not install the TV software at all.

Installed 4.6a+ and it got rid of the channels but I still have no MPEG encoder settings. Guess I shouldn't have tried to help since I can no longer capture analog cable with WinTV 6. The only way I can see getting it to work again is to reinstall Windows.

I can guarantee you that the problems with WinTV 6 will never be fixed and WinTV 7 is even worse than WinTV 6. Hauppauge makes good cards but as long as they can just get you to buy newer products and use third party software, they will never fix their own.

[themaster1]

9Mb would be more than enough to capture SD programs in real time in mpeg2. It's not just about the higher bitrate one can capture, but also the GOP/sub GOP sizes. For real time mpeg2 encoding nothing's better than a 1-1 GOP/sub GOP or in other words No GOP /sub GOP.All frames are key frames.

The inconvient is that it's not dvd compliant, though, if you burn that on a data disc no problem at all, whereas with 12Mb if you wanna backup your footages onto a dvd you must reencode.

Word to the wise

[jagabo]

Face it, there are no longer any programmers at Hauppauge that have any ideas what they are doing. It's been all downhill since the PVR 250/350 days.

[jagabo]

For real time mpeg2 encoding nothing's better than a 1-1 GOP/sub GOP or in other words No GOP /sub GOP.All frames are key frames.

Not unless your device can capture at 25+ Mb/s.

[DarrellS]

I installed the 4.8a driver, the 4.6a software and rescanned my channels and now I get all the encode options.



EDIT: Notice the "Advanced" button that was not there before.

[ddpool58]

I installed the 4.8a driver, the 4.6a software and rescanned my channels and now I get all the encode options.



EDIT: Notice the "Advanced" button that was not there before.

Thank you, DarrellS! I'll give that a try.

Funny, I got an email reply from Hauppauge customer support:

Hello,



The chip on the HVR-1800 is different than what the PVR-250 had. The HVR-1800 can only capture up to 8mbits VBR with DVD Standard and up to 6mbits using MPEG2 HQ CBR.







regards,



Jerry Henriquez

jhenriquez@hauppauge.com

Technical Support

Hauppauge Computer Works

New York



http://www.hauppauge.com

Oookay......

[jagabo]

As usual, tech support has no idea what's going on.

[DarrellS]

I forgot to mention that I installed WinTV 2000 before installing WinTV 6 which is probably why I'm getting the encode options. Installing WinTV 2000 after installing WinTV 6 will probably not work.

EDIT: I just opened WinTV 6 and I'm back to one encode option again, DVD 2048 bytes and the "Advanced" button disappeared.

Wait, I changed the channel to analog cable 3 and all the encode options are back (wonder if that was the case all along). I had it set to OTA digital channel 12 which captured at 17.9 Mbps and 6 channel AC3, not DVD 2048 bytes.

Analog channel 12 captured at 6000 Kbps in 12 Mbit/s mode and 8000 kbps in DVD Standard mode. Looks like the tech was correct about the 1800 not being able to capture 12Mbit/s.

8000 kbps is probably plenty for analog capture. Total bitrate of a standard DVD cannot exceed 9.8 Mb/s and analog TV broadcasts and VHS tapes don't have that high bitrates anyway.

[jagabo]

When capturing ATSC or clear QAM the Hauppauge cards simply save the MPEG stream received from the TV station. They don't reencode. Only analog sources are encoded so you only have the choice of bitrates there.

[DarrellS]

Right.

The whole setup thing is confusing though. When you go to change the settings, you should be able to create your MPEG settings no matter what channel you are on. You're not creating the settings for the channel that you are watching but for every analog channel that you will record.

As bad as everyone claimed the ATI MMC software to be, The WinTV software is no better and probably worse. As Lordsmurf stated in another thread through, all modern cards and software are all junk compared to what we had before. Everyone seems to think that taking away all our choices and giving us a one size fits all is the right thing to do.

[vhelp]

Wait, I'll bet you I can get you 30 MBit/s and more.. no wait, you'll loose the bet, never mind

I'm basing that on my 1600, where I was able to set the bitrates to 30, 50, even 100 MBit/s on that card. i just wanted to see if I can do it and also to see how high a bitrate the 1600 could go since it was an "HD" card, meaning the bitrate support (based on the hd chip) would have to be capable of those kinds of bitrates though not for dvd specs. It passed my bitrate stress test.

So, if the 1600 is the same as the 1800, then its definately possible. Heck, I'd even go out and pick one up just for the testing by I've never seen one at best buy, where I get all my latest gizmos now-a-days. Anyway.

I just hated the 1600 because of its troubles in my picky pc, that, and I was not happy with the quality of the analog captures because its internal noise reduction was the worst I've ever seen. I mean, I captured one the last Farscape episode, "the locket" before they took that show off the air for good, and when I brought it over to my later generation (graphics card and monitor) the Image Processor turned it into shtz, all the chars, etc., looks pasticky and what-not. Just awful.

I don't know if they improved upon the 1600 going to the now 1800 model. I'm assuming that the 1800 is the big brother or sister to the 1800..perhaps I'm wrong and its an all-new-card.

DarrellS

I'm glad you got your issue(s) settled.

-vhelp 5167

[jagabo]

Wait, I'll bet you I can get you 30 MBit/s and more.. no wait, you'll loose the bet, never mind :lol:

I'm basing that on my 1600, where I was able to set the bitrates to 30, 50, even 100 MBit/s

Did you verify the videos that it produced had those high bitrates? My WinTV2000 with my PVR-250 allows one to create profiles with bitrates over 15K but the hardware chip maxes out at 15K. The only HD the cards are capable of is ATSC and QAM -- which arrives as MPEG 2 from the source and is not encoded by the on-board chips.

[SHS]

Frist of all the 1600, 1800 are pettey much have the same over all chip spec when it come to A/V as the older 150, 250, 350 and 500 when come to the Hardware MPEG2 Encoder the MAX Bitrate is still only 15k and as for ATSC and QAM side it bitrate can be anything the broadcaster sent out so there for it dosen't use the Hardware MPEG2 Encoder at all
The Hardware MPEG2 Encoder only work with analog video side

[ddpool58]

I tried the 1800 card again, this time without running the HCWClear program. I had both WinTV2000 and WinTV6 installed and had used them both successfully with my 250 card. I took the 250 card out and put the 1800 card in, using the 4.8a driver. This time I saw the 12.0MBps option and gave it a try. No good. Media Info says it captured at 6000Kbps, giving me 4797 Kbps and the quality difference is apparent.

I don't know what the problem is. Perhaps it's just a defective card or there is some other kind of conflict with my system. But this is taking too much of my time now so I'll just keep using my 250 card as I'm satisfied with it. I just wanted to have the digital option if I decide to get digital cable or a stronger antenna to pull in ATSC stations.

If anybody has any other ideas about why this isn't capturing at the higher resolution I'd be glad to here them. I've never had problems with Hauppauge's capture software before but I've read the comments from those of you who don't like it. Is there another program you'd recommend trying with the 1800 that might work better? I'm using Windows XP.

[jagabo]

MediaInfo only tells you the bitrate in the header of the MPG file. You should use GSpot which actually parses the entire file and reports the average bitrate. Although, since you say it was visually inferior the bitrate probably is low.

[ddpool58]

I didn't write down what GSpot said, but I did try that and it was consistent with what Media Info said.

[jagabo]

Yes, with CBR encoding they should report about the same thing.

[ddpool58]

It wasn't using CBR recording but the numbers GSpot was giving me showed me clearly that I wasn't getting the higher setting with the card.

[jagabo]

Do you have the 12 Mb/s CBR option in the list? With my PVR-250 I created a 15 Mb/s CBR template and use that much of the time.

[ddpool58]

Yes, I do have the 12MBps CBR option in the list. Nothing was missing from the list this time. It just wasn't capturing at 12MBps.

[DarrellS]

I can confirm that. I have the 12 Mbps settings but it only captures at 6000 kbps.

6000 kbps is probably plenty for analog TV and VHS capture but if you get better captures with the 250 then I'd use that to capture analog and use the 1800 to capture QAM cable and OTA digital. Maybe use WinTV 2000 to capture analog and WinTV 6 to capture digital so you don't have to keep switching capture devices in the software.

I've tried a few different capture software and I can't get anything to work any better than the WinTV software. A lot of software doesn't recognize the Hauppauge audio (or the digital tuner) so you can't capture the audio. Virtualdub will capture high bitrate AVI with the 1800 but there are a lot of dropped frames and out of sync audio.