captured video with hauppauge card... video looks blurry

[granturissimus]

i have the WinTV PVR-150 card, and i used WinTV version 6 to capture video from a composite input. the card captures the video in DVD format, so i think that means its mpeg2? in the program, i put the video bitrate to cbr and put the bitrate at 9350kbps and audio at mp2 384kbps. well i captured some video from a camcorder, and i notice that the video is more blurry than when i hook up the comcorder to the tv through composite. so the capture card makes things more blurry it seems. it also added black bars on the sides... one about 10 pixels on the left, and another about 6 pixels on the right (estimate).

is there anything i can do to make the capturing clearer and sharper? or is my card just sucky and old?

PS: i notice there is a setting in wintv for GOPs. its set at 15, but has options for 12 and 6. which one do i put?

[jagabo]

TVs routinely accept low resolution video from the composite input so they apply sharpening filters. Computer monitors normally get very high quality signals so they don't apply any type of filtering. So when you view a television signal on a computer monitor it will look less sharp than the same video on a TV.

The PVR-150 is capturing interlaced video. The software is deinterlacing that video for display on a progressive computer monitor. That results in some blurring of the picture.

I'm not sure about the PVR-150, but other Hauppauge PVR cards have a sharpness setting in their video proc amp controls. Look for such a control

The black bars at the left and right edges (and sometimes at the bottom and top of the frame) are all there in the original video signal. You don't normally see them because TVs hide the edges of the frame, see "overscan".

Have you tried burning your captured video to a DVD and viewing it on TV? It will probably be just as sharp as the source. And you won't see the black bars at the edges of the frame.

A GOP size of 15 is fine. Shorter GOPs may make the video easier to edit but will lower the quality.

[PuzZLeR]

If the capturing is done from composite (yellow RCA) then the video could improve somewhat with something like S-video if available on both inputs and outputs.

Then again, Hauppauge capture tools are typically "soft", or even blurry, with analog capturing. I guess this was part of an effort to remove alot of the blockiness and "edge confetti" usually associated with MPEG compression. But even at high bitrates I still see blurs and lost detail with Hauppauge hardware.

This is very unfortunate because everything else about Hauppauge-ware is top-notch - reliability, performance, speed, price, etc. And sadly, in most cases, I will take the blocks, edges and artifacts of ATI-ware because they will deliver more detail in the video in the process.

There's a sharpness feature? Where? I have yet to find it. If referring to sharpness features available in third party tools, such as SageTV, they don't work.

[edDV]

... it also added black bars on the sides... one about 10 pixels on the left, and another about 6 pixels on the right (estimate).

This is normal because NTSC 4:3 video translates to 704x480. If you capture 720x480 you will get 8 extra black pixels left and right. You are getting an approx 2 pixel picture shift to the right that is not normal.

Digital DV camcorders and commercial DVDs record extra width out to 720.

Example: 704x480 NTSC captured as 720x480

[jagabo]

There's a sharpness feature? Where?

I don't know about the PVR-150, but with the PVR-250 it's in the video proc amp settings. I don't remember if WinTV2000 give you access to it. But you can start GraphEdit or GraphStudio, add the capture filter, go to Properties, selecte the Proc Amp tab, and adjust the sharpness slider. You can do this while WinTV2000 is running and see the effect.