Capture Software Recommendations?

[Prince Valiant]

Does anyone know of capture software (for a capture card) that plays back audio and video while you record? I've been using Debut but, it only plays the video while recording and it doesn't pick up the audio unless I use the mic. jack. Media Player Classic lets me play audio from the card jack but I can't record with MPC.

[Cauptain]

Does anyone know of capture software (for a capture card) that plays back audio and video while you record? I've been using Debut but, it only plays the video while recording and it doesn't pick up the audio unless I use the mic. jack. Media Player Classic lets me play audio from the card jack but I can't record with MPC.

For me, the awesome capture software is AMAREC TV. Unbelievable capture software. Working with all cards (Hybrid capture cards have some problems) I have AVERTV HD (OK), ROXIO GAME CAPTURE (OK), ENCORE USB (OK) and MYGICA X5807 (OK).

Capture with FFDSHOW codec or UT VIDEO CODEC. Windows XP, Vista, 7 (32&64 bits compatible)

Take here: AMAREC TV


Cauptain

[usually_quiet]

If you can give us more info on the capture capture card, like the make and model, plus some information on your computer and OS you might get more and better replies.

The closest thing to universal capture software is probably building a custom filter graph with GraphStudio or GraphEdit, assuming you are using Windows XP or higher,

[Prince Valiant]

If you can give us more info on the capture capture card, like the make and model, plus some information on your computer and OS you might get more and better replies.

The closest thing to universal capture software is probably building a custom filter graph with GraphStudio or GraphEdit, assuming you are using Windows XP or higher,

Sorry about taking so long to get back on this.

Yuan PG583
Windows Vista 32-bit

[sanlyn]

Not familiar with the YUAN PG583. You can hook up VirtualDub (free) in capture mode and see what you get. VDub is a competent capture utility, but your card and/or OS might be a problem. If VDub works, fine. Forum members have been using it for years. Need more info about what sources you're capturing, what format you plan to capture to, and what do plan for final output?

The YUAn's software drivers are posted in many places, and I believe it's an OEM card on some Acer and Gateway PC's.

[usually_quiet]

Judging by what Google turned up, the Yuan PG583 appears to have been a component in some Acer and Gateway pre-buit systems. I can't find out much about it because it does not appear to have been sold separately.

I should probably have asked what you are trying to capture (i.e. TV off antenna, analog cable TV, console video games, camera output, VHS tape, or cable box/catellite box output) and what format you want to use for your footage (MPEG2, H.264, etc.).

DScaler may work for your card's stereo audio input and Composite video input or S-Video (if it has one) as well as analog cable. If you want to capture DTV programming off antenna, NextPVR (also known as NPVR) is a freeware PVR application.

[Prince Valiant]

Judging by what Google turned up, the Yuan PG583 appears to have been a component in some Acer and Gateway pre-buit systems. I can't find out much about it because it does not appear to have been sold separately.

I should probably have asked what you are trying to capture (i.e. TV off antenna, analog cable TV, console video games, camera output, VHS tape, or cable box/catellite box output) and what format you want to use for your footage (MPEG2, H.264, etc.).

DScaler may work for your card's stereo audio input and Composite video input or S-Video (if it has one) as well as analog cable. If you want to capture DTV programming off antenna, NextPVR (also known as NPVR) is a freeware PVR application.

Input from a console. Direct video is the format I would prefer, it encodes fast with good quality. I'm grabbing Virtual Dub and DScaler now, I'll test them when I have time. Thank you for the help thus far .

[Cauptain]

Input from a console. Direct video is the format I would prefer, it encodes fast with good quality. I'm grabbing Virtual Dub and DScaler now, I'll test them when I have time. Thank you for the help thus far .

VDub is OK. But Dscaler not good in nowdays. For Console record look this link.

Very usefull for any capture device. Look my YT videos for quality (Ok, YT not use 60fps ).

[usually_quiet]

Judging by what Google turned up, the Yuan PG583 appears to have been a component in some Acer and Gateway pre-buit systems. I can't find out much about it because it does not appear to have been sold separately.

I should probably have asked what you are trying to capture (i.e. TV off antenna, analog cable TV, console video games, camera output, VHS tape, or cable box/catellite box output) and what format you want to use for your footage (MPEG2, H.264, etc.).

DScaler may work for your card's stereo audio input and Composite video input or S-Video (if it has one) as well as analog cable. If you want to capture DTV programming off antenna, NextPVR (also known as NPVR) is a freeware PVR application.

Input from a console. Direct video is the format I would prefer, it encodes fast with good quality. I'm grabbing Virtual Dub and DScaler now, I'll test them when I have time. Thank you for the help thus far .

Never heard of Direct video. Do you mean uncompressed? If so, that is not a good choice unless you have a RAID array for capture. Uncompressed SD video requires about 65GB per hour and the hard drive can't keep up. Use Huffyuv instead, which requires between 30 and 40GB per hour.

DScaler worked better than Virtualdub if I wanted to view the video I was recording and was slightly easier to use. Aero glass had to be turned off and I used an XP compatibility setting in Windows 7. Your mileage may vary, as the saying goes.

If you are planning to use the PC monitor to play the game while recording, good luck. Chances are there will be too much delay to play the game effectively if you do this rather than split the output from the console.

[Cauptain]

Hi usually_quiet,

Why prefer HUFFYUV?? UT VIDEO is better or no??

Do you try AmarecTv for view?? For those who have several TV cards is amazing, you create presets, just click and go.

[usually_quiet]

Hi usually_quiet,

Why prefer HUFFYUV?? UT VIDEO is better or no??

Do you try AmarecTv for view?? For those who have several TV cards is amazing, you create presets, just click and go.

I have never tried UT VIDEO. I have tried various capture software out of curiosity to see what it was like. I have looked at AmarecTv but haven't tried it. Capturing to Huffyuv and then converting to MPEG2 is actually overkill for my purposes.

My main purpose for capturing is to record TV shows from a SD digital cable box in MPEG2 format. Windows Media Center or GraphStudio are my best choices for capturing directly to MPEG2 because I like to record closed captions as well as audio and video.

[sanlyn]

My main purpose for capturing is to record TV shows from a SD digital cable box in MPEG2 format. Windows Media Center or GraphStudio are my best choices for capturing directly to MPEG2 because I like to record closed captions as well as audio and video.

Mmm, wait a sec. If most of your captures are from SD cable (and I really hate what SD cable boxes do to downsampled HD broadcasts. Their temporal filters are the pits, even with SD digital sources), then using a decent DVD recorder would seem more convenient. You could always burn a disc from their hard drives or copy the recording to a PC's drive. In fact, why archive to a hard drive when you'd already have the video on disc? Admittedly, there aren't many really good DVD recorders around these days, but they're at least as good as a capture device. There's little improvement with budget capture cards, as their tuners can't compete with the tuner in most brand-name DVD recorders.

[usually_quiet]

My main purpose for capturing is to record TV shows from a SD digital cable box in MPEG2 format. Windows Media Center or GraphStudio are my best choices for capturing directly to MPEG2 because I like to record closed captions as well as audio and video.

Mmm, wait a sec. If most of your captures are from SD cable (and I really hate what SD cable boxes do to downsampled HD broadcasts. Their temporal filters are the pits, even with SD digital sources), then using a decent DVD recorder would seem more convenient. You could always burn a disc from their hard drives or copy the recording to a PC's drive. In fact, why archive to a hard drive when you'd already have the video on disc? Admittedly, there aren't many really good DVD recorders around these days, but they're at least as good as a capture device. There's little improvement with budget capture cards, as their tuners can't compete with the tuner in most brand-name DVD recorders.

Thanks, but I have had a DVD recorder since 2005 and use it. PC capture is my backup plan if it dies unexpectedly. I know all about the replacement options available and will likely get a Magnavox 515h/F7 before the summer ends.

[usually_quiet]

If most of your captures are from SD cable (and I really hate what SD cable boxes do to downsampled HD broadcasts. Their temporal filters are the pits, even with SD digital sources....

All I can say is you must have peculiar digital cable service, or perhaps you have none.

My SD cable box does not downsample HD. Downsampling occurs before the signal reaches my home since there is a SD version of every HD channel in the system. My SD cable box won't even tune the HD digital channels. That requires an HD cable box, for $7 per month more than an SD box. Attempting to tune an HD channel with my SD box only generates an error message.

My DVD recorder and the TV Wonder 650 HD have noise reduction filters, which makes sense for devices that work with analog sources of variable quality. My digital cable box can't tune analog channels. (There are only 17 analog channels left and all of them have digital SD counterparts.) Since my cable box simply tunes a digital channel, decrypts it if necessary, and converts it from digital to analog, there is no point to having temporal filters for noise reduction.

[sanlyn]

I guess it depends on the box, usually_quiet. I have two Cablevision boxes, one an SD digital and the other HD. A while back, before Cablevision required me to use the box for all reception and effectively rendered all my tuners useless, I used to record digital and analog stations right off a split cable; my DVD recorders never saw either box, unless the channel was scrambled. I'm really sorry the cable company started requiring the box, because now I have to hook that box to my recorders instead of taking the same channels directly off cable, and the artifacts out of the box are pretty annoying.

I also had that cable feeding a Samsung HD tuner. It could pick up SD and HD channels (the OTA channels only. It couldn't see QAM or scrambled). I recorded 4:3 broadcasts at 4:3 on the recorders. I recorded 16:9 HD channels thru that tuner into a Toshiba recorder; I did so by having the tuner downsample to 480i and send the entire 16:9 image "squeezed" into a 4:3 frame, not letterboxed. I'd record that squeezed 4:3 image but set my RD-XS34 DVD recorder to flag it for 16:9 output. The recordings played back at 16:9 full frame; I could see no filtering of any kind, and the Samsung tuner did an almost perfect job of downsampling to 480i. Not a stitch of disturbance or block noise anywhere. The Samsung tuner has no noise filtering that I can see, and I don't use the recorder's filters at all. But due to the changeover requiring the box at all times, I can still record 4:3 SD such as news or weather or BBC World but now it goes thru the HD box and the same channels that didn't show filtering thru the Samsung tuner are sure showing it thru the box. And I now have a nifty $200 Samsung HD tuner that's useless, as I can't get OTA on an antenna where I live.

If the noise I see thru my SD box isn't coming from the box, then Cablevision has changed what they're sending. I have old recordings made thru the previous analog non-digital box (no longer useful on my cable now; digital box required) and directly off the cable back then. None of those old recordings have anything like the block noise, fuzzies, and other artifacts I'm seeing today. That was the first thing I noticed when I was forced to exchange my old analog box for the digital model: noise, and plenty of it. I was pissed. And I still am.

[sanlyn]

Thanks, but I have had a DVD recorder since 2005 and use it. PC capture is my backup plan if it dies unexpectedly. I know all about the replacement options available and will likely get a Magnavox 515h/F7 before the summer ends.

Backup? The Maganvox has a player, not a recorder. I assume you mean you're using your PC for backup, not the Magnavox. IMHO you'll get better results with a second DVD recorder as backup. But it's your choice, and at least you have a multiple-use PC. Can't use a DVD recorder as a PC, obviously.

[usually_quiet]

If the noise I see thru my SD box isn't coming from the box, then Cablevision has changed what they're sending. I have old recordings made thru my previous analog non-digital box (no longer useful on my cable now; digital box required) and directly off the cable back then. None of those old recordings have anything like the block noise, fuzzies, and other artifacts I'm seeing today. That was the first thing I noticed when I was forced to exchange my old analog box for the digital model: noise, and plenty of it. I continued to record directly off cable, and the noise disappeared. Then, recently, Cablevision encrypted everything, so I'm forced to use their crummy noise-maker box all the time. I was pissed. And I still am.

Bingo! That is exactly right. Cablevision has changed what they send you. It is now MPEG-2 480i QAM instead of NTSC analog. Whether delivered by OTA via an antenna or digital cable, the digitized versions of analog programming is poor quality. There is not enough bandwidth allocated for the SD MPEG2 version to have a bitrate sufficient to produce the same apparent level of detail and quality as the original analog.

[Edit]If your DVD recorder is downscaling from HD, it will allocate enough bitrate to make a nice conversion. If it records the cable company's crappy downscaled SD version of the same channel directly off cable instead, it won't look as good. The SD cable box has very little to do with the problems you are seeing. The damage is already done by your cable provider before the signal reaches the SD cable box.

[usually_quiet]

Thanks, but I have had a DVD recorder since 2005 and use it. PC capture is my backup plan if it dies unexpectedly. I know all about the replacement options available and will likely get a Magnavox 515h/F7 before the summer ends.

Backup? The Maganvox has a player, not a recorder. I see you stated you're using your PC for recording backup, but what will the Magnavox back up? IMHO you'll get better results with a second DVD recorder as backup. But it's your choice, and at least you have a multiple-use PC. Can't use a DVD recorder as a PC, obviously.

Since you need this explained to you... Not everybody needs or wants more than one DVD recorder connected to their cable service. My present DVD recorder will be retired after 6 years of service when I get a replacement for it. The Magnavox MDR515H/F7 is an HDD DVD recorder. My PC will only be pressed into service for recording cable TV programming if my DVD recorder dies.

The main reason I have a TV tuner for my PC is to watch TV using a pair of rabbit ears while I am at my computer. I don't have cable in every room. However I have figured out how to record from my TV tuner card's S-Video and analog audio connection if I need a temporary recording solution while I wait for the UPS truck [Edit] to arrive with a new DVD recorder.

[sanlyn]

If your DVD recorder is downscaling from HD, it will allocate enough bitrate to make a nice conversion. If it records the cable company's crappy downscaled SD version of the same channel directly off cable instead, it won't look as good. The SD cable box has very little to do with the problems you are seeing. The damage is already done by your cable provider before the signal reaches the SD cable box.

The recorders don't downscale. They're SD recorders.

Likely you're right about the cable guys changing their signal. Until October last year when the cable company disabled tens of millions of better-quality TV tuners in our area, I was doing all my recording off the line, not thru a box (except for scrambled channels, few of which I watched anyway). Starting in October, all SD and HD channels have similar grunge, though there's somewhat less of it in all outputs from the newer HD box. When I compare analog and OTA-HD recordings made pre-October, there's no block noise, no blurs, no disappearing faces in dimly lighted scenes -- unless it was obviously in the source. You don't have to stare at the older recordings to see the difference; it's immediately apparent.

When I get really irritated by all this over-hyped digital crap, I turn off the LCD and the plasma. I reconnect my old 24" CRT, recheck the calibration, slap in a DVD movie or one of the earlier recordings, and watch for a few hours so I can refresh my memory on what undisturbed motion, stable camera pans, smoothly blended sunset colors, convincing skin tones, superior image depth, density, and overall accutance, and the color black, all really look like. Sometimes I sit way off to the side of the CRT just for the fun of not seeing the image deteriorate every time I shift my eyeballs. I'm amazed that no consumer-level HDTV is actually capable of "high definition". High resolution, yes. But high definition? You're kidding. Every digital "improvement" seems to make it worse, so that watching TV isn't much fun any more. Just as well. It's mostly dumbed-down junk anyway, I get better news and weather on my PC with no 5-minute commercial interruptions, and our power bill has dropped markedly since the shove-it-down-their-throats digital "enhancements" of last October. And more often now we go to the movies. Watching a real movie displayed the way its creator intended makes the old CRT look rather competent, and makes our high-priced so-called "HD" TV and cable look like the crap it is.

Sorry. End of rant.

[sanlyn]

Since you need this explained to you...

Nope, don't need an explanation, UQ, I just put only a partial Magnavox model number into my 'puter and a TV/player combo showed up instead of the recorder. My bad.