Multiple Simultaneous Capture on a Single Computer

[Satisfied_Camel]

We all get roped in to transfering Uncle Marge's VHS tapes to something less archaic at least once in our lives, but the process is so eye-gougingly boring. Even then, that little voice in side of you wants to do it the right way (the Huffyuv archived, MPEG2 encoded, DVD playable copy way). What do you do??

I'm checking to see if it is possible to SIMULTANEOUSLY, all on the SAME COMPUTER...

–capture two uncompressed video streams (using two Hauppage HVR-2250 capture cards)
–capture the same video streams but as MPEG2 (using the same HVR-2250 MPEG2 hardware encoded cards)
–burn previously created MPEG2 videos to DVD while capturing new streams

....And, if it is possible, what are the necessary ideal computer specs (ex. quad core, 8GB RAM, 3.0ghz processor, etc.)? Also, are there any specific pre-built graphs or tutorials on how to build this graph in GraphEdit?

So I don't sound too crazy, the two Hauppage HVR-2250 cards are MPEG2 hardware encoded and will lessen the CPU usage at least for the dual MPEG2 capture portion. What I'm worried about is using GraphEdit to reroute the uncompressed capture from the same cards while also burning DVDs– which I'm guessing is pushing the CPU usage through the roof.

I'm referencing these two forums/websites...
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...is-it-possible -showing an example GraphEdit filter
http://www.snapstream.com/Community/...sa/default.asp -showing hardware encoded simultaneous capture

Thanks all, I appreciate the help, please ask questions if you need more info

[jman98]

Exactly how many damn videos do you have to do? When family asks you to do 2, that is one thing. When they ask you to do 20, that is another. If it's so many that you need to ask these questions, then in my opinion they need to pay someone to do it. Sometimes in life you just have to say "no". I am not a professional translator, but with enough time I can translate between Russian and English. An acquaintance I barely know but who knows I can speak Russian asked me to translate a handwritten letter in Cyrillic cursive from an uncle of her adopted son into English (his Russian has faded a lot by now and he is incapable of reading it himself). Cyrillic cursive is a real bitch to read and I told her that if it was in email where I could easily read the words, I would do it, but I refused to do it as a favor (I also feared getting future requests after this one for the same thing) because she was unwilling to pay me and it was too time consuming. I suggested that she pay a professional translator to do it (we have such in our city who can speak Russian) because she could get the job done quicker. I told her I was sorry, but I considered it too much of an imposition to do it for her. I don't think she was real happy, but sometimes in life you can't let people walk all over because others are quite happy to have you waste YOUR time for free for THEIR benefit.

If you insist on doing this, I do not personally recommend that you burn and capture at the same time. I refuse to do other tasks while burning simply because it is 100% completely and utterly unacceptable to me to have ANY problems with a burn.

[aedipuss]

buy one or two of these if you want that kind of quality
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-DVR620-DVD-Recorder-Black/dp/B001T6K7G6

[sanlyn]

Recording old, crappy, noisy, discolored home family tapes directly to DVD is not the quality way (it's one of the worst ways, in fact). Toshiba made some excellent DVD recorders in the past. I own three of them. But that was in the past. Not today.

Yes, what you describe just could be possible (I don't know about dual capture cards, though. Maybe ? ?). But not with the PC's you get at BestBuy. Do what I did. Build your own. I built two -- and guess what? I can still only work with one at a time, even with both of them running jobs. Why? Because, well, things happen. Or don't happen, whichever applies.

[DB83]

When I saw this topic, I wondered whether I should simply write the two-letter answer [the first being N and the last being O] or the longer, sleep-inducing , version.

Well sleep is almost upon me and atleast I will have pretty dreams at the prospect of a fried PC should this be even attemtped.

Ok. You might get away with dual captures with two cards. That is if you have separate drives for the captures.

Transcode these captures in to a different format - these cards might be able to do lossless captures but NOT at the same time as hardware captures - not a feckin' chance. No way to read the data from the drive during capture. And even if I am wrong on this the stress on the CPU (even a hardware capture will use CPU resources) will be immense.

And as for burning a disk at the same time, I have just wet myself at the prospect. Good burns need CPU resouces. They also, more importantly, need a steady, un-disturbed, flow of data. You would not get that if you were writing to the disk at the same time.

Yeah. Life is short. Time is precious. But if you want to do something right then time is priceless.