Pinnacle System's PCTV Pro-VHS video capturing?

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Hi everyone.Although I have seen a couple of postings in regrds to Pinnacle Systems PCTV Pro, I did have a couple of hardware/software related questions about it.

1) Hardware-capture. What format(s) does the card render in & to what resolutions? Does it encode in AVI,& more importantly can it record/capture Pal Mpeg1 352x288 25fps with hardware encoding?

2)I have seen it's forum site & there seems to be a problem where it's retail-store version capture software doesn't allow for VHS video-capture.
Is the card still compatible with other 3rdparty capturing software options eg:Virtualdon,TMPEnc.,or Ulead VideoStudio V4SE-basic?

I'm looking to record old TV/VHS recordings of approx. 25-30mins length. I'm using Windows 98 original,with a 20GB ATA100 Hard disk,with about 16GB spare.About how much AVI raw footage can be saved at 352x288 PAL 25fps,(& audio),with say 12GB space. Will the software like TMPGEnc automatically break up the AVI size of the file when it reachs a 4GB Fat32 file size limitation?
Thank you for your help.

[joeAgain------]

Phooey,

I hope you get your answers, I'd like to hear them too.

But people hear it seems are tired of answering my questions.

Maybe you know the answer to this one. Is that card supposed to make it possible to create CD that can play full screen on a TV when using A video CD player?(or will they be a little bitty screen) and is the quality of that big picture of relatively decent quality?

I hope we both will get our answers. At least this will put your question on top of the board again.

Joe

[photohap]

Yes you can capture VHS with the PCTV. Do not use pinnacles software at all, its plain horrible and slow. I use virtual dub with my PCTV to capture in AVI format (virtual dub will segment the avi files for you in to 2 gig segments to overcome the fat32 limits) and then Tmpgenc to put it into Mpeg. You can use other software such as ulead video studio and capture directly to mpeg, but I don't like the results of it............. When using virtual dub you can set your resolution to whatever you want (try not to go over 640x480, pctv doesn't like it above that), make sure to turn off overlay. Use Huffy compression codec......... I know this is brief, sorry... alot more info can be found on the forums here on how to use virtual dub and tmpgenc.... In a nutshell your pctv will do the job just fine..... I use mine faithfully,,,,,, oh one last note,,, do not get the version 5 drivers for this card,,, they are horrible!!!! stick with the lower versions.......

mark

[photohap]

sorry one more thing to add.......... get yourself another hard drive,,,,, you want a 7200 speed with at least 40 gig.... keep it seperate from your system disk..... You might want to post the specs of your computer also......

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Thank you photohap for the technical info & Joe Again for keeping the posting active.

I'll give you a basic rundown now....
Windows 98 1st Edition
Celeron 900 on a an Asus TUSL2-C M/B (Intel 815EP chipset)
20 GB 5400rpm ATA-100 HDD (With about 14/15GB spare at present)
64Mb NVidiaGF3 Ti200
Sound Blaster Live!DE5.1
Creative 12x10x32 CDRW & standard 32xCD-rom drive
I'll be able to use WinDVD that came with my card to play the files.

I realise that the AVI format is best for general,all round software conversion using VDub,TEMPEncg etc.,(Like a basic WAV file is to convert to MP3 or WMA etc.).
But I was also curious about the "Mpeg1" claims on Pinnacle's Website.
1)Does this card have hardware Mpeg1 rendering in real-time too?
How Does hardware-realtime encoding work?
2)Does that TMPEncg programe actually burn/save the image to your CDRW drive,or will I have to also get Nero Rom 5 to actually burn the image as a VCD?

3 )Although I might not have the room on my single harddrive to record an AVI larger than 352x288 PAL 25FPS, can you capture in 640x480 & resize down to 352x288?
I just don't know how many GB's a 25-30min recording in 352x288 or 640x480(Including audio),actually takes.
Will that reduce the "blockiness" of the final image?
@Joagain. As I understand things. The only way to send the mpeg video image "out" again is via the TV-out on your Graphics card,(eg:Geforce 2).
Depending on if your graphics card has it,it'll connect to a TV in either 800x600 resolution,or possibly lower depending on your TV.