Capture in DVD resolution...

[hardrock]

Hello everyone

The question is simple: what type of computer I need to have to capture in DVD resolution? Athlon? PIV? And RAM memory? Please tell me...

Thanks

[Digitizer]

I COULD capture from cable with Win98, AMD Athlon 700 Mhz and 256 MB RAM. Windows 2000 takes away much of the power, so now I can only do this from SVHS source and not straight from cable. Generally, you don't need a 1 Ghz or more to do this.

[rinkel]

Well, it depends on the capturecard u will be using.

You probably want to use Win2000 / WinXP because of the file-size under NTFS which is not limited like Win98 fat32 (4 gig)
Then You have to decide what capture card u are going to use: AVI/DV/MPEG2

AVI/DV needs to be rendered to MPEG2 and will cost you loads of time, but there are cards which can help you render by hardware (pinnacle DV500)

The best thing is to check what card you have / are going to buy and check their requirements.

Due to the fact of the loads of floating point calculations, Intel is the best choice because it does a better job at that (AMD is best for gamers)

I use AVI capturing and then i render it to mpeg2, the AVI can grow to about 32 gig ! (try that with Win98) so a big harddisk would also be nice
For the captureprocess you don't need anything fancy, a 900mhz is enough, but for rendering AVI->MPEG2, it can cost you about 13 hours, so there you should buy i big processor for. (except for the DV500)

The other choice is an MPEG2 capturecard, but if you want the same quality as AVI capture like the pinnacle DC10/DC30 then it will cost you about $850,- (Matrox RT2500) $1700,- Pinnacle DVD1000)

All the above is for good quality capturing, i don't know your standards, if they are not so high, you can go for a TV-card with hardware mpeg compressor onboard, like the WinTV PVR-250, from Hauppage, which will give u relatively good results, but not as goos as a DC10 by far, but the PVR doesn't need that amount of time to encode.

Another tip, try to avoid VIA chipsets, capturecards have problems with it and can give you audio-sync problems


Good luck,

Rinkel

[hardrock]

rinkel, how big reply

Well, I've tried to capture to AVI format. And the famous problem of frames dropped appears...
My computer is a PIII 500MHz, 128MB Ram under Windows XP.
Tomorrow i'll get plus 128MB Ram! I think at least 640x480 format I'll can capture...

Thanks

[Thorn]

You're at a disadvantage at 500MHz, but the real bottleneck could be your hard drives, if they're 5400rpm rather than 7200rpm.

Just a note for capturing, I have win2k on an athlon 1.33GHz and 7200rpm drives. I capture with Virtualdub using the Huffyuv codec, which saves space (and for you might help if your harddrives are the bottleneck). I often drop about 15-20 frames per hour, but I never really notice.

Also, dvd resolution is 720x480 (for ntsc). Unless your final format is DV or for a DVD, you may not need to capture at that resolution. VCD, for example is 352x240.

[hardrock]

How I can check it? I don't know about see how many RPMs my HD have, but I know it works at Ultra DMA mode.

about the resolutions you have said, I know that

[uteotw]

Celeron 466 @ 550 with 256MB.
ATI AIW-128 32MB PCI.
Win2000 SP2 - DirectX 8.1 - MMC 7.2
Maxtor 80GB 5400rpm (NTFS) on UDMA66 controler.

For 2 hours capturing in VirutalDub at 720x576 25fps, Audio PCM 16bits / 44khz , its drops around 20 frames on average using huffyuv or PicVideo.

Settings :
Video buffer limit = 80
Audio buffer limit = 0
Audio buffer size = 0

(I've reduced frame drops a lot since I set audio buffer to 0).

Disk I/O:
Chunk size = 512 Kb
Chunks in buffer = 2

Otherwise , with the same card using ATI MPEG2 capture it was working OK on a PIII-866 at 720x576.

uteotw

[hardrock]

Sorry, but what's MMC?

[uteotw]

ATI MultiMedia Center

[TheInformer]

hardrock:

The Dazzle DVC II will capture to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 files in real time, and it doesn't need a ninja PC to do so. You can read about it here:

http://www.dazzle.com/products/vidcr2.html

I have one for sale (only used twice) if you're interested.

[hardrock]

I'm interested, but I don't have enough money at moment

[hardrock]

People, I can't believe that!
I've captured in DVD resolution (720x480 YUY2), but not in the same frame rate (around 23/24fps)...
Please HELP ME to get the 29,97 goal :P

the quality of the image is so awesome... there's no more the ghost of the blocks of vcd

[athrak]

I have an Athlon XP 1600 (they run at 1.4ghz), and probably about the cheapest video capture card in the world (a $90 AU Pixelview Prolink TV Tuner card)

It has absolutely no mpeg hardware acceleration, and I can capture at 720x576, in Mpeg-2 in realtime!

I have an 80 gig 7200rpm drive, and 256 megs of Ram. I don't think a massive amount of RAM makes a hell of a lot of difference, but I did notice a massive difference one I upgraded to a 7200 rpm drive (I have a seperate drive for data - not by design, just coincidence)

THe drivers I have found make all of the difference. I'm using the BtWinCap drivers, and Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.5

I can capture at 5.5megabits, and 48000khz. I find any more than 5.5 megabits, and i start dropping frames, but at 5.5, I don't dsrop any frames, and that'll keep like that for 3-4 hours of video. (I haven't tried doing more)

Hope this helps a little, in brief, i can do 720x576, 25fps, directly into mpeg-2, with no re-encoding needed, and no dropped frames!
(Damn it looks good - Song Of The South - an old Disney flick was on - i captured, it no dropped frames, and it looks just on perfect!)

If anyone has any questions about my setup, e-mail me!

Good Luck!

[hardrock]

athrak:

I think the difference is which you have an Athlon XP 1.4GHz and I have a Pentium III 550MHz. About the video capture card, I have the same and use the same rockz drivers you use

I wasn't planning to capture directly into MPEG-2 files because the quality isn't good. Is better capture to AVI, then convert it.

Again, about the Pentium... If I get a Pentium III 800MHz, I'll can capture at DVD resolution with 29,97 framerate?

Thanks!

[athrak]

perhaps.... But i dunno.

I used to capture TV shows for the girlfriend on my p3-800, at 352x288 in MJPEG format, (with the qual. setting at 18 i think), which is what i read was recommended for doing captures, and it used to drop frames, roughly about 1 per minute... and it didn't look that good. friends suggested that i must have been doing somethign wrong, as it should have looked fantastic with that high a quality setting, so I'm no-one to give advice really

the driver si wa susing at the time never let me go above 352x288, but if you tell me exactly what program you use, I can plug my card back into the p3-800 and give it a go, and snd you the results.

the girlfriend now has the p3-800, and all she does is play solitaire on it! So it's not a problem, and if i can help clear this issue up, i'll certainly do my best...

(I can even try to clock the p3-800 at 550, and try out various things with it)

Cheers!

[hardrock]

With my Pentium III 500MHz I can capture in this format without any frames dropped.
I'm trying to capture at Ulead MediaStudio. The drivers which i'm using are a "hacked" version for cards which uses bt878 chipset (or something like that)! And it works very well, is possible capture in any resolution.

[VideoMann]

I use a P4- 2Ghz ASUS motherboard, 512MB Memory

capture mode AVI:

Cable Box/0r/VCR ---> Canopus ADVC-->PC Firewire card-->Hardrive 60Gb

Capture program Premiere or Cyberlink PowerDirector2
no dropped frames at NTSC 720x480, 29+fps, capture bits= 8-9Mbps

[hardrock]

VideoMann, you capture in YUY2 or 24 bit?

[VideoMann]

I'm new to this:
I use the S-Video or the RCA-plugs(cinch) on the ADVC and then a Firewire cable to the PC. Uncompressed Microsoft DV-AVI

[fand]

I'd just like the record to show that in my opinion processor speed and > 5400 rpm hard drives make an incredible difference as far as TV capture goes.

cheers,

kyle

[thxkid]

well I captured at 8500 bitrate at 704x480 MPEG2 using the $199 hauguappe WINPVR card and the result was a perfect image of True lies from DVD as a MPEG2 file, plus no frame drops, no audio synce problems and no hours of converting with TMPGE and I doubt very much if I could bet any better with using AVI, plus I can just turn the card up even further to 12,000 bitrate if need be, I find anything passed 9500 is a waste anyway since your at the top end for DVD recording anyway at that bitrate, might help me in my cause I use a AMD Quadspeed 1600+ with 512 megs of PC133 Ram with a 7200rpm 30 gig hard drive, with VIA chipsets, creative labs 5.1 Sound blaster and a Voodoo 5500 AGP card, ummm. I never have any lockups, sync problems or any of the other horror stories I hear from using VIA chipsets and a sound blaster card, I am using WIN98SE also, I work around the 4gig limit all the time by using either MPEG1 or MPEG2 captures or AVI using Huffy, Divx 5.02 or Ligoos 1.2 Raw or 5.1. Plus luck has nothing to do with it, just taking time to work out or around any problems you come up with.