Unbelievable!!! Pinnacle PCTV capping @720x480 Uncompressed

[coda304]

Unbelievable!!! Pinnacle PCTV capping @720x480 Uncompressed=0 frame loss.


Finally after 3 years of trying to perfect my capturing methods I have finally found a capture card that works! The stock drivers for this card have horrible audio sync issues and drop frames like it’s going out of style. However the new 5.01 drivers are working flawlessly for my rig, I get *ZERO* frame loss and audio sync is rite on even for caps over an hour.

I am not using VirtualDub I am using Direct Show Capture…I think this proggy delivers better-looking video anyhow. Again I am also using retail drivers from Pinnacle, which I found on there European web site. I am capping 16bit RGB Uncompressed @720x480…the results are amazing; I compare the video to DSS Pay Per View quality. Some images are close to DVD quality but the image still looks a little soft compared to DVD.

My Rig

ASUS P4T-E Mobo

P4 1.9GHz

512 Megs Kingston PC800

ASUS Ge-Force Ti500 Deluxe (sucks ass for capping) latest Detonator Drivers.

Pinnacle PCTV Pro (5.01 retail drivers)

Turtle Beech Santa Cruise sound card

WD 40Gig Ultra100 OS Drive

2-WD 100Gig Ultra100 RAID Configuration

Promise- FastTrack 100 TX2 RAID card

PC Power & Cooling 450-Watt Power Supply

Plextor 24x CDRW

Sony 2nd Generation DVD+R Writer

Toshiba 12x DVD-Rom

Monster Cable 20 ft S-Video cable

Monster Cable 20 ft Audio Interconnects



:P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P



Update

Got the Pinnacle capping @ 24-Bit Uncompressed using VirtualVCR and the retail 5.01 drivers. So far the video looks fabulous...I would compare the final MPEG2 DVD output to Pay Per View DSS.

Capture Source: Sony Ultimate TV DSS

Capture calibration tool used: Video Essentials Retail DVD via Standalone
Pioneer DV-333/Sony 19' BNC PC Monitor

[Poplar]

Congrats and a question:

Why capture in RGB 16-bits instead of RGB 24-bits, or in some kind of YUV?

[coda304]

Poplar

I would love to increase the quality too 24Bit RGB but the drivers will not allow it, says incompatible format.

So what about YUV, will that codec allow for 24Bit color? The card is compatible with this format, I was just under the impression that RGB was superior too YUV compression for converting too MPEG2 DVD. Please correct me if I am wrong cause I can’t really see the difference in quality. I am just going by what I have read that MPEG2 encoders prefer uncompressed too compressed for high quality results.

Thanks

[LeeBear]

coda304 it's far from 'unbelievable' that you are getting no frame loss when capturing to 720x480. It's because you are using 16 bit colour, that's 1/3 less bits to capture then using true 24 bit. You do know there's a big difference between 16 bit and 24 bit? Actually the difference is about 16,711,680 colours. 16 bit only allows about 65 thousand different colour, 24 bit on the other hand allows over 16 million. With 16 bit you're going to get alot of banding because not all the colours can be represent. It's usually easily noticeable in parts where there's lots of shade of one colour, like in the sky, or scenes with shadows. I believe most people will agree that 16bit is pretty much unacceptable when dealing with video.

Regarding RGB and YUV. That is just the way the colour information is stored it has nothing to do with compression. You can have an Uncompressed RGB or an uncompressed YUV. YUV is actually prefered over RGB for the simple reason that most encoders handle colour information in the YUV format, it'll covert RGB to YUV internally thought. If your source is YUV then the encoder doesn't have to do that converting step which can make it slightly quicker.

-LeeBear

[coda304]

So...Is YUV actually 24-Bit color?

[vitualis]

I'm not quite sure, but I think that it depends on the subsampling. YUV is just a colour format (e.g., like RBG). You are asking a question like is RBG 24 bit?

Obviously it can be, but it can also be 32 bit, 16 bit, etc.

I believe that YUV at 4:2:2 is near equivalent to 24 bit colour.

Another reason to use YUV for capturing (on top of the reasons already stated) is that many capture cards (the ?Brooktree based cards) natively use YUV and translate it to RBG when you capture in RBG.

Regard.

[coda304]

Thanks for the info, now I need to know what *non-planer* means? My card supports YUY2-non-planer and a few others but I am totally lost…what format I should use for the highest quality caps.


Thanks much!

[snowmoon]

YUV, YUY2, and UYVY all capture in a diffrent color format where B&W part of the signal is given priority by gettin a full 8bit per pixel. If it's a 24bit format ( YUV ) both color compnients are sampled per pixel. If it's a 16bit format ( YUY2 UYVY ) the color compnients are alternated each pixel. THe 16 bit formats are very similar to the format that is used for DVD's.

So any YUV/YUY2/... would be better than RGB 16bit.

[coda304]

Ok...I think I got it!

Thanks Much

[coda304]

Got the Pinnacle capping @ 24-Bit Uncompressed using VirtualVCR and the retail 5.01 drivers. So far the video looks fabulous...I would compare the final MPEG2 DVD output to Pay Per View DSS.

Capture Source: Sony Ultimate TV DSS

Capture calibration tool used: Video Essentials Retail DVD via Standalone
Pioneer DV-333/Sony 19' BNC PC Monitor

[Hong Kong Phooey]

May I ask what compression codec are you using then? Have you tried capping @ that resolution using Huffy?
I've stuck to using the older V4.02a drivers as these seem to allow capture in stereo & don't have the sync issues,& other problems I've read about with V5.x,that I had come with my PCTV pro card.

[coda304]

Thats the thing I can't hardly believe...I am using *No Compression*. The pinnacle will also cap using the Huffy or PicVid codec's.

Also works with YUV and both code's mentioned above with 0-frame loss and perfect audio sync.

[therick]

uuummmmm. ok. I thought that you were SUPOSSED to be able to capture full frame with the PCTV. I got it working quicker than my WinTV. The whole reason I got the card was because everyone was saying that they could capture full frame with it and it was only ~ $40...am I missing something? Is this the first time anyone has been able to get the 5.01 dirvers to capture full frame? Of course I used the btwincap drivers...

@coda - This DirectShow Capture, though that is something...where did you find this app? I thought that IUVCR was the only program supporting directshow capture capabilities...interesting...

[coda304]

Therick


I also tried the Btwincap drivers and was dropping many frames. VirtualDub dose not work with the retail drivers because it is not a direct show cap.

Try this link http://www.digtv.ws/ you will find virtualVCR that is a direct show capture program. It doesn’t come with many filters but I think has better cap quality than Vdub anyhow. I sure if you do a search you will find other Direct Show capture utilities.


Good Luck