Capturing AVI with Pinnacle PCTV and VirtualDub

[superfresko]

Hello everybody.

It's some months I'm trying to do VHS -> DVD, but cannot find a saisfying solution for video capture.

What I'm looking for is a "plain" PCI capturing card that captures in AVI (Huffyuv), that I will later convert with TMPGEnc and put on DVD.

I tried an ATI All In Wonder, but I had some problems... when finally I had it working, I found out it was broken (video sometimes starts blinking)... In the meantime I bought a GeForce4 for playing , so now I'm looking for a PCI card.

I've seen what the market offers... I've seen that there are lots of cheap cards, that if properly set up, they give acceptable quality (according to those who write in the forums).

For me acceptable quality would be almost no quality loss from VHS and my authored DVD.

So I've decided to buy a Pinnacle PC-TV... questions are:

- will it work with VirtualDub?
- will the drivers let me capture at high resolutions (704x576), or anyway the resolutions I want (e.g. 640x576)?
- are there good drivers?
- where can I find WDM/VfW (I'm still a bit confused about them...)?
- will it work?

Thanks to anybody who will anser.

Byebye.

[donpedro]

Which version ? Standard, PRO or Deluxe ? I am in process of selcting some card too.

[Hong Kong Phooey]

@superfresko. What are your PC specs? The PCTV/pro aren't bad at what they are,(I own a PCTV pro myself), but as most of the senior members of this board will tell you, they're not going to match the quality of a higher end video-editing card with mpeg1/2 hardware.

More importantly, your PC specs will give a better insight into whether if you'll encounter any problems. The PCTV cards can be a nightmare to setup depending on what CPU,M/B chipset, soundcard, O/S etc you're running-go to pinnacle's website & go to their user forums to see what I mean.

I'm not trying to scare you too much, like I said, I'm quite happy with mine & it does my VHS to VCD stuff (using VirtualDub,TMPGENC etc.), very well. But I just want to caution you to check your specs & read the forums carefully before you make up you're mind.

As for the WDM/VFW drivers situation, thats a lot simpler to explain. If you're using Win2K/XP then the WDM Version 5.x drivers you'll get with the PCTV card will be needed to use it. If on the other hand you have Windows 98, then I suggest you go to Pinnacle's website & d/l the older Version 4.02A VFW drivers. Although they're not as recent as the WDM drivers, the WDM drivers apparently have some sycn issues, which don't occur with the older VFW drivers, at least that I've seen.

The other factor regarding the WDM/VFW drivers, certain capturing App's like VirtualDub, AVI_IO etc. listed here at the "How to" guides require certain drivers to work. VirtualDub for example normally requires VFW drivers, however there are 3rd party WDM drivers,(not written or supported by pinnacle), which do allow you to use the PCTV card with VirtualDub if you're desperate enough,but you'll won't be able to use the pinnacle app's to change channels etc.

There are WDM driver capture app's also listed here for Win2K/XP like IUVCR, although not using those O/S's so I don't know anything personally about them.
Hope I've been of some help!

[superfresko]

Hi! Thanks for your answer!

The specs are:

- PIV 2GHz
- 256 Mega RAM
- 60 Giga HDD (UATA100)
- W2k (even though I'm thinking to switch to XP)

I'm not interested in capturing directly in MPEG, though: I want to convert it from AVI with the settings I want.

Once, I tried WinDVR 1.5 with a bt878 card, and the results were great (also with Half-DVD settings). Problem is, settings (such as bitrate, etc.) are fixed, thus, if I have a video that's 2 minutes (even 1 minute) longer then the maximum of a 4.7 DVD-R filled with WinDVR 1.5 Half-DVD capturing settings, I won't be able to put it on the DVD-R.

With TMPGEnc I will just have to slightly lower the bitrate...

I have W2k... and probably go to XP. I was wandering if I will be able to capture with VDub in Huffyuv at high resolutions? Are there good and working drivers to do this with the PCTV (not the PRO: just the plain PCTV)?

As far as I've seen the difference between PCTV and PCTVPro is that the latter has a stereo TV tuner. Anyway, I will capture audio via my sound card, wich is stereo. Furthermore I want to use the card as a capture card, not as a TV Card, and I won't capture directly from TV, but via composite from the VCR.

So, why pay almost twice the price for something I won't use? (Here in Italy the PCTV costs 70$ and the PCTVPro costs 125$)

Anyway, thanks for your help.

Byebye

[superfresko]

Which version ? Standard, PRO or Deluxe ? I am in process of selcting some card too.

Since I'm looking only for VCR capturing, and I won't use the TV tuner, I was thinking about the Starndard version...