I need help before 4pm EST American Time.

[Greg12]

I need a good capture card, I'm looking at


The Happanguage PVR 250
PINNICLE PCTV
HAPPANGUAGE TV FM


Or any other card. The only thing is it has to operate on the PCI bus. I don't have an AGP slot.

[kitty]

WinTV PVR 250 is a good card. You need the latest drivers from the hauppauge site or www.shspvr.com (under "News").

Depends what you are going to make - I make decent DVD captures direct to MPEG2 with this card. Also there is a $50 rebate going on (Circuit City I think but might be Best Buy or CompUSA - see sunday ads) making it $99.

If you want a VCD only MPEG1 capture card or a BT8x8 card this isn't quite the one to get.

What are you targeting?

[Greg12]

my final result will be DVDs. These will be viewed my family and some sold by my church. Also some will be personal DVD's of TV shows I like.

Idealy I'd like to be able to get raw AVI as well as MPEG>

[kitty]

Choose also on editing ability. I have Ulead MediaStudio Pro & DVD MovieFactory which handle MPEG2. PVR250 comes with a crummy MPEG2 cutter/joiner NanoPeg. Ulead VideoStudio is a capable MPEG2 editor also. Supposedly Pinnavle Studio 8 handles MPEG but might be buggy.

If you want to edit with an AVI editor then find a BT8x8 card - there is a list at btwincap.sourceforge.net along with better drivers than the card will have.

Hope this helps.

[Greg12]

i'm looking now at the AverTV studio

[Barnabas]

I 2nd Kitty's choice. For the money, the best buy in a decent hardware encoding capture card is the PVR-250. STAY AWAY FROM THE ADS Instant DVD!

[SHS]

This sometime to keep in mind Greg12 is that AVI is a pain neck to capture at high rez I'm ref to pass 352x240 with out dropping frames all over the place as for what kitty had to say this is part lee rigth but I didn't have any problem with nanoPEG MPEG Editor which really wierd that other do.
If you really have to edit your clip then I remmond the Canopus ADVC-100 and TMPGEnc keep mind this going to take time.
Note you do need Firewire card or Firewire input.
A buddy of mine had 2 system one with Canopus ADVC-100 for editing all thoses pain a@@ VCR tape and 2nd PC with WinTV-PVR 250 for real MPEG capturing and all he is using Ulead DVD MovieFactory SE for the DVD Authoring Software.

[Greg12]

I have a dazzle DV bridge I use for short captures, I need something cheap,

I think i'm gonna get the AverTV studio

[kitty]

If you only have a 20gig drive that will fill up pretty fast with decent quality AVI (many people with 8x8 cards use MJPEG but you have your choice of codecs). If you use lossless codec like HuffYUV you'll get the best quality but your movies better be very short.

MPEG 2 HW cards will already be encoded which offers an advantage when HD space is scarce.

If you had another $100 you can get a 60-80 gig HD on sale with rebate.

Let us know how you did

[Barnabas]

I also have had trouble with the Nanopeg editor. While it cuts the files ok, once cut, you can not import them into Movie Factory which comes with the card. I am using the very latest Nanopeg editor btw.l

[Greg12]

i bought a Pinnicle PCTV

I am using it for TV, the S-Video and RCA r funny, u have to do the sound through the sound card, not the card.


It can capture to DV in real time w/ my system

P4 2.4GHZ


And my 80 gig hdd had 51 gigs free when i began.


We'll see how the first capture works out soon.



It uses a Connexant Chip, not the brooktree.

[SHS]

Connexant bough Brooktree or aka Rockwell

[aubrey_q]

Greg:

Your profile still shows you have a 20 gig HD and 866MHz CPU. That influenced most of the answers here.

Just today I sold my AverTV Stereo (is like the Studio w/o FM and no remote) and got the Hauppauge PVR-250. The card is $99 after $50 rebate at Circuit City this week. The reason I got it is that my PC is too slow for MPEG-2 captures and AVI capture is a cumbersome and lengthy process. It also takes a lot of hard drive space. The PVR-250 has excellent MPEG-2 hardware encoding.

If I had a fast CPU like yours, I'd would've kept the AverMedia because I could've had the choice of AVI and MPEG-2 software encoding, but I don't have a fast CPU. Well, not fast enough, anyways.

I was hacking away at capturing TV shows and converting them to DVD for 2 weeks with poor results. After successfully installing my PVR-250 (it was a pain, let me tell you), I captured two different video segments. I encoded at 4000 and 6000 video bitrate and burned them on DVD using DVD Movie Factory 2 (trial version). The result was superb. I was amazed. Nothing I had done capturing in AVI and converting to MPEG-2 with TMPGEnc came close.

Bottom line, I'm happy with my PVR-250.

If Steve, Kitty and SHS read this, a big thanks for recommending the card and helping me through the installation.

Time to burn!!

[SHS]

your welcome aubrey_q

[kitty]

See Kitty Read, Read Kitty Read, Kitty say No Problemo aubrey_q

Now if you can get MF2 to use that PVR250 to cap video (it really shouldn't but it acts like it wants to)....

[Greg12]

How do I denote in my profile that I have 2 systems?

[SHS]

Open Regedit go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Hauppauge\hcwTVWnd\Sag Harbor\Configs

Export as Reg
do some edit to the reg file
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Hauppauge\hcwTVWnd\Sag Harbor\Configs]
@="DVD Extra Long Play2"
"MPEG1 VCD"=hex:01,02,01,0b,01,02,01,02,01,00,01,00,01,0f ,01,02,01,00,01,00,01,\
0b,01,00,01,fa,02,04,7e,01,00,01,00
"MPEG2 2.0MBit/sec"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,00,01,0f ,01,02,01,01,\
01,00,01,0e,01,00,01,fa,02,06,40,02,07,d0,01,00
"MPEG2 2.0MBit/sec (HalfD1)"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,02,01,01,01,00, 01,0f,01,\
02,01,01,01,00,01,0e,01,00,01,fa,02,06,40,02,07,d0 ,01,00
"MPEG2 12.0MBit/sec"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,00,01,0f ,01,02,01,01,\
01,00,01,0e,01,00,01,fa,02,25,80,02,2e,e0,01,00
"MPEG2 12.0MBit/sec (CBR)"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,00,01,00,01,00,01, 0f,01,02,\
01,01,01,00,01,0e,01,00,01,fa,02,2e,e0,01,00,01,00
"SVCD Extra Long Play"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,01,01,00,01,0 f,01,02,01,\
00,01,00,01,0b,01,00,01,fa,02,04,80,02,05,a0,01,00
"SVCD Long Play"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,01,01,00,01,0 f,01,02,01,00,01,\
00,01,0b,01,00,01,fa,02,06,40,02,07,d0,01,00
"SVCD Standard Play"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,01,01,00,01,0 f,01,02,01,00,\
01,00,01,0b,01,00,01,fa,02,07,d0,02,09,c4,01,00
"DVD Extra Long Play"=hex:01,02,01,0a,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,00,01,0 f,01,02,01,\
01,01,00,01,0e,01,00,01,fa,02,0b,b8,02,11,30,01,00
"DVD Long Play"=hex:01,02,01,0a,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,00,01,0 f,01,02,01,01,01,\
00,01,0e,01,00,01,fa,02,12,c0,02,18,38,01,00
"DVD Standard Play"=hex:01,02,01,0a,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,00,01,0 f,01,02,01,01,\
01,00,01,0e,01,00,01,fa,02,19,00,02,1f,40,01,00
"__Radio"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,02,01,02,01,00,01,00, 01,0f,01,02,01,01,01,00,01,\
0e,01,00,01,fa,02,01,f4,01,00,01,00
"MyDVD 4-8 224"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,00,01,0f ,01,02,01,01,01,\
00,01,0b,01,00,01,fa,02,0f,a0,02,1f,40,01,00
"DVD Extra Long Play2"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,00,01, 0f,01,02,01,\
01,01,00,01,0e,01,00,01,fa,02,0b,b8,02,11,30,01,00

to this

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Hauppauge\hcwTVWnd\Sag Harbor\Configs]
"MyDVD Profile"=hex:01,02,01,00,01,00,01,00,01,01,01,00,0 1,0f,01,02,01,01,01,\
00,01,0b,01,00,01,fa,02,0f,a0,02,1f,40,01,00