Is this much noise normal?

[tacodan]

I am new to video capturing and recently bought a used AverTV card. This is my first time capturing so I'm not sure if what I'm seeing is normal.

When I view the video image on my computer, it seems to be pretty noisy or grainy. I'm not sure what the exact term would be, but it appears that the pixels are sort of twinkling or oscilating. I have a picture below which I captured from the card.

I first had the video coming straight from my camcorder, but then I fed it through my tv and then to my computer to see how it looked on tv. On tv, the image is great. A nice, clean picture. But it doesn't look very good on the computer. The image has basically the same noise whether I use composite or s-video.

I tried encoding some clips with TMPGenc but the result looked very bad. Very globby colors. Like if someone had a blue shirt, there would only be two blues used in the whole shirt: a blue and a lighter blue.

So is this normal for video capturing? I had thought that the picture I'd see on my computer would be at least as clear as the tv. I could understand if the image was pixelated as it was resized, but I thought the image would be stable.

My setup is:

PIII 650 720meg
GeForce4 4200 64meg
36 gig 10k scsi drive
AverTV Studio

Thanks!

[tacodan]

Hmm... I don't know why the image didn't show up. Try this link if you want to see it:

http://home.austin.rr.com/btnelson/box.jpg

Hopefully you can get an idea of the noise in the image. It looks great on the tv, but messy on the computer.

[PlaiBoi]

based on that picture, the quality looks pretty good to me. TV tuners dont always have the best tuners in them, so the quality will be less than what u see on your TV.

[ZippyP.]

You could try filtering esp. to get rid of the twinkling pixels. Either with Virtualdub (smoother or noise filter) and frameserve that to TMPGEnc or use TMPGEnc's built in noise filter. There are alot of Vdub filters available on the web.

Beware, the built in filter increases encode time by a huge amount!

8)

[dj619gior]

Hello
Will a signal booster help my tv has a good amount of fuzz to begin with and when I capture it looks bad.
Do you think a signal booster will help at all?
Thank's!

[Gazorgan]

A signal booster may help a little. But, a booster also introduces noise (other than sparkles, it introduces 2nd order, 3rd order, and cross-mod noises, which result in distorted pictures). You should only use it if you have a lot of sparkles in you signal, and get a variable one, not a fixed gain amount. Too much signal is as bad as too little.

Remember this, the inside of you computer is a very noisey place, electrically speaking. Every 6 cable TV ( 4 1/2 in PAL ) channels will have extra interference from you PCI bus frequency. If you have an ISA bus, then nearly every channel will have interference of some type. Try putting your capture card as far away from you CPU as possible.

Also, ground loops can cause severe interference, make sure you cable/antenna drop is grounded to the same place you computer is. If you have a UPS, make sure you ground to it as well.

[dj619gior]

hah my capture card is verry verry close to my cpu its in the agp slot so I cant put it anywhere else.
I am looking for my dads signal booster but I cant find it I will have to wait till he gets home.

[Will Hay]

It may simply be a result of your relatively low PC spec.
If it's fine on the source you're capturing from and the resulting capture is different, it could just be a low spec capture card compined with a low processor.
If you say the source is very good then you won't need a booster.
My tv signal comes from downstairs, up in to the loft, down to my bedroom tv and then into my computer and I get excellent captures (sorry! )
Will

[dj619gior]

I found out I am on cable lol.
Not antenna and I cant use a booster.
I am thinking about getting Digital cable in my room./