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For the life of me, I cannot get Video Studio to capture from my Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1600 tuner card. It comes up with the error: "Unable to switch to Capture Mode" and "Check to see if your video capture driver is working properly". I can capture fine with the WinTV application, so I think the driver is working OK. I also have an AVerMedia 23888 Video Capture card that came with my computer for Windows Media Center that will not work for capture with Video Studio either. My computer is a Gateway FX4710 with Windows Vista 64 bit operating system, with BIG everything!!! Should be no problem......Any suggestions anyone?

The trouble is that most capture/TV cards will only work with their own software, or if they sort of work with VS, they don't work nearly as well as with their own software. There are a number of Hauppage card users on this Board, and they seem to always recommend using Win-TV for their captures, and then simply open the captured files in VS for editing. I don't have a Hauppage card myself, but in one computer have a Dvico Fusion dual HDTV card, and in another have a Winfast DTV 2000H card, and in both cases, I use the software which came with them. The Winfast card sort of works with VS, but its own software gives me more flexibility. The Dvico card is detected by VS, but I have never managed to get a successful capture that way, so again always revert to the Dvico software...

Hi Ken, thank you for your reply.
Yes, you are correct. VS detects the card but won't capture from it. I used to use Video Studio 5, 6, 7, and 8 to capture from my ATI cards in other machines so I am used to the routine. Old guy's like me don't like to change things much if we don't have to. The WinTV application actually does an excellent job of capturing TV so I will just use it and edit with VS. At least it is in a usable format, not like Windows Media Center! I remember you being very helpful to me in the past with problems that I was encountering. You have been around this forum for some time. Thanks again Ken, your help is very much appreciated.

Most of the Hauppauge cards are HARDWARE ENCODING capture devices. In other words they contain their own on board processing chip so the captured data is encoded over to mpeg before it has even left the card.

The hooker here is that most capture systems (except of course for the supplied software) are expecting raw unprocessed data..... not finished mpeg files.

The 1600 (which I have.... along with the 350 and win tv usb.... none of them BTW are not very compatible with anything but its own software) comes with its own capture software which is better anyway.... you can capture mpeg2 up to 12M which is more than most editors will capture at.

If you really want to capture with an editor like VS then you should look at a SOFTWARE capture card like Leadtek (which I also have). The Winfast pvr3000 which is both hardware AND software capable.... but IMO..... Hauppage is better. Leadtek does however provide more capture options.

Hi neonbob, thank you for your reply.
Your explanation is very informative and I believe you are right about the capture quality. It seems to be very, very good with the Hauppauge 1600 compared to my old ATI TV Wonder cards in my old machines.