Need advice on a good quality capture card.

Dean66 · Post by **Dean66** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:06 pm

I basically purchased DMF 4 on the advice of a friend who told me that I was wasting my time reencoding my football games and tv shows. He said that DMF 4 has an option to leave MPEG2 files alone and will just create the DVD menus in about 5-10 minutes.

I'm using my Canon camcorder to pass thru the S-Video and the sound through a firewire cable to my computer. I've been doing this over a year now with my Pinnacle Studio 9 program with no problems other than the lengthy downtime of reencoding after I've edited out the commercials.

I tried capturing with the DMF 4 software and really liked the fact that it lets you capture in Dolby Digital audio instead of just MPEG audio or PCM. My Pinnacle captures were always with MPEG audio only. I could change it in the reencode step at the end, but now that I'm gonna be using DMF 4, I need to be able to capture in Dolby Digital audio from the start.

The problem I'm having whenever I try and capture with the DMF 4 is it stops after about 15 minutes and I get a box that says "flushing DV trascode buffer". I did a search and found a couple of people that got the same message. Apparently, capturing in MPEG 2 in real time is very demanding on the processor and it can't keep up because of the camcorder capture device.

An analog capture card should get rid of this problem, right???

I'm looking for advice on a good capture card that works with DMF 4. I've tried a few different ones, and I wasn't satisfied with the quality, or I couldn't get them to work at all with DMF 4.

I would really prefer one that has a HARDWARE encoder on it so it doesn't put as much stress on the rest of my computer.

I'm running a P4 3.0 Ghz machine with an eVGA 6600GT video card and 1 Gig of PC3200 RAM, along with an Asus P4P800SE mobo and a 300 Gig Seagate hardrive for storage. I just did a reinstall of everything yesterday, so the system is clean.

Any advice would be well appreciated.

Thanks.

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 1:06 am

Hi,
I have a similar machine.
If not capturing firewire into a dv-avi file and I want to capture
analog I use the
"ATI Wonder Pro" (pci card) priced between $49.00 & $79.00
ATI also has another card with true real-time hardware compression
for about $140.00
Both cards have TV Tuners (Standard Definition).
Using the "ATI Wonder Pro' the average processor usage is
approx 28 percent or less when capturing using the ATI recorder.
XP sp1 HT processor.

The ATI capturing software also lets you apply filters to clean the video up.

You can use VS9 or MF4 to also capture with the card but ATI's software is very good and addresses the hardware chips on the capture card.

The only problem I've had is figuring out how the audio works.
On a SB Live you may have to mute the direct audio input and
adjust the sound level via the recording channel with then pipes into
the pcm slider. This depends on the software being used.

Card also works with Nero6 & Nero 7 for capturing.
Nero 7 can capture in lpcm, dolby 2.0 or dolby 5.1.

Hope this helps,

MD

Dean66 · Post by **Dean66** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 2:29 am

Can you capture with Dolby digital audio with the ATI card? That's what I'm really looking for besides, of course, getting a quality capture. I want to be able to drop the raw mpeg2 file straight into the dvd moviefactory program and create the disk without having to reencode video or audio.

Does your system have an ATI video card or an Nvidia? I'm using an nvidia and sometimes those two don't get along nice together.

Thanks,

Dean

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 4:32 am

Hi,
No, when you record using the ATI software it's either lpcm or mpeg audio.
When you record using "Nero" it's lpcm or Dolby audio for NTSC.
When you record using VS9 or MF4 it's lpcm, mpeg or dolby audio.

It takes very little time to convert the file if recorded in pcm or mpeg audio.

You are aware of the option "Do Not Convert Compliant Mpeg files" in VS9 or MF4.
MF4 also has the option "Do Not consider Mpeg audio compliant".
When you check that on then only the audio is re-encoded if the file is mpeg audio and if the video is compliant it's not re-encoded. Goes very fast on my system to convert the audio.

You can record in many formats using the ATI software.

My video card is the Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT OC 128meg AGP.

Hope this helps,

MD

rwernyei · Post by **rwernyei** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 4:51 am

Dean,
This is what you want. One can pre-order now, they should be here next week.
http://www.usb-ware.com/ads-instant-dvd-plus-mp3.htm

I wrote this reply for the ADS Instant DVD 2 but it will also apply to the new Instant DVD+MP3. *New Sony HDV users can also apply and take advantage of this method for downconverting their HD footage in real-time with the new ADS Instant DVD+MP3. This is possible due to it's native 16:9 MPEG2 encoding feature.**(Requires special Sony cable)

If you are wanting a hardware MPEG encoder, the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 is the best you will find. To this day, hardware encoding is still better than software encoding. It has an advantage over the others by allowing a "loopback". A "loopback" allows the user to take edited DV footage from the timeline and export using firewire to their camcorder. With the av inputs(S-video/composite) plugged into both camcorder and the ADS capture box the footage is then encoded to DVD compliant MPEG2 file in real-time. This is achieved by using the Capwiz program supplied with the capture box. This has full device control which allows the transfer to take place. This is where the other capture boxes fail, they rely solely on bundled software as a device control plugin. A number of Ulead software have plugin support with this device in case you want to use it for capture as well. So you have more than one option for capture with this box. Other pros are this encoder has color-correction, brightness, sharpening, etc. for features. You can make these changes within the encoder and not worry about waiting for the software to render it. Also, the ability to preview these changes on a TV at the same time is a huge plus. Instant feedback of what your final output will look like on TV, DVD. I tested some sample DV footage with some added effects and transitions. Encoded it to MPEG2 at 8000 VBR Single pass with ADS box against Ulead DVDWS2 and Media Studio Pro 7.2 at 8000 VBR with their new 2 pass encoding capabilities. IMHO, the hardware encoder's results were better, at least that's what my eye sees.

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 1:26 pm

I think having an external hardware capturing device has many advantages. That's a really nice unit.

MD

titanbabe · Post by **titanbabe** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 4:14 am

I originally used a compro tv tuner card to capture video, but had lots of trouble getting the video and audio in sync. After doing a lot of research, I bought a hauppauge win-tv pvr 250, which uses hardware to encode mpeg video instead of software. This solved my problem- now the audio and video are in sync.
The hauppauge win-tv 250 and 350 are the only way to go IMHO.

Dean66 · Post by **Dean66** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 3:06 pm

rwernyei,

It definitely looks like a good unit. Have they fixed the overheating problems that I've read about with a lot of other previous units? Also, I can't tell from the picture, but does it have an S-Video out on the front?

Thanks,

Dean

tyamada · Post by **tyamada** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 3:55 pm

I use a Hauppauge PVR250 with excellent results. If you are looking to do High Definition than you should look at the DVICO FusionHDTV5 products.
http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/ENG/Products/
Next generation of Capture Products.
Can caputre standard tv broadcasts and S-Video/Composit video.
Outstanding capture quaility in HD and SD video.

The Terratec AV250 AV400 and Hauppauge Devices have plugins for MF4 but they don't give you options to change the bitrate.

I perfer to capture with the devices' software and edit in VS9 or MF4.

rwernyei · Post by **rwernyei** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 4:33 pm

Dean66,
Yep. It has has S-video out and audio out. The audio out is 3.5mm stereo. So one can either use a 3.5mm cable for line-in or one of those stereo "Y" (3.5mm to R/L composites cable) for input with common a/v equipment.

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 6:47 pm

I recommend against capturing to MPEG! MPEG is not meant to be edited. You can get "sneaky" file corruption that causes Ulead programs to crash and/or DVDs with A/V sync problems.

I have a Hauppauge card, and it does a good job. But, I had to buy a special-purpose MPEG editor. Also, it only captures to MPEG-2 audio.

Dean66 · Post by **Dean66** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 7:00 pm

rwernyei wrote:Dean66,
Yep. It has has S-video out and audio out. The audio out is 3.5mm stereo. So one can either use a 3.5mm cable for line-in or one of those stereo "Y" (3.5mm to R/L composites cable) for input with common a/v equipment.

What about the overheating issue? Is it still a problem?

rwernyei · Post by **rwernyei** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 7:24 pm

DVDDoug,
If you read my earlier post about performing a "loopback" procedure you would see that I do not edit in MPEG as it is an output format. I use the "loopback" with my Sony TRV30 cam and now that I have just acquired a JVC GY-DV5000U that records to standard DV media(276 minutes) I have even more choices. I can either do the "loopback" in real-time using S-video and composites or I can export and record to tape using my NLE(Media Studio Pro 7) and then use the supplied firewire port on this new ADS Instant DVD+MP3 unit. Real-time hardware encoding with manual color-correctioning features up to 15 mb/s CBR or VBR. Much better than software encoding.

Dean66,
The heat issue has been mentioned as a problem by other users but I have never experienced it. I run a small fan over the box just to keep it cool. I have recorded (3) 2 hour projects back to back with no heat or performance problems.

Dean66 · Post by **Dean66** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 8:04 pm

Thanks, it sounds good. The MPEG issue isn't really an issue for me since I use MPEG2 VCR which is Womble's earlier version. It works great and it's fast. It sounds like this is just what I'm looking for.

Dean