high quality capture hardware...

[86peaches]

i currently use a wintv card for capturing but it's not the best quality and only has a single analogue input.

i'm looking to get a new capture device that can capture @ high res (up to 720*576) with the best possible quality. it also needs composite input.

i will mainly capture from tv (terrestrial and sky digital) but i also have a lot of vhs i would like to convert to digital format.

i have a budget of around £250 but i don't necessarily want to have to spend that much. so what would be a good solution?

[DaveQB]

it appears the lifeview flyvideo card can
"Video capture size: up to 720x576 (AVI), 352x240 (VCD NTSC) and 352x288 (VCD PAL)" but uses the Phillips SAA7130 (dunno if thats a good or bad hting?, doesnt allow use of the 'other' drivers.

while the pixelview has "Video Resolution: 720x480" but uses the BT878 chip

the leadtek WinFast doesnt say on there site

well thats as far as i have researched tonight ...

[dar1us]

My GeForce Ti4200 captures like a dream - Phillips 7108.

Captures at (up to) 720x576, but only PROPERLY in multiples of 288 (pal-i i live in) but I am probably doing something mighty stupid. The quality is superb, better than most of the captured TV shows you find on the internet.

I convert captures to DivX or SVCD, the quality of the SVCDs is not bad at all, similar often to DVD2SVCDs (i use it to convert my captured AVIs).

I capture from SKY Digital, i use a SCARTTOVIDEO adaptor shown below, it works a treat and only cost 10 quid (€14). I can also plug it into the back of the SCART out on the VCR and capture directly off Analogue terrest', though obviously, SKY Digital creates better quality outputs.

Here is a link screenie of Enterprise (1x23 - Fallen Hero) I captured - through SKY Digital) only on sunday. Obviously, I use my normal soundcard to capture audio, SB Live! works fine.
Enterprise Sample (JPEG) (http://www.weatherjack.btinternet.co.uk/enterprisesample.jpg)

I didn't pay any extra for the card, i had it already, and it really puts my old ATI to shame!



UNRELATED - kinda
anyone know of a good codec other than PICVIDEO because it doesn't create very good quality video even on 19/20. also, other than HuffYUV because it is too lossless


daru1s

[dar1us]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Here is the little adaptor

Edit by Swede: Something was *very* wrong in the attachment database. Pls, try again.

[markrb]

I am also very interested in finding a stand alone capture card for high quality captures. I will be capturing from Laserdisc hopefully using the S-Video output. I would think that this would be close to the Sat Capture that 86peaches wants to do.
The end result is to convert to SVCD.
The captures will be purely a temp file and on a 100+GB RAID.

I have been reading the links in the FAQ, but those recomendations are 6-8 months old and probably out of date now.

Thanks,
Mark

[dar1us]

ok, third time lucky...

this time, i wont attach it, get it at www.btinternet.com/~weatherjack/scarttovideo.jpg

I am looking into DVB-S as it IS the way forward:) - More on that in a new thread:)

dar1us


@markb
good luck with the old laserdiscs.. what kinda outputs have you got on the back of ure laserdisc player?

[fasttimes]

peaches,

No need to throw away your capture card! All the TV cards based on the BT848/878 (the vast majority) will do full resolution captures. It's just a matter of the correct drivers. Do a search for "BTWinCap" on the web. The WinTV cards are actually very good.

[markrb]

@dar1us
Composite and S-Video.
For audio both Analog stereo and Coax digital.

Mark

[dar1us]

@markrb

okey, have you got some simple VIVO device already like a graphics card, because if you have, not much point in paying a lot more for anything special because it will do the job fine, have you had a look at those samples. and as I remember it, laserdisc isn't the best source ever so it wont be loosing definition in a capture process plugging your laserdisc player straight into a VIVO unit.

sorry if I dont make sense half way through that, it is 4:30 AM here in the uk atm

glad to be of assistance


dar1us

[markrb]

@dar1us
I have no video input device of any kind right now.
I would rather get seperate hardware then a combo card.
I tend to upgrade often and if I had to keep upgrading to get the more expensive video card it would end up killing me in the end.
If I keep a video card more then 6 or 8 months it's a luck year for me.
If I can get a capture card I am happy with most likely I can stick with it a little longer. Certain things I am willing to pay more for if they add longevity. For instance I always go with a top of the line monitor since I tend to keep them for years.
While I won't spend as much on the rest of the computer since I am always upgrading anyway, even if I don't need to. You know who's got the biggest on the block disease. :)

Mark

[Herske]

I would not recommend a bt8x8 card to anyone trying to get high quality captures. A CX881 card would be nice, but drivers seem to have problems, as some threads here indicate.

The biggest problems of bt8x8

1: Low dynamic range
2: Awful color separation

Also, the cards it's used on are mostly noisy.

I had the chance of testing (in the same time) a dc10+ and a bt 878 tuner card. DC10+ at 6 MB/s was perfect (no mjpeg artifacts, Ookami :D), but the colors were right, the image looked better.

So, in the future, for a cheap solution, I might consider a Geforce with video-in, and capping uncompressed for highest quality. I have over 100GB of space, so that's not problem. But I will not be buying a bt 878 card ever. Never ever.

I also have a dvb card for direct mpeg2 copying, but that's not strictly capture.

[DaveQB]

can anyone use thw Winfast TV 2000 XP with virtual dub and its Winfast drivers ??

it doesnt seem to want to go here .... :(

[Ookami]

> no mjpeg artifacts, Ookami ),

Bad, bad, Herske! How dare you?! Grin. ;)

@markrb

How much do you want to spend? Do you have a firewire card? Will you convert from your VCR too? Do you want to buy a DV camera? Do you want to filter the material?

All this and many more you'll have to ask yourself before buying a card. Alternatively you can buy a cheap, used card on Ebay and after you see what it can do and tests you can buy a more expensive card...

As for the threads, the infos and flamewars are pretty actual. :)

Seriously, I plan to buy the Canopus ADVC 100, altough you cannot capture lossless, the capture quality is amazing according to the users. But, I have, already a GPU with Video in with what I can use any codec of my choice for capturing (from MJPEG to lossless). If you plan to upgrade your PC in the next time, how about buying a VIVO card (ATI or similar) instead a normal GPU?

Be sure to check both of the video outs (or video ins on the GPU). There are some funny (and true) stories, about S-Video ins that have a badder quality than the composite because of various issues (very low quality connectors etc.)... Of course, in 99% of the cases you should go for S-Video.

BTW, Laserdisc gives you very good quality...

Good luck and, more importantly, have fun.

Jeez, just wanted to check my mail :rolleyes: .

All the best and good night,

Mijo.

[markrb]

How much do you want to spend? Do you have a firewire card? Will you convert from your VCR too? Do you want to buy a DV camera? Do you want to filter the material?

1. Under $100 if possible, but up to $200 if needed.
2. No Firewire card
3. No conversions from the VCR
4. I am not interested in a DV camera, although I did look into them after DDogg said I should. I don't use a camcorder now and never did even when I had one.
5. I would rather capture with as few filters as possible and then tweak anything post capture.

I may want to look into Tivo type ability as well, if possible.

Thanks,
Mark

[cjv]

Hi,

I just recently got an MSI TV@nywhere to do some S-Video captures from digital cable...in a word..its unbelievable! This is the one that uses the brand new Conexant CX23881 chipset. I also have an ATI Radeon 7500 AIW and AIW 128, both with S-Video in, and was not happy with the quality of the captures. Let me warn you, from what I have experienced now, stay FAR FAR FAR away from ATI cards if you are after quality...FAR away!! They produce a yucky/muddy/flat/unsharp capture that is hard to describe. I could tell in 2 seconds if a capture was done with an ATI...and no amount of post filtering will improve it.

Anyways, there may be some bad reviews of the TV@nywhere around the web, but in my case, I only wanted it for the high quality S-Video capture abilities. It was only $80 Canadian, and I have not even installed or tried to use the NTSC cable tuner on it. (I can use my AIW as a PVR if I want) The quality from this card, or more specifically this Conexant chipset is amazing. It captures every single tiny little detail, and you can then post-filter to your liking.

For an example of how much detail it captures..with my ATI, it would usually capture HuffYUV at approx. 350 megs/minute. With the MSI, it captures at approx 750 megs/minute. Yea, it takes up a lot of space, but its worth it. For pure S-Video->AVI capture, I believe there is nothing that can even touch the quality of this chipset.

cjv

[DaveQB]

what software do u use to cap in Huffy ??

the software that comes with it only suppose to allow Mpeg1 formay and only a low res (somehting like 320x240)

well atleast thats what another guy in this forum said.

be curious to know how you did it, as i am very interested in this card.

also, does it support PAL format?? (576x768)

thanx

[cjv]

The included software is a modified version of WinDVR. I believe you can capture full D1 MPEG-2 (prob up to 9.8 megs/second..check the specs for WinDVR) I only used it briefly before I reformatted, just to make sure all features of the card were working and it wasn't a defective card. The TV tuner part only works with the included WinDVR, but it does work well if you require that. I did not reinstall it after reformatting, mainly because I only wanted high quality S-Video capture. I am using the recently updated drivers for the Prolink card.

It's true that capping in VDub only allows 320x240, but that's because VDub uses old VFW technology w/wrapper. Any true WDM capture application will allow you to capture full D1 resolution to any codec installed...(and also control the sharpness...a very important feature that's absent in ATI cards).
I use HuffYUV and iuvcr, but it works well with the free Virtual VCR. I have been capping some stuff today, and at some points it gets up to almost 1Gig/minute!!...very expensive, but great detailed quality even from my crappy digital cable source.

The card has jumpers on it for PAL use, but it may be just for the TV tuner part??? I'm in Canada and have no ideas about PAL, sorry. Just look for cards that have the CX23881 chipset. I believe one is called XCapture, and Asus also makes one, along with this MSI one. All I can say is that I'm very happy with this card...just wish I had a better source like analog satellite now :)

cjv

[DaveQB]

cool,
thanx alot for that reply,

i found iuVCR to be a very good capture program (last night) even with my Winfast.

so what do/can you use to use the Tuner ?? with these Prolik drivers can you use the software that came with ??

i too am mainly concerned with S-Video capturing, but i would too like to use the Tuner.

if not i might keep this Winfast for the Tuner and FM and get the MSI for capturing only :confused:

a little more info on the Tuner side would be much appreciated.

the Asus one, on their site, only lists NTSC usage, so its useless for me.

is there a Prolink using the CX23881??
i'll check that out now....

[DaveQB]

PS is it possible to cap @ 576x768 ???

thanx

[cjv]

Hmm, the highest capture resolution I can select is 720x480, but I'm in North America (NTSC).

I only used the tuner for approx 10 minutes, then reformatted and chose not to reinstall it. (I never wanted it anyways) For the short time I played with it, the tuner also appeared to have MUCH higher quality compared to the AIW Radeon 7500. There was more noise, but this is due to a crappy cable signal which can be seen directly on TV as well. The noise was very uniform, unlike the ATI which smeared it..so it should filter out quite nicely temporally. The colours were better, and faces were much sharper. But capping my Canadian cable signal for any archival purposes is out of the question..it just sucks! (Ha..my digital cable sucks too I guess)

The drivers for the Prolink card (Play HD or something) work because they use the same chipset as the MSI...but they were released a few weeks ago..so they are much more up to date. I don't know if the TV tuner works with the Prolink drivers, but you could just use the MSI driver for the TV tuner and Prolink for the rest..or mix and match.

Download the trial of WinDVR, and play with it with your current card. If you don't mind using it, then that is what the MSI card comes bundled with..and a remote control or something (that I never even opened).

This certain card (the MSI) one may not have a lot of support and does not do all that is advertised (ie: MPEG4 encoding), but the chipset it contains (CX23881) has a very bright future..even the Dscaler developers are adding support for it.
cjv

[DaveQB]

Originally posted by cjv
I don't know if the TV tuner works with the Prolink drivers, but you could just use the MSI driver for the TV tuner and Prolink for the rest..or mix and match.


oh?? just install both drivers and the apps tap into the ones they need huh ??

off topic, but does the BTwincap drivers do that ??
i mean, i havent yet imaged my HDD to play with the the BTwincap drivers, but would they install side by side with the Winfast drivers and i could use differnt apps requiring different drivers ?!?!


Download the trial of WinDVR, and play with it with your current card. If you don't mind using it, then that is what the MSI card comes bundled with..and a remote control or something (that I never even opened).


WinDVR 1 i assume ??
thanx for the tip! :D

This certain card (the MSI) one may not have a lot of support and does not do all that is advertised (ie: MPEG4 encoding), but the chipset it contains (CX23881) has a very bright future..even the Dscaler developers are adding support for it.
cjv


yeah?? Dscalar too huh ? (i cant get Winfast working with that app BTW)

i believe it does have a very bright future :D
not sure whether to buy it now, or in the future ;)

[cjv]

Originally posted by DaveQB
oh?? just install both drivers and the apps tap into the ones they need huh ??

Ha, not that easy. Once you understand how windows handles drivers, you can just install the drivers you need for your hardware manually via .inf files..that way you have total control. For example, out of the 15meg+ installer they expect you to install, I extracted only approx 200k..just 6 files that I really needed!!

If you're interested, here's a small 5 second sample from digital cable. The source is unfortunately overcompresed and really soft (cheap cable provider), but you can still see the vivid colours, and how this card does not pick any noise whatsoever. Just imagine how this would look with a decent source!

http://members.shaw.ca/cjv99/Sample.avi

cjv

[DaveQB]

sweet thats nice work with the .inf driver files.

be curious to know a little more indeepth.

any URL's ?? or maybe email me some concepts ??

no worries if ya cant

cheers

David

[\AX]

im totally with whoever is on the tip of..."the msiTV@anywhere produce's GREAT quality"

However i used the s-video from my sat box. Straight from the box now (finally only 6 feet away), right into the card. I use a Audigy 2 straight into the back with a L/R to 1/8 inch pin.

Ok if you get this card to keep a/v synch...longer than 40 minutes, somebody tell me how.

With iuvcr, i must give a heads up that it will keep synch..sort of. Like after about 35 minutes it goes asynch...then about 1 minute later the synch comes back

Im not expert in these fields. You would have to ask ^-I404-^ or whatever his name is. He is EXTREMELY SMART in analyzing, summing up, finding errors, and the whole 9 yards in video. He impressed me with his knowledge.

Ok however. the file i downloaded off of cjv "Sample.avi" depict's great quality. However, i see the same zhit in that clip that i do in mine. At like 2 seconds or something you see a split towards the top middle. It's right behind Smantha's head over top of the palm tree. Now this does not always happen. But i see it in several of my captures. Also...i guess some of the field ordering get's rrrrreal messed up from time to time. Im sure cjv has seen what i mean. What he did to fix it if he did i dont know. I could fix this about 90% of the time. It looks like interlacing...but not. Like solid horizontal lines across the screen that is interlaced aswell. Looks weird, alot like interlace. I can get this out again 90% of the time but sometimes it produce's artifact's like i see in that sample...piss's me off to no end. This is one of the many problems i have with this card. This is also why alot of people are upset with this card aswell. Not just because of what app's you can use with it, the tuner, or whatever else...this is one too.

The phillips chip i could not get to work in vdub. By this i mean i couldnt get it to produce a picture. It saw the card there...but always a blue screen. Like i had the input wrong but i didnt. It probably was me somehow but that was my result. However what i did see from it's supplied software...was not better than the MSI card....close...but not completely as good. I would say like 95% there.

There has been alot of talk about the msi card having color problems...but i have not experienced this and have only seen few state this. I think that is user related.


Again...i would wait to buy a 9bit+ card right now until summer. Alot of these issue's should be worked out (hopefully) by then. The phillips seems to have some issue's with it aswell from what little i dug up on it in thoughts to buy it.

im curious however. cjv's cap looks the same as mine..almost. my color's are alittle brighter (intended for children on playback...they like more colorfull things usually..who doesnt really). Also mine look alittle more....uhhh..smoother or something...can't really tell but something is different.

I would like to konw your settings cjv...mine are the below for the msi card.

Brightness 5273
Contrast 3291
Hue 4844
Saturation 7693
Sharpness 4 (Anything under 4 looks blurry as he11...also 4 is max)
Gamma 0 (setting Gamma to 1 you loose alot of detail with this card)
ColorEnabled YES

Also i would like to say mix and matching the driver's with the prolink card does NOT work. The tuner just does NOT see a channel. Even using the driver's that are the most up to date from MSI you could very well have the same result's. MMMMMMMMMany people have MMMMMany issue's with the tuner.

a/v synch depends on alot of your system speed/performance and audio card i know. But on a 2ghz pentium with my audigy 2 it still varied greatly on keeping synch past the 35-40 minute mark.

I would like to sum up this post by saying...if you have not seen cjv's sample yet...check it out. If you can beat that on a bt8x8 card please let me know which one. 50usd might be pocket change to sum :-)...but not all :-). Alos that quality is 100% consitant without any hesitation so don't think it will vary (of course digicable and satellite are some of the better source's). If your looking for the quality and might want to wait for better support then the MSI is all you. Maybe you will even have the LUCK that cjv is having and have it work out great...however don't be suprised for 1 second if it doesnt.

Also this card support's PAL if you set the jumpers on the card to PAL.

O yeh...MSI's support BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!! so don't expect ANY help, absolutely NONE, from them...beat the bbs thread's over and over...it's your only hope with this one.

EDIT: o yeh if you want to just use the .inf file's you can extract those...or if you have already installed goto your device manager and tab to the driver's tab, and click driver details...they will all be listed there.

[cjv]

Originally posted by \AX
Ok if you get this card to keep a/v synch...longer than 40 minutes, somebody tell me how.
If your audio sampling is at 41000, try changing it to 48000 stereo uncompressed PCM. I capped a movie from HBO, over 2hrs long, no sync probs whatsoever. Talk about detail...the file was almost 70gigs!!!
It looks like interlacing...but not. Like solid horizontal lines across the screen that is interlaced aswell. Looks weird, alot like interlace
If you are talking about very faint horizontal lines, then I see those too. The thing is, on closer inspection..they are present on my TV direct from the cable box as well. (Cheap cable co's MPEG overcompression). It seems other cap. cards do not pick this up due to over-smoothing.
im curious however. cjv's cap looks the same as mine..almost. my color's are alittle brighter Also mine look alittle more....uhhh..smoother or something...can't really tell but something is different. I would like to konw your settings cjv.
My digital cable sucks. It's really horrible..(but I'm getting satellite soon).
The "sample.avi" was taken with defaults (raised brightness a touch) and downsized..so that people can see it raw before tweaks/filters. I agree with you that sharpness must be raised from the default of 1..but I find 4 produces too much ringing/aliasing?
ColorEnabled YES
I find this produces a _very_ unnatural and oversaturated look. Also seems to amplify colour bleed with my sources. I will check my other setting when I am at home, but they are mostly default.
I would like to sum up this post by saying...if you have not seen cjv's sample yet...check it out. If you can beat that on a bt8x8 card please let me know which one.
I can beat it! :) Actually, that cap was taken the first day I had the card, uncalibrated, and I would classify it as average. (I just posted it because its all I had at the time, it looked decent, and the girls are hot) :)

@\AX: I'd be interested to see a sample of one of your caps...both tweaked and untweaked..from PAL I assume? Contact me via PM if interested.

cjv
EDIT: Here's a 99% defaults unfiltered cap from a premium movie channel (sharpness=2). Encoded from 720x480 HuffYUV -> IVTC -> CCE 2.66 480x480, 1-pass 2530 CBR (NTSC SVCD).
http://members.shaw.ca/cjv99/Sample_SVCD_2.0mb.mpg
http://members.shaw.ca/cjv99/Sample_SVCD_4.5mb.mpg

[Ookami]

Originally posted by markrb
1. Under $100 if possible, but up to $200 if needed.
2. No Firewire card
3. No conversions from the VCR
4. I am not interested in a DV camera, although I did look into them after DDogg said I should. I don't use a camcorder now and never did even when I had one.
5. I would rather capture with as few filters as possible and then tweak anything post capture.

I may want to look into Tivo type ability as well, if possible.

Thanks,
Mark

Hello Mark. Sorry for the slow reply...

After I saw your answers, I think, it would be best that you buy a new GPU with a S-Video in (without tuner etc., because you don't need one, and the internal tuners are always giving you badder quality than the external ones). After a few months (you said that you buy very often new GPU's) you can buy a new one without S-Video in, if you want better quality buy a new standalone capture card instead, if not, just buy the new model of the same manufacturer.

Alternatively, buy a used card standalone capture card...

As for 5., I would never recommend using filters while capturing, it's always better to do it after the capture is done. There are several reasons for that (CPU usage etc. etc.).

Er, sorry, don't know what "Tivo" is. Shame on me.

Hope this helped a bit.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[\AX]

not interested in showing you my cap's...not because i don't want to..but the fact i have moved from Cable, to 56k, and now on a Rockwell 33.6 dialup :-(. I use this computer to surf the web and a mp3/answering machine.

However i will cap some and a couple ready. Hopefully @ christmas (might be too late for ya?) i will have cable back.

I agree with everything you mentioned, atleast to try to see if it help's. Although on my source (DirecTV) the sharpness level of 4 is best. At 3 i still see some blurry effect's. Not really on the people. But like in the backgrounds. Like leave's on tree's in the background sort of blur together. On 4 this doesnt happen anymore than the source is orginally.

My cap's to me, look better on my digital tv after capturing than actually feeding it right to the tv. I have no clue why however this is happening. Maybe because the ADC in the card is better than that of the box??? Doesnt make sense since it is the same sorce..but this is so. Even look's better if i just pass it through the card out through my GPU (radeon 7500 pro) than straight from the box.

Great card. Im about to watch your 2mb clip now. No way im going to get the 4.5 :-)..i still have 18mintues left on the 2mb.

Your cap's look really good. If you keep synch for 2 hours...well your defiantely happy. I would be too.

That part about that "split" line or whatever in your source...I see the same thing in my cap's that are NOT in the source...somehow it might be in the deinterlacing...bu i m not sure.

[dar1us]

Purchasing the MSI TV@nywhere in the UK, i been scouting about looking for a local supplier, and eventually found it here :

http://www.vgicomputers.com/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_MSI_173.html

a bit expensive, 50 quid with everything, avalible to all major countries for extra fee.

hope it helps someone


dar1us

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

as it seems that here are people with awfull sync issues
when capturing to .avi (i know that /AX has them,and i know
that Swan has them....) i would like for us to spare some time and
talk about the subject and gather as much info as we can to (perhaps)
go to the bottom of the thing...(or at least try...)_

here's what we might decide to do:all participants of this thread
(which turned itself from "another what hardware is best" thing to
something way better,with samples and stuff...) might decide (hehe) that it would be nice idea that every one of us states his
hardware specs (not full,but stuff in some relation to capturing)
and OS's we're capturing with and off course capture application itself,and brief description on results considering the sync:
like this:

-cel600,i815board,SB PCI128 sound,bt8x8 device
-win98
-VDub/VDubSync
[no sync issues what so ever->VD will drop/add frames if async
occurs,and VDsync will resample audio and no frame drops/adds will
occur!lipsync is perfect after any capturing duration!]

however,i do have issues with WDM(win2k) on same system (atv2000,virtvcr...)
and it goes out of sync gradually,it starts after cca. 30'!

(some of you mentioned Audigy,some don't mention OS they capture from,etc.
as you see i myself don't have problems as i have dualboot win98/2k
but i'm interested if we can nail the problem to OS or particular
hardware!if everyone capturing on 2k has problems,then that's where it's at!)


i would like this part of thread to try to see some pattern in all this (ie. if particular hardware or particular OS or capture app. cause async)!


also (connected to card testing) i notice that no one took interest in this thread
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39432
and i think we all should have one place with samples (jpeg is enough)
of cards we tested....
if nothing it would be easier to choose cards etc.etc.
some testing pattern should be agreed upon->tests of cross-talk,
tests of color quality,sharpness etc.
(but perhaps this is too much to ask for...?)
anyhow all of you can provide some jpeg's of their capturings,right?


[perhaps this sync issue deserves new thread,but as i already responded here (hehe) i won't be doing it....anyone who wants can copy-paste this inspiring post of mine and that way create new thread]

cheers

Ivo

[cjv]

@^^-+I4004+-^^:

Sounds great. Its your idea, so you should have the honour of starting the new thread :) It can outline your criteria, and hopefully we'll get it made sticky. All of your ideas sound good. My only suggestion...that the very first line in each post consist purely of the name of the card, followed by a blank line ie:
ATI AIW Rage 128

This way we can easily scan each post. Along with system specs and sync issues and solutions, I agree that samples are a good idea, but I disagree that they should be JPEG. At the very least, make them PNG so that no extra JPEG artifacts get introduced. But, I would much prefer something like a small 5 second capture...we just need a place to host them. :)

Of course Huffy would be the best, but its far too large. Maybe we can use something like 2530 CBR MPEG-2, so that even though the clips are compressed, they are all encoded using the same settings...and NO PRE FILTERING ALLOWED!!!!

Ha, there are some variables..but once they are sorted out, the resulting database would contain a WEALTH of useful information.

cjv

[markrb]

Hello Mark. Sorry for the slow reply...

After I saw your answers, I think, it would be best that you buy a new GPU with a S-Video in (without tuner etc., because you don't need one, and the internal tuners are always giving you badder quality than the external ones). After a few months (you said that you buy very often new GPU's) you can buy a new one without S-Video in, if you want better quality buy a new standalone capture card instead, if not, just buy the new model of the same manufacturer.

Alternatively, buy a used card standalone capture card...

As for 5., I would never recommend using filters while capturing, it's always better to do it after the capture is done. There are several reasons for that (CPU usage etc. etc.).

Er, sorry, don't know what "Tivo" is. Shame on me.

Hope this helped a bit.

Cheers,

Mijo.

No problem on the slow reply. Didn't even notice :).

Tivo is a standalone device her in the US that is like a Digital VCR on a Hard Drive. You can watch TV through it and pause live TV while you hit the bathroom or what ever. The device continiues to capture while you pause the playback and then you can return and continue never missing a minute. It can also store your TV for you like a VCR until you remove it.

If I was to get a Stand Alone Capture card and wanted good quality now based on my other answers what would you suggest? Would this be better then any GPU, say Nvidia Ti 4200 based video card? I have been hearing bad things about the ATI cards when it comes to this and would rather stay away from them.

Mark

[dar1us]

Ahem, CJV... read the original poster of that thread, twas' my idea

grr:)


dar1us

[dar1us]

@markrb

TIVO, this is a reasonably clever device, literally a digital video recorder, it looks like a VCR but has hard-disks inside. It converts radio frequencies into a digital recording. Or you can youse a SCART/Composite/S-VHS? input.

It stores - for a cheap modle - 30 hours of video at good enough quality. They are about 100-200 pounds in the UK (100 on ebay).

The quality is superb if your source is good (digital sat/cable...). the kewl thing about TIVO is you can put in more diskspace, re-write the software (runs a simple linux platform). The most AMAZING thing you can do with TIVO, is wait for it...
... ADDING a network card into the support slot (for manufacturer), and plugging it up to your PC and copying the files across to re-encode. Great soloution, what country are you in, would help me work out what kind of products might be avalible to you, if u are in the US, you can get DirecTivo, a TIVO box with built in DirectTV decoder et al. The quality is great. Our equiv in the UK (has been around about 2 years) is SKY+, this is basically the same, but because we are the only country to have it, noone has written much about fiddling. Also, SKY treat there programs much more preciously than any other network in the world probably, they made it illegal for us to buy CAMs for common interfaces to watch it on out PC's (properly - through a PCI DVB-s card).

hope this has helped you


dar1us

[markrb]

@dar1us I do live in the States.
Actually what I was referring to was making my own Tivo type device using a capture card and a PC. They sell kits here to do this that includes the software, but they cards included are pretty low end and the kits are aimed at the uninformed that needs all the gadgets. Like us, just not the uninformed part.


Mark

[cjv]

@dar1us:

I'm sorry, you're right. You'll have to forgive me, I just started really following this specific forum a couple days ago.

cjv

[dar1us]

Dont worry. I was only joking:)

but I agree, MY idea is a good one, thinking of starting a site specifically for cards... test et all, so get posting


dar1us

[fasttimes]

Originally posted by Ookami
After I saw your answers, I think, it would be best that you buy a new GPU with a S-Video in (without tuner etc., because you don't need one, and the internal tuners are always giving you badder quality than the external ones).

I don't know if I agree with that... The Hauppauge cards have great tuners!

[\AX]

Im totally with making a thread/page dedicated to capture result's. I know I will mainly be using my MSI TV@nywhere because I personally feel that the bt8x8 issue's have been pretty much gone through and through again...resulting in a typically good way of capturing with the btwincap or what now.

markrb...if you can make your own tivo like app for a tv card...please do. I know when i looked around for tivo device's to use if i got a tivo i looked alot at the avs forum's and a couple people there were making there own hardware and selling it. I would love to see a TRUE tivo application for a tv card.

On the issue of Tivo...i have a friend who i see very rarely that has been doing that for some time now. He capture's to the hdd's and transffer's it over to the computer...with great result's. however...if you plan to take that approach i have read and have seen here that it only capture's at 480x480...the XXXx480 part is ok for everybody but the 480xXXX part i have different feelings about. I have seen the cap's he has taken off a pc with a tivo setup...looks great. However i don't like the 1:1 aspect ratio and 1:1 frame size. But for being 480x480 i really don't see a better way to do it as far as satellite goes.

I use DirecTV, run Win2k, and capture now (try to atleast) with the TV@nywher. What i have seen it capture, to me is the same as a Tivo capture. However. With the lack of VFW support (atleast above 320x240) i have issue's.

With WDM i have ...uhhh..some success. I can say this, which i think is a fair call, WDM is not as fully developed as WDM is to date. The spec's for WDM are there...just unfortunately i have not seen nearly the same amount of user's as far as a success rate as i have VFW. To me WDM is *going* to be the best one day on the windows platform...however i just don't see the same quality app's i see for VFW. VirtualDub i have NOOOO problems with. AVI_IO obviously has some advantage's since it seems to keep synch on almost any system that can meet the requirements. On the other hand using my bt8x8 card, iuVCR, amCap, and several other WDM applications have not done aswell as the VFW applications. With my bt878a i can capture with NO problems at all in VFW...in WDM this is not the case.

Anyhow im over-typing here.

I would like to know the best way to get my capture's into a .jpg format. I know i can press print screen or capture inside a application...but is this the best way to do it? Is there a *better* way to compress a .bmp (im guessing .bmp) to .jpg. The compression routine's cant be the same in all .jpg codec's right?

For the MSI TV@nyhwere user's here, and mayber the general 9bit+ user's aswell, i have asked some people from the MSI forum to come over hear and read up and see if they cant get/give some answer's. The one's i have seen mostly have the TV@nywhere..but some have had the cx881 and the phillips chip on different boards.

Anyhow who's going to start this thing??? I'm hoping aswell that ^^-+I4004+-^^ does it. If not markrb is surely smart aswell. Just somebody that is not me...because im not so smart :-).

I hope this thing get's going real soon...i really do. I have seen many thread's here and wherever else but only www.tv-cards.com seems to be dedicated to tv cards right now. Mainly the cards there are bt8x8's or GPU's...some are not...but most from what i have seen are. This isnt a bad thing...but for us who are using a newer 9bit+ card that is not the best of place's to start looking for alot of answer's. Me and cjv i know represent the tv@nywhere card here.

I hope a bunch of people jump on this.

Oh btw...i run windows 2000, have a 1.33 ghz k7, 512ram, and asus mobo. I konw the asus mobo has issue's...but with my bt8x8 these issue's are not apparent. So im not blaming anything on the mobo..yet. If someone would tell me that i need a faster system...well i would not disagreee one bit. But it has worked so far with the bt8x8 in great results.

[cjv]

@\AX:

For screen caps..just open in VDub and "copy frame to clipboard". I find its better to PNG instead of JPEG as its lossless. Most have Photoshop/PSP I'm sure, but there's always GIMP for Win32.

About the samples..I've posted a template and my specs in the "Samples" post started by dar1us. Maybe we can start from there, and revise it where necessary. The biggest problem is that the samples will not be permanent. For instance, my @shaw webspace is only 10megs, and I need the space for college assignments as well..so in that case, the samples may have to go.

cjv

[Ookami]

Originally posted by markrb
No problem on the slow reply. Didn't even notice :).

Tivo is a standalone device her in the US that is like a Digital VCR on a Hard Drive. You can watch TV through it and pause live TV while you hit the bathroom or what ever. The device continiues to capture while you pause the playback and then you can return and continue never missing a minute. It can also store your TV for you like a VCR until you remove it.

If I was to get a Stand Alone Capture card and wanted good quality now based on my other answers what would you suggest? Would this be better then any GPU, say Nvidia Ti 4200 based video card? I have been hearing bad things about the ATI cards when it comes to this and would rather stay away from them.

Mark

Hi Mark!

As you didn't noticed the slow reply, I've decided to reply even slower :D .

"Tivo", now I get it. This feature is fairly common with the new GPU's, even more than a year ago every ViVo GPU model had a capture program that supported this. But, there were many cons... You had to use the, mostly, crappy capture program from the manucfaturer. IIRC, it mostly used lossy MPEG2 compression. etc. When I get the new c't's I will try to get some more infos for you, they have fairly good tests... You could also read the vcdhelp capture page for user "tests".

As for ATI. I've heard, also, many good things from the ATI cards. Especially the first Radeon series had a very good ADC chip etc. And it seems that ATI started to write good drivers too (when I had a ATI card this was not the case).

And there are different results with different models (sometimes even with the same models!). This is one of the reason why standalone cards are, mostly, the easier choice. Altough, if you plan to encode your Laserdiscs to low res 1 CD backups, then you should not bother about anything at all :)...

How about buying a card with the new CX chipset? It seems, that the quality is very good, but, sadly there are, again, driver and compatibility issues. But, before, buying be sure to have a long chat with someone who owns the exact SAME model.

I did the same with the Canopus ADVC 100 (DarkSoul can sing a song about it :D )...

-Standalone card

From what I read and hear, the Canopus models are very good. But, only with the ADVC 100 you can disable Macrovision! As for better or not, it's not so easy. In terms of quality, it's mostly better. Again, it's not a black and white answer. If I find the time I will write a long essay, these days, about the pros and cons of the capture cards vs. GPU's.

Take everything I write with a grain of salt (or mountain)! It's always the best to see something with your own eyes! If you can, go to the computer shop and watch the results...

Gosh, again, a very long reply.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[Swan]

I appreciate the Tivo explanation, didn't know what it was before. It sounds like the Thompson recorder I saw in a store recently. It had a hard drive to record TV on. I asked the clerk if it was possible to transfer the recorded video to a computer and he said it was, through Firewire.

I also checked out one of these "DVD Recorders" that are more and more common sight in shops and ads. I pestered a clerk into hooking it up for me, so I could check out the menus, etc. I spent an hour reading the manual. It was a Panasonic DMR-E30 which recorded onto DVD-R and DVD-Ram disks. When I said it was a shame that it could not handle re-writable media (I mean, who wants to capture a watch-once-throw-away show on a DVD-write-once-disk, as much as they cost?) the clerk said no DVD Recorders on the market handles DVD-RW.

The brochure stated that one could put up to 1 hr worth of video on a DVD-R using the highest quality recording preset. I said to the clerk "what if you want to record a movie using the highest preset, this will not be possible!" . He assured me the highest quality was not necessary, but even though I have not seen any samples from the DVD Recoder, I think it's up to the user of a gadget as expensive as that to be able to decide just what quality he/she wants on the recordings. If the machine sets a limit like that and costs 1 419,21 US dollars (on sale!), then I'm not interested. :)

The clerk then gave me a brochure with the big brother of the DMR-E30, DMR-HS2, which has a hard drive of 40 gigs, plus a DVD-R/DVD-RAM writer. At least this gives the opportunity to record eveyday recordings to the HD, watch and erase, and burn the more valuable shows on a DVD-R.

I can tell that these gadgets do just about what I already do, capture Mpeg-2, with the difference that a capture card and a decent Mpeg-2 capturing software costs nothing, compared to a DVD Recorder. Even if you throw in a DVD writer, it still will cost less than a DVD Recorder. Plus, you only get 4 quality settings to choose from (different bitrates, I assume) and you can not tweak GOP settings or Motion Estimation settings with a DVD Recorder. But I'm sure the quality is amazing. This is the successor to VHS for sure, but I think DVD Recorders are both too expensive and too limited to buy right now.

I did the same with the Canopus ADVC 100 (DarkSoul can sing a song about it )...
I wish he'd sing his song some more. ;) I am very interested in the ADVC too. One thing I wonder is how one sets the level on the audio?
How does the ADVC regulate the level on the incoming audio? From working with digital audio sampling (transferring LP's to CD) I know all about how difficult and crucial it is to leave headroom so no clipping *ever* occurs and at the same time, not set a too low level either. Is this configurable on the ADVC?

Also, is it possible to screw up the sync on the files by editing?
What if one opens the DV compressed avi from the ADVC in Vdub and wants to extract a portion (using DirectStream Copy). Can this screw up the sync?
Or, opening the video in Vdub, extracting the wav, normalizing and such in BeSweet, then muxing it back into the video. Will this be risky in respect to audio/video sync?

/Swan

[srsstvs]

Sorry, I don't get into editing stuffs so can't really answer your "advanced" questions. I use Ulead Video Studio 4 (Basic) to capture and I use hardware setting, which is 720x480 and you can select audio setting from 8 bit to whatever is available in Ulead. Although I've never tried to make comparisons.

I suggest you post your questions in their forum under ADVC products, someone will be able to answer your questions. Their forums are pretty helpful. Good luck! ;)

[Ookami]

@Swan

Grin. The "clipping" question was the one that I wanted to ask DarkSoul these days... :) I've bothered him with many questions and he's very busy, so... It occured to me a few days ago when I thought about the audio in.

As for your other questions, I can only answer what I have read, so it would be better for someone who owns the card to answer it.

Download the technical infos PDF, there are some more details. For A/V sync, there is the "lock audio and video" option. Also be sure to read a bit in the official forums, there are many answers too.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[Swan]

@Ookami
I have read the manual and the specs and have lurked on the Canopus Forums for a week. The questions we have are not answered anywhere. :)
I have registered and posted on the Canopus ADVC forum now.
Hopefully, the answers will be what I want to hear. I'd love to have a gadget like that to play with this Christmas. :)

/Swan

[markrb]

@Ookami I still didn't notice how slow the response was so this time it should be much slower. :)

BTW I do want to capture and convert to 1 disc, but to DVD not VCD.
Possibly 3 disc SVCD, but never 1 disc VCD.

I had my hand on the mouse ready to click buy on a DVD-R drive yesterday and hesitated. I am so ready for one, but I keep missing the great sales.

I have to wait until after Christmas at the earliest now.

What is the price range of a decent stand alone capture card anyway? Are there good ones for under $100, under $200? Are the inexpensive ones crap?

Mark

[\AX]

Im not sure what kind of dvd-r drive you guy's are talking about. Do you mean a dvd-r drive that is like standalone vcr??? or one that goes into your computer??? I know that the standalone ones are not, like Swan's wondering, that great of quality. There good...but like the DV camcoders they suffer quality problems. I have seen one standalone dvdr device in work...and was not impressed. To me it seemed exactly like sony's MicroMV. The MicroMV has some great qualities but the biggest draw back is that it ONLY record's to mpeg-2 (maybe mpeg-1 i didnt check that out). When recording to mpeg-2 there is always a concern of editable frame's. Like with the MicroMV which a Best Buy salesman's pitched to me one day, has serious issue's with editing. He said that him and a couple other's tested out all the camcorder's and he personnally is into DV. He said when he tried to edit the MPEG-2 stream that the MicroMV recorded it was a headache. Only certain frame's would edit correctly and synch issue's did arrive when he would try to edit out a clip in the file.

Ive never gave the standalone player's much a chance after i saw it record that one time. It seemed to me like if you wanted to record to mpeg-2 you might want to consider something else. The standalone dvd-r/rw device's, like the MicroMV, use only one codec. So you must have that codec on your system to even edit it. You can't change the codec you want to capture with. So if you find that the one that your dvd-r standalone is recording to is inferior...then your out of luck. The MicroMV is the same way it has to have the supplied codec and you can't change it. That is another drawback to me and would seem to most.

The canopus seems' really good. If i get the extra money someday i will try that or a later device. I imagine you can capture to atleast a DV .avi codec with it...maybe?

Newer capture cards for computer's seem on the up and up. With my and cjv's card you MUST have a faster system to get good result's. It seem's you need something faster than the 1.33 K7 atleast. If you got that...then this card seems to be a good choice. Of course you will have to use WDM.

Capturing a frame in VDUB with this card, like mentioned, is a good idea. But the frame will only be 320x240...so im not too sure how well that represent's quality. But im thinking i should capture in something else and just capture a frame in VDUB from that capture?


Money seems' to be a issue. If you got alot of money...then you could try anything. But like me i was, and still am strapped in the 200- usd market. Im not too sure what could be good in the 200- usd market for capturing beside's a tv card. I could see how a Canopus could give great result's...but it also seem's that if you pay 200- for any device wether it be a Canopus or whatever you might be in the market for a tv card. I have had a chance to use the DC1000 before and it doesnt seem to me that i can get great result's with that unless i have a costly camera/device to supply as a source.

Back on the issue of a standalone dvd-r/rw device...might want to try it but you will be limited to 1 codec to capture with which seem's limited.

@Swan...i couldnt imagine someone telling me that i wouldnt need the highest possible quality. That seem's to be rediculous. I mean would you buy a house that someone say's you don't need the highest quality framework to have a good sturdy house? That seem's to me really weird someone would say that...almost like they are hiding something.

[dar1us]

I dont think you will hear a bad thing about the ADVC1000 apart from the price. It's a great piece of kit if you are doing analogue captures. But... as you live in the US, it may be worth your while picking up the MSI card, tv@nywhere, new 10-bit controller... All sorts, CJVs captures look promising (would prefer Hi-Res DivX to show quality but, guess there aint' enough room for everything.

The MSI card is like $50USD or Canadians'. Not sure, but it is cheap considering the quality. It is good enough to do everything you want by the sound of it, not sure whether it is really viable to fork out for that ADVC when that little MSI will suffice. Handles everything you want by the sound of it.

MSI TV@nywhere (http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/per/per/pro_per_detail.php?UID=342&MODEL=MS-8876)

Pictuire of it (http://www.msi.com.tw/images/product_img/per_img/8876.jpg)

Apologies if this card has already been discussed in depth to mark...


dar1us

[cjv]

@dar1us: (3 seconds each)

Raw unfiltered/unresized
http://members.shaw.ca/cjv99/sample_raw_720x480_2.1mb.avi
Been through the filterchain :)
http://members.shaw.ca/cjv99/sample_filtered_1.1mb.avi

cjv
PS. If you want longer clips, PM me upload details.

[Ookami]

@Swan

Thanks a bunch for your help... Please, let us all know of the answers you get (maybe even opening a new thread, this one is getting unreadable).

I will buy my ADVC in January or February so I have more time :) .

@Mark

>What is the price range of a decent stand alone capture card anyway? Are there good ones for under $100, under $200? Are the inexpensive ones crap?

What's decent? What's good? It's always this "What's a good car?" questions :) . It depends on what you want! If you want to play around, then a standalone card is overkill... If you want to convert analog formats for money then a card like the ADVC is the least you can buy. I believe that a old card like the DC30 can be buyed very cheap (used). If you are doing this for yourself, maybe a ADVC 100 is overkill, but it also depends on how much do you want to spend. BTW, if you buy a ADVC you have to buy a Firewire card too and you should look for a better DV codec than the MS one.

Also, my experience and knowledge is too small to answer such questions correctly. I would not like that you buy something and then be dissapointed.

Before I buyed my Asus 3800 I've searched the Usenet, Internet, all video forums I could find, official forums, downloaded clips, looked in PC shops etc. I wanted to buy a DC 10 or similar card until I read all thos "Help" and bug report postings on the various forums (long time ago, when e.g. the 74 min. bug still existed). Just until the end I've discovered the quality of my Asus card. But, as my soundcard is crappy, I've had many quality problems from the audio side...

One thing for sure, if you have a standalone card, you mostly don't have to worry about buggy drivers (ok, they are buggy but not in the BT/CX, ATI etc. way), sync issues, bad audio ADC's (cheap soundcards) etc.

But, you have to worry about other things, like "building your PC around the capture card (the internal ones)" etc.

@\AX

What are you aiming at? Of course, everyone wants the highest quality. But with a few hundred bucks you cannot possibly have "highest" quality. Even "I want highest quality for 200$" cannot be answered, because there are many other factors too (compatibility, usability, wide range usage etc.).

@cjv

This looks very promising. How about a lossless and untouched clip somewhere (still interlaced etc.)? Altough, thank you already, for this clip.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[Swan]

@Ookami
Sure thing!

@dar1us
I dont think you will hear a bad thing about the ADVC1000 apart from the price. It's a great piece of kit if you are doing analogue captures. But... as you live in the US, it may be worth your while picking up the MSI card, tv@nywhere, new 10-bit controller..
Yes, but with the MSI card, I'd still have to use the audio card for capturing the audio, just like I am doing now. What I am looking for is a bulletproof way of getting high-quality (yet compressed) video with perfect sync. In a format such as DV-compressed video in an Avi-container, that is editable and easy to export to DVD-ready Mpeg-2. The MSI may offer better visual quality than a 8-bit BTchip-card, but it won't do anything to combat the a/v sync problems when capturing in avi-format.

My biggest concern about the Canopus ADVC is the audio levels issue I wrote about earlier. If these levels can't be set, then I'm kinda worried about what the device does, if it has a limiter of some sort built-in, etc. I'd like to be able to control the levels, not have some auto-mechanism doing it behind my back. :)

@\AX
Im not sure what kind of dvd-r drive you guy's are talking about. Do you mean a dvd-r drive that is like standalone vcr??? or one that goes into your computer??? I was checking out a DVD Recorder, a standalone device. Not one that goes into the computer, i.e. not a "regular" DVD writer.

exactly like sony's MicroMV. The MicroMV has some great qualities but the biggest draw back is that it ONLY record's to mpeg-2 (maybe mpeg-1 i didnt check that out).
Yep, that's what the DVD Recorders do. Editing Mpeg-2 is very very hard (it was not designed for it) and often demands expensive tools. The device I checked out could only write to DVD-R/DVD-RAM, and although you could "edit", according to the manual, it's more a case of leaving stuff out of the DVD's TOC, if you know what I mean. The video is captured directly to the DVD-R disk, so "editing" is not "editing", just excluding the portions you don't want to see from the file system on the DVD.

But, I am not knocking these devices. I think it's the future, they just need to get cheaper and more flexible.
The Panasonic has an auto-function for regulating the incoming audio-levels, but it could also be unlocked and you can set levels manually.

Ive never gave the standalone player's much a chance after i saw it record that one time. It seemed to me like if you wanted to record to mpeg-2 you might want to consider something else. The standalone dvd-r/rw device's, like the MicroMV, use only one codec. So you must have that codec on your system to even edit it
Of course, for a tweaker and experienced computer-capturer, a DVD Recorder is too limited. But the majority of the population will never have the skills or the interest to learn how to capture the way we do. For them a DVD Recorder is great. And how convenient it must be.

For me, I can't count the times a recording has been screwed up because of a bad capture application, an installation I made that messed something up in the Directshow filters, etc, etc. With a dedicated, standalone device for video recording, it would be easier. Not to mention how great it would be to finally be able to exchange high-quality recordings with friends and family. No more crappy VHS copies. I long for the day when everyone uses some form of digital recording from the TV. No more need for NTSC-->PAL conversions, etc.:)

Regading the codec.. If the device you mention, like the Panasonic I checked out, captures DVD-compliant Mpeg-2 (as the Panasonic does) and you want to play a DVD it has created, on your computer, then yes, of course, you need a software DVD player (which includes a Mpeg-2 decoding filter).

So you must have that codec on your system to even edit it. You can't change the codec you want to capture with. So if you find that the one that your dvd-r standalone is recording to is inferior...then your out of luck.
I think you misunderstood that part (editing). If the MicroMV records in Mpeg-2 format, then it must produce a Mpeg-2 file that is compliant to the Mpeg-2 specification. I'm sure it is compliant, Sony would not sell a device that does not follow the specification and which produces illegal Mpeg-2's. If you import the Mpeg-2 recorded with a standalone DVD Recorder into the computer, you do not need the specific Mpeg-2 encoding codec from the standalobe device to edit it. In fact, I don't think the DVD Recorders use a codec at all. It's more likely that they have hardware Mpeg-2 encoding. They offer timeshift functions and such, so a software encoder would be too shaky, I think.

All you'd need to edit a Mpeg-2 from a DVD Recorder is a Mpeg-2 editing program and unless it supplies an Mpeg-2 playback filter, you'd need that too. I have never seen a DVD from a DVD Recorder, but I assume they look just like a regular DVD, in terms of the file system and so on. There'll be vobs on them that you'll have to rip, and so forth.

But any Mpeg-2 playback filter/application would do. This is the beauty of Mpeg-2. In Mpeg-2, it has been defined exactly how a valid Mpeg-2 file should be made. It doesn't matter how or what method, hardware or software you use to *encode* the file *as long as the resulting Mpeg-2 file is compliant; that it follows the Mpeg-2 specification. The decoder has been defined too. A valid Mpeg-2 decoder must be able to decode any Mpeg-2 that follows the standard. This is a system designed for total interchangeability, as opposed to for example Mjpeg.

But yes, if the hardware Mpeg-2 encoder in the DVD Recoder gives what you think are inferior encoding results, then you has been screwed.

I seriously doubt any of the main brand DVD Recorders produce poorly looking Mpeg-2 though. Considering how much a DVD-R can hold, 4.7 GB, and that a disc is just enough for a 1 hr recording in the highest quality preset on the Panasonic, the video bitrate must be very high. I'm convinced the recorded video looks fantastic. My concern with these devices is that they're too expensive at the present and not flexible.

Swan...i couldnt imagine someone telling me that i wouldnt need the highest possible quality. That seem's to be rediculous. I mean would you buy a house that someone say's you don't need the highest quality framework to have a good sturdy house? That seem's to me really weird someone would say that...almost like they are hiding something.
You've never heard a sales person talking like that? :)
I never trust sales people and find it amusing when I know more than they do. Without bragging, it does happen. Often. ;)
It's even more amusing because I am a woman and normally the sales people assume I know nothing because of my gender. It was funny to see the clerk's face when I started talking about I-frames, bitrates, resolutions and stuff like that. :)

I told the clerk what I thought (that YES, this DOES matter and YES is it crap that one can't record a movie in the highest quality if one wants too). You know what else he told me? That I was the first to ask to see the Panasonic in action. Other people just buy the stuff, without even checking it out. What does that tell ya? Not enough people put pressure the sales people, or the manufacturers, to be honest about what their products do, what the flaws are, etc. :(

/Swan

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

S>I'd like to be able to control the levels, not have some auto-mechanism doing it behind my back.

as with everything in life perfection is NON EXISTANT!

but as i remember this was discussed on my NG and i'll see if i can dig it up.....

[Darksoul71]

@Swan:
Wanna hear me sing ? Better not...or only if I´m drunk :D

One thing I wonder is how one sets the level on the audio?
How does the ADVC regulate the level on the incoming audio? From working with digital audio sampling (transferring LP's to CD) I know all about how difficult and crucial it is to leave headroom so no clipping *ever* occurs and at the same time, not set a too low level either. Is this configurable on the ADVC?

Hm, I never thought about this but you´re correct. Unfortunately the ADVC100 is NOT configurable. As I NEVER experienced clipped audio when editing my audio streams using Sound Forge. I normaly fade in & out, do some denoise and equalizing. You can see clipped audio in SF very easy. I think the ADVC does some "auto leveling" as sometimes seen on some cassette recorders. May be I´m wrong......

Feel free to e-mail Canopus about his.



Also, is it possible to screw up the sync on the files by editing?

Never had any problems with this....


What if one opens the DV compressed avi from the ADVC in Vdub and wants to extract a portion (using DirectStream Copy). Can this screw up the sync?

No, and VDub is my FAVOURITE editing software. Even better than Adobe Premiere :P


Or, opening the video in Vdub, extracting the wav, normalizing and such in BeSweet, then muxing it back into the video. Will this be risky in respect to audio/video sync?

Normaly not. I´m normaly extracting wave from DV AVI with VDub, processing audio with Soundforge, encoding to LAME VBR MP3 and muxing with Nandub. I never ever experienced async audio.

But on this "audio input level" I´m not shure......

-D$

[Swan]

@Darksoul71
Wanna hear me sing ? Better not...or only if I´m drunk
As fiiiine as you look, I'd wanna hear you sing, no matter what you sound like. You look an awful lot like that Hunk-o-funk Wesley Snipes. Yum, yum! ;)

enoise and equalizing. You can see clipped audio in SF very easy. I think the ADVC does some "auto leveling" as sometimes seen on some cassette recorders. May be I´m wrong......
Hmm.. Interesting. Do you capture from a cable/analog/satellite receiver? At what level do the levels normally peak when capuring from TV?
Yes, it must have some sort of compressor/limiter. It's the only explanation. I'll write to the support at Canopus and ask about it, if I don't get a reply in their ADVC forums.

I've read some complaints in their forums about low audio levels.
This is also what I experienced when I toyed around with a Dazzle DV Hollywood Bridge about six months ago.

But you are extremely pleased with the ADVC-100, right?
I've read that DV compression is similar to Mjpeg. Would you agree? Do you get top quality video from the ADVC? Good enough to re-encode to DVD compliant Mpeg-2?

Does the audio ever go out of sync? Do you use the Locked Audio mode all the time? This quote from the manual sounds so weird to me:
Locked Audio Mode — toggles
between capturing locked audio or
unlocked audio. If you are capturing
a lot of long clips, you should leave
this switch in the OFF position to
make sure the audio stays locked to
the video.

??

Glad to hear you use VirtualDub and that it's safe to extract the wav from the captured files and do some editing on them. Then that concern is no longer a concern for me.

Have you found any software with a scheduler that can control the ADVC?

Many questions, I'm sorry. :)

/Swan

PS For everybody interested in Locked Audio, this is a good place to read more: http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html#LockedAudio

[markrb]

Well my Mom just offered to buy me a capture card for Christmas. Only thing is it can't be much over $50. Would the MSI TV@nywhere be my best bet for that price range?
I don't really care about the tuner.
I only want to capture from S-Video or Composite sources to an AVI.

Thanks,
Mark

[dar1us]

I would gess so, and btw, I asked for one of those too from my mom:)

Hope you have fun and a good xmas

see our collected samples at http://www.aa981752.force9.co.uk/


dar1us

[cjv]

Originally posted by markrb
Well my Mom just offered to buy me a capture card for Christmas. Only thing is it can't be much over $50. Would the MSI TV@nywhere be my best bet for that price range?
I don't really care about the tuner.
I only want to capture from S-Video or Composite sources to an AVI.
@markrb:
Basically anything with the CX23881 appears to be the best around right now. That would be the MSI, the XCapture, or the new Asus one. You mention only SVideo/composite, maybe you live in U.S. and can get the XCapture for $39.
Check out this thread (these guys appear impressed)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=182360

cjv

[markrb]

Thanks very much. I think Mom will be pleased. She was afraid that she wouldn't have anything to give to me this year.
I usually have everything I need or it's just too expensive for her.
I think I will ask for the PixelView card since I have no need for a tuner and according to that thread the tuner on the TV@nywhere is poor anyway.

Thanks,
Mark

[Ookami]

>I've read that DV compression is similar to Mjpeg. Would you agree? Do you get top quality video from the ADVC? Good enough to re-encode to DVD compliant Mpeg-2?

IIRC, hhe very same site (Adam Wilt) you've linked explained DV and MJPEG. You're probably refering tho the same answer (for the lazy people, see below).

As I've asked DarkSoul the same question, I can confirm that. He said that his ADVC resultst are better than anything else he got with his other cards (like Voodoo 3 3500 TV, Elsa Erazor 3, Asus Deluxe, MSI GeForce 3 Ti200, etc.).

As he wrote the answer, he was reencoding his captures to MPEG2.

Also, DarkSoul and many others are very pleased with the quality. As for reencoding, of course, for many video editing people DV is the format they use in the editing process.

@Mark

Glad, you've made your decision. Hope you'll have much fun and sucess.

Can I transcode between DV and motion-JPEG, MPEG-2, or DV50?
You can. Depending on the amount of compression used, you might not even see a difference.
It seems to be generally accepted that M-JPEG compression at 3:1 is roughly equivalent in quality to DV's 5:1 compression. It's also worth remembering that DV and JPEG are both DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) codecs; they tend to have similar artifacts and effects on pictures. (DV gets its additional compressive efficiency through block-level optimization of quantizing tables, whereas JPEG uses a fixed quantizing table for an entire image).

Thus, one might venture to guess that whether one is compressing via 5:1 DV or 3:1 JPEG, similar amounts of damage are done to the image, and that transcoding between these two compression schemes might cause less degradation than the initial compression caused.

Indeed, at NAB '96 Panasonic had hidden away in a corner a most interesting demonstration. A D-5 (uncompressed ITU-R-601) signal was fed to a component digital switcher on input #1. It was also taken, compressed via the DVCPRO codec, decompressed, and fed to input #2. The processed signal was further fed through a Tektronix ProFile DDR using JPEG at around 2.5-3:1 compression, and played back to input #3. That signal was again fed through a DVCPRO compression/decompression chain, and brought up on input #4.

A wipe pattern was set up, and by pressing buttons one could see a split-screen of any two signals on the switcher. Remember, this was a digital component switcher, and the monitor was one of those gorgeous Panasonic digital monitors where the image data stay digital all the way to the modulating grid (really, these are amazing monitors; if you haven't seen one, you don't know how good video can look).

The original D-5 image was deep, quiescent, lucent: as good as 525/59.94 images get. The first DVCPRO-processed image showed the usual sorts of DV artifacts we've all come to know and love, but it was still pretty darn good; you had to look closely to see any degradation.

But that was it: the further stages of processing showed no noticeable difference. The initial DV compression had already thrown away the troublesome transients and difficult details. What survived the initial DV codec was a DCT-friendly image that suffered very little from further compression in the ProFile, and the ProFile-processed image ran through the final DVCPRO codec with ease.

I'm not saying the images were identical; there were probably minor truncations and losses occurring in the ProFile's JPEG codec and in the final DVCPRO codec. However, these were very minor and visually imperceptible. Because the entire signal path was digital, the image stayed in registration throughout; there was no shifting of 8x8 DCT block boundaries nor were there level shifts and noise introductions as could occur in analog connections, both of which could degrade further compression. Moreover, the compression on the ProFile was very mild; it was at least as good, visually speaking, as the DVCPRO compression.

So, it can be done. Bear in mind that the level of JPEG compression used is a big determinant of whether you can transcode successfully. If you're using low JPEG compressions of 3:1, 2:1, or less, and transcode in the digital domain (through a serial digital connection or software conversion, rather than via an analog connection to a JPEG codec), you will see very, very little degradation of the image. If you dump your DV data into the JPEG world via an analog connection, or if you use higher compression rates, you will see a progressively higher amount of degradation.

Even so, there's always the risk of some loss. As a fellow said at SIGGRAPH '86, "Dealing with floating-point numbers is like shoveling sand: when you pick up a handful, you get a little dirt, and some sand trickles out..." and the same can be said about moving between different codecs.

I-frame-only MPEG-2 is said to be comparable to DV format compression at the same bit rate. Thus 25 megabit MPEG-2 should yield results (and transcoding errors) similar to DV, and 50 Megabit MPEG-2 should be comparable to DV50.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[\AX]

@Swan...about high quality camera's meeting the standards

You are correct, however i did read in pc magazine (dont know the validivity of the source of course), that the Sony MicroMV DID HAVE to have the supplied codec installed. I might be misunderstanding you on what you said...probably am. Anyways, it said without that codec you couldnt edit it. The also said that was silly and they couldnt understand it but overall it's a good camers.

However, the friend and other people i know that work at H.H. Greg here in the states...say that the camera is crap. They didnt try to edit at all. They just filmed customer's and stove's in the store and they said it had to one of the worst picture qualities they have seen in that price range. They, all told me i would be better off with the cheaper Panasonic model (cant remember exact model name).

Again i probably did misunderstand you. However what PC Magazine said in their DV issue (like 9 months ago or so), is that you have to have that codec. So here is were my ? comes in. Is there a "possible" way to get it to the pc WITHOUT that codec? From what i got from pc mag. made me think that the standard of mpeg-2 format is not being upheld with this camera.

I was thinking about getting my public access channel here locally into getting one. Howeve i don't want to have to be held down my that codec. So im wondering if you HAVE to have it or there is a work around.

The PA channel up north of me just got a (another...first one somebody broke) GL2. I like that camera alot. However, the MicroMV and camera's that small really appeal to me. Very portable and there, or so it would seem, is less of a chance to break. However i do know that is dependant on the person and quality of the camera but in general it would seem like that to me.

I dont do BIG budget stuff with DV camera's. When i got a DV200 i felt compelled to try variuos one's out. The sony DV2000 i like the best so far...however it wasnt mine due to price. So i must go with a model that is lower end. (when i get the money again)

Im obviously not experienced with DV Cameras...but i have read many times over at DV.COM that a Cannon Optura (is that the right name?) is one of the best there is to have at the -1000usd price ranges.

I know that software has alot to do with also beside's the gain level's and so forth of a camera. I have not heard of any of the applications that Ookami and other's are mentioning. I have only used the Avid DV Xpress 3.0 since i got a train cd with it (which btw helps ALOT).

I have tried premier...ehh..i dont know. I feel like adobe is better with the photoshop so i dont use it. Plus i didnt like the interface.

I have tried FC3 pro...I liked that but i dont have a MAC at home so i really never got a chance to get anywhere with it.

Swan i hope you get a good DV camera if you decide to buy one. I have yet to get one but want one real bad. Also, which you probably know, it is NEVER recommended to use your camera as a deck. That is another $$$ issue i have since i dont have another 500usd to dish out on a DECENT deck. 500usd isnt alot either for a deck..the ones at the PA channel are only like 1400usd and those even at that price are not considered HIGHER end. Dunno maybe we could swap some footage. I got some REDICULOUS stuff we made for the PA channel that we never aired.

Probably typing too much...but i got to add this. (one day i will get a fast connection and put it on the web).
The show was set as 70 disco rat's living well past their time in the new millenium. Some of the stuff was really funny. The theme wasnt my idea, since i really dont like disco, however it worked out well. The show was like 5% JackAzz, 50% Seinfeild, and 40% Married With Children. The other 5% i really cant compare to anything else.
We did one scene, which falls into that unknow 5%, and to be honest how i type it here is not nearly as funny as it is when you watch it. Anyhow, we did a scene where I dressed up in the 70's cloths from the thrift store, and everybody else was totally dressed like they were TRUE Pro's and were somebody in the whole hollywood production scene. So there dressed up holding lights, booms, mirror's, and some other stuff. They filmed me and my friend at a bar. Well i went in, totally into a bar that is "hip" with the "in" crowd as far as "yuppies" and "frat boys and sor. girls". It was a total shocker to them because we just busted in there like we were somebody. I sat down at the bar carrying a satellite reciever and the remote for it. I pretended like it was my date. Totally. The bar tender laughed when she saw me...then she looked really confused when i said "Can i have a double scottch here for my lady friend" and i was pointing at the satellite reciever. Well i sat there...in a room that nobody was sitting down because there was no room...acting totally like it was my date. Anyhow i dropped the remote...and my friend who went in like 5 minute's before us who was TOTALLY fitting in with the crowd...made a move on my "date". When i bent down to pick up the remote i could see that we where NOT going unnoticed..also i saw my friend move in so when i leaned up i got all offensive. Anyhow, wound up we got kicked out, not because of the zhit me and my friend where doing...but my friend almost burnt someone with the light.

It really doesnt sound funny when you read it..but if you see it does.

Anyhow that is why i like video :-P. Because you can put your self in it and make total fun of yourself and friends and not worry about a drop. The video capturing which im sure you and everyone else here knows...i only do for children. This is EXTREMELY fun dont get me wrong...but not as fun as watching your stupid self making a azz out of your self.

Anyhow hate me for posting that...but i really take pride in that. It was something i did all for Video. I truely take pride in it...that is why i posted it. Which btw this is the frist time i posted it in such detailed now after it has happened.

That was just a idea of mine that came true...all due to the greatness of Video. For that, i will always find Video in all fields something of a mysterious, yet pleasurable, AWESOME way to spend your time.

Also for if it wasnt boards like these and ALL these helpfull, honest, and friendly people here and everywhere else...i would not know aslittle as i do just to get by.

Thank you to everyone for actually taking the time to sit in front of a light bulb in a box, with a board with buttons, and help people of the world with all your knowledge knowing you will most likely never meet them. This is truely a statement of how humanity can truely be great.

Sincerely \AX

(what the...i know im typing too much now. When i posted this the first time like 10 sentence's from 3 different parts of my post got switched around completely at random)

[Swan]

@\AX You are correct, however i did read in pc magazine (dont know the validivity of the source of course), that the Sony MicroMV DID HAVE to have the supplied codec installed. I might be misunderstanding you on what you said...probably am. Anyways, it said without that codec you couldnt edit it
No, its' my bad. I misunderstood you. I thought the Sony MicroMV was a DVD Recorder, not a digital video camera.

/Swan

PS No news from Canopus regarding the audio levels. I have also mailed support. No reply yet. Plus, someone else has posted in the Canopus forums, asking the same question I did about regulating the incoming audio levels.

[prom3theus]

Do you really think the aiw quality is bad? All I've ever used is an aiw, and I just ordered a radeon 7500.

I'm not sure what qualities you are trying. Have you tried capturing at basically RGB bitrates? I capture at 640x480, and at about 20MB/sec (1.2G/minute), and it seems like good quality, but I can't compare.

What are your results for same bitrate captures? Can you capture something fairly consistent, like CNN/MSNBC live news, and send up two pictures at the same bitrate, no compression, just single frame bmps?
Or if they are too big, how about jpgs compressed equally? I'd be really interested in seeing a quality comparison, as I'd sell the aiw in a second if I thought I could get something better without much price difference. But right now, I can capture video without frame drops at its highest settings and 640x480.

[cjv]

I captured with my AIW 7500 for over 6 months, and in that time I was happy because I never really gave it much thought. Thus, if you're happy, then there is nothing wrong with ATI.

Yes there is better quality available (CX2388x, BT8x8) and better compatibility (BT8x8).

I will say, though, since I've stopped capturing with the ATI, they've released 2 sets of WDM drivers. I did some short tests, and surpisingly, they have improved quality considerably. The ones that came with Catalyst 2.4 (not 2.5) appear to be the best. Even though XP and win2k use the same drivers, XP appears to give better quality. (but i refuse to keep XP on my main computer) :)

The bad points: radeons have no sharpness control, and they already blur the image quite a bit. It's hard to describe, but they can make the image "flat" looking and kinda 2D. (this was my biggest complaint, and this is much less noticable with the 2.4 WDM drivers). They have no built-in comb filter that I'm aware of, so crosstalk is even a problem when using the S-Video input.

If you already have a video card, you can get a BT8x8 card for probably $30-40. With defaults, it will have the same/better quality as the ATI, but with tweaks should perform much better. For $50-100, you can try one of the cards based on the new CX2388x chips. They have poor compatibility right now, but give great quality, allow tweaking, and have a bright future.

I don't have my ATI set up for capturing right now, but I think dar1us set up a web page with lots of samples. I did 2 captures of the same program: 1 with a MSI and the other with my Radeon. You can check them out (and many others) if you want, look for the "samples" thread.

I always capture samples at 720x480, HuffYUV, YUY2. Oh yea, check out a.b.m and download some short samples along with the NFO. Some of those captures are amazing...they sometimes list the card/capture settings used. You can see what is possible with a great source.

cjv

[fasttimes]

Originally posted by cjv
For $50-100, you can try one of the cards based on the new CX2388x chips. They have poor compatibility right now, but give great quality, allow tweaking, and have a bright future.
Could you describe what you mean by "allow tweaking"?.:confused: What control do the OEM's drivers give you on the CX2388x based cards, vs the control BTWinCap drivers give the BT8x8 based cards.

[cjv]

Sorry, by tweaking I just mean that with the ATI, you cannot adjust sharpness, and with the CXxxxx you can. Most feel this is a _very_ important control/tweak that many cards lack (all ATI AIW ones for sure).

AFAIK, there are no improved drivers for CXxxxx other than the OEM ones, but the OEM ones work quite well.

cjv

[fasttimes]

Cool. :D So, maybe the OEM drivers won't be the horror that OEM BT8x8 drivers have always been! I've been looking at the CX23880 based cards, but the lack of open-source drivers is/was a big concern to me. :scared:

[cjv]

The way I see it is like this. The developers of Dscaler are working hard to support this chipset, because many HTPC users love the improved quality, but need Dscaler support. Once Dscaler has good enough support, this will probably the suggested chipset. Then, once Cxxxxx has replaced many BT8x8 cards for high end users, enough people will have them that there will be demand for improved capture drivers, tweakers, etc..much like BT8x8 has now.

cjv

[Darksoul71]

@Swan: Wow, it took me over a month to think about an answer....
Well, not really :D
I was very busy with my diploma but yesterday I had my presentation and now I´ve more time.
As fiiiine as you look, I'd wanna hear you sing, no matter what you sound like. You look an awful lot like that Hunk-o-funk Wesley Snipes. Yum, yum!

But unfortunately I haven´t got your "swan white" color of skin ;)

Do you capture from a cable/analog/satellite receiver?

I capture from cable using my Panasonic VCR as tuner via SVHS.

[At what level do the levels normally peak when capuring from TV?
/QUOTE]
Hm, that is a good question. I´m currently compressing from AVI->MP2 with BeSweet from a ADVC100 capture and it reports 13,6 dB overall track gain. I never experienced any clipping / compressing as both Soundforge and BeSweet always reported a normalized to 0dB which wouldn´t be possible with "clipped/compressed" audio. But I still agree that there must be a audio limiter. You could still use a mixing panel between your AV source and ADVC100 to avoid loosing any dynamic information in Audio.

[QUOTE]I've read that DV compression is similar to Mjpeg. Would you agree? Do you get top quality video from the ADVC? Good enough to re-encode to DVD compliant Mpeg-2?

I would agree that I get top video quality from ADVC100. On this DV vs. MJPEG I´m not quite shure. Previously I used a hardware MJPEG card and the quality was on par to DV only at higher datarates (> 5 MB/s). On lower data rates up to 3.6 MB (data rate of DV video) the DV codec will crush MJPEG qualitywise if your DV source is good enough.

For re-encoding to MPEG2 I can get "broadcast" quality using CVD at 1.8-2.5 MBit. This looks as good as the original TV broadcast from cable. If I apply some noise filters (Convolution3D) it looks even better. You´ll loose some sharpner because of the lower width and deinterlacing but I can live with that. If you plan to archive analogue video in it´s original form I suggest that you use a full DVD-R per movie encoding interlaced in 2pass VBR mode.

Does the audio ever go out of sync? Do you use the Locked Audio mode all the time?
Honestly I´ve never touched these DIP switches. I´ve been using "locked audio" all the time and never experienced any async video. :)


Have you found any software with a scheduler that can control the ADVC?

No, not really. There might be a PVR software done by electronic-design (a small german company), that supports timed recordings from DV sources plus encoding to MPEG2 in realtime. Have a look here: http://www.videocockpit.de/
But it seems to me that this is still under development. Honestly doing timed recordings with the ADVC isn´t really a big deal. You can do this the same way that was possible to do timed recordings with VirtualDub be4 VirtualDub Timer came out. There are ton´s of tools out there to control programs. Winbatch, Macroscheduler, GhostMouse (in combination with scheduled tasks of Windows), windows scripting host (WSH) just to name a few. This is no "out of the box" solution but should be easy to implement.

Some final words on the ADVC100:
-Should you buy a DV cam with analogue in instead ?
I don´t know. This depends on your budget. I use an analogue Sony Hi8 cam and so I decided NOT to buy a DV cam.

-Is the ADVC100 cabable of capturing really old VHS/Video8 tapes ?
Not really ! If your source is really f...ed up (old VHS tapes, etc) the DV hardware codec "breaks" and you´ll either get black screen or some funny flashing colored squares in your capture. If this is a concern for you (i.e. you have 200 old VHS tapes to digitize) then you should get another capture solution. I sometimes use the video in from my MSI GeForce4 and VDubSync in order to capture screwed up material. If I´ve got through all my old material I wan´t buy a graphic adapter with VIO anymore.

-Does the ADVC100 produce good quality video ?
Hm, depends on your personal opinion. From my point of view (as Ookami already wrote) the quality is MUCH better than anything I ever owned or tried out. More vivid colors and more details will also your encoded movies look better.

-Is this quality worth to pay 300-400€ ?
This depends on. It really takes some time to get used to the higher amount of quality you get from using a ADVC100. If you´ve captured with a cheaper solution earlier (esp. if you only used composite as input), the material from the ADVC100 will look more "grainy". It´s hard to explain this effect. You get more details but also more noise from analogue captures. These "extra" details make only sense if you spend enough bitrate for your encoding to keep them. If you only store your movies to 2 CD DivX or VCD then you can also get happy with a cheaper solution.

IMHO the ADVC is worth every cent if I think about all those crappy "realtime to MPEG2" solutions for USB like the Adaptec VideOooooh or Dazzles DCS200 for up to 300€. You get some driver independent video capturing device. Hook it up to a Mac and it´ll work. Use it under Linux and it will work. Show me any other external (!!!) capture device that is able to do this (of course all other IEEE1394 cap devices like the Hollywood bridge can do this also).
Also the ADVC100 has hardware compression which means that you´re able to work normally with your system while you´re capturing a movie. With any software based codec this isn´t possible. I have an Athlon XP1700+ and can easily browse the web, write e-mail, develop, etc while capturing without having a dropped frame. This wasn´t possible before even when using my hardware MJPEG card.

Hope this helps.

-D$