capture TV n00b questions

[svekke]

Hello,

First of all, I'm a real noob in capturing from TV. I just got my capture card since yesterday and did some tests.
The problems that came up:
- the resolution was totally wrong (a little square on my tv-screen, all the rest was black)
- sometimes the captured file didn't play smooth. frame drops?
- With actionshots (cars flashing by, fights) I had some annoying vertical lines (de-interlacing?)

Are there some way to get past these problems? Like, what is the best resolution to use if you know I always view the captured movie on a TV, not on my PC. And I'm from Europe, So it's PAL.

I capped yesterday with the default software, but I heard you guys that VirtualDub is the best. I tried it, but I only had sound, no visuals. When I closed VD, the sound kept going on. In the windows Task manager there was still a VD process running, but I couldn't close it. I had to reboot.
Any solutions?

Well, as you can see ... lots of question.
I will be a very happy man if some questions can be answered.

Thnx in advance!!

[Fredledingue]

The full resolution for Pal is 720/576. It's bit high a resolution, but if you comp can handle it, it's worth the quality.

If not, 640/480 is a good resolution but it's not the PAL ratio which is more like 608/480.
Half of 720/576 is 360/288 and it's a bit low a resolution for good quality but if high quality is not goal you can try it.

The movie doesn't play smooth for two possible reasons: dropped frame or reading/decoding not folloqing up. In your case it would be rather dropped frames: disable all background applications, services, power managment, antiviruses etc... , defragment your hard drive.

Also make sure that you capture in 25 frame /sec as it's the PAL standard.

De-interlacing create horizontal lines...I can't say what are these vertical ones.