Trouble finding a capture card

[pojke]

I'm building a new system (will use XP pro) and need to replace my old ATI AIW-9000 (no AGP slots on new motherboards) and am having trouble finding a capture/tuner card that will do what I want.
I especially need to be able to:

1.) Capture uncompressed/huffyuv video through composite connections to a VCR using Virtualdub so that I can encode it myself using CCE.
2.) Have flexibility in setting quality/bitrate of the card's hardware encoder.

I'm intrigued by the Avermedia M780 (http://www.pcalchemy.com/product_info.php/pName/avermedia-avertv-m780-combo-pcie-atsc-and-ntsc-white-box)(aka AverTV Combo). It gets good reviews but none of them mention the above concerns. Will this card do what I want? I know it has the proper connectors, but can the hardware encoder be bypassed?

Are there other options? From what I've read, the Hauppauge cards like the HVR1600 force you to use the hardware encoder. The ATI TV wonder cards seem to have a lot of complaints and have horrendous software issues.

[chipzoller]

The ATI Theater Pro line (550/650) is really very good and has good hardware noise reduction and 3D comb filter (necessary for composite captures). It has hardware MPEG2 encoder but I bypass that in favor of huffyuv or lagarith.

[pojke]

I had looked at the 650 but was apprehensive about it due to so many negative reviews (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16815294001&SortField=0&SummaryType=ALL&Pagesize=50&Page=). Seems many people really hate the CMC software and think it's a step down from the older MMC which I have gotten used to. It's good to know that you can bypass the hardware encoder though, which puts it a step above the Hauppauges. I assume you've used Virtualdub to capture with it?

How much control does the user have in setting the hardware encoder?
With the old AIW9000 I could select resolution and specify a custom mpeg2 video bitrate and choose among several audio bitrates. This is very important because the preset bitrates either produced files that were too big or too low in quality. And if I knew the run-time of the video the bitrate could be selected precisely so that it would fit a DVD with the best bitrate/quality ratio. It also had a dvd-half option. I'm hoping to retain all of that functionality.

[Seraphic-]

I have a TV Wonder 650 and it is an over-all good capture card for S-Video input and has some nice features which chipzoller listed.

Catalyst Media Center is not THAT bad, but I prefer to use 3rd party capture programs. The real plus with CMC is that you can set the card for 4:3 and 16:9 mode within it... but when using any other program I've found, there is no way to do such thing (that is a problem in my case as I have both 4:3 and 16:9 video) (Maybe someone has found a way?). As for custom settings for encodes, yes, you can create custom profiles in Catalyst Media Center. These let you set: Width (320-720) and Hight (240-576), Capture Quality, Bit-rate (also Peak Bit-rate if VBR), and compression standard (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, and H.264) Each of these formats has a few different versions (you can't do such things in a 3rd party programs as you are locked to YUY2 @ 720x480). However, there is no settings in CMC to adjust Sharpness, Brightness, Saturation etc... 3rd party capture programs let you access these settings (you can get around that though, set those settings with a 3rd party program, and they seem to remain when using Catalyst Media Center).

I should point out that when using Catalyst Media Center, the audo/video is out of sync for about 1 to 2 seconds (this is only for viewing the video, the captured file seems to be in sync). Anyway, I'm still hoping to find a way to set the 4:3 and 16:9 mode outside Catalyst Media Center. But other then that, it really is not too bad of a card.

Take a look HERE (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=128189) I listed two other cards you might want to look at.

[pojke]

Hmmm. I've never used a 3rd party capture program (unless you count Virtualdub). Do they use the hardware encoder and essentially duplicate what CMC does? Or do you mean something like Beyond TV or SageTV which are PVR programs? I'm confused on the software side of things.

Thanks for the specifics on CMC. As for the "custom profiles," I'm assuming that means you can actually type in a bitrate as opposed to picking from presets. If so, that's good.

The PDI and Snazzi cards are interesting, especially the Snazzi, which looks really nice as a capture card and seems to offer lots of user options. That would be great for capturing only, but neither of them has a tuner, so they're not really options for me. If you're thinking of getting one, note that the PDI Deluxe lists "an AGP video card" as one of its system requirements -- not sure why that would be needed.

[pojke]

UPDATE:
I contacted AVermedia and they say that card can't do what I want, so I'm very interested in the ATI 650 cards that chipzoller and Seraphic have.

But I need to know 2 things:

[1] Can it be used with Virtualdub to capture uncompressed video through the composite inputs? Have you actually done this with the 650? I really want to be sure that it doesn't force you to use the the hardware encoder.

[2] Are the "Theater Pro 650" and "TV Wonder 650" the same card? Is the Sapphire Theatrix 650 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815310002) the same card? If so, it appears to be a bargain.

[chipzoller]

1.) I have not used this with VirtualDub but I do use it regularly with VirtualVCR to capture uncompressed. VD uses VFW drivers and VVCR uses WDM. I think the drivers for both these cards (550/650) are only WDM.
2.) The Theater Pro 650 and TV Wonder 650 are not the same cards. I think that Sapphire Theatrix 650 is the same card, but I can't get a good look at the chipset. I have a feeling it's the same thing only sold under the Sapphire name. The chipset will say either 550 or 650 Pro on it.

[pojke]

That's interesting. I haven't been able to find a "Theater 650 Pro" card. Even on the ATI site, they only show an ATI TV Wonder (http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonder650/PCI/index.html). Instead, they seem to refer to the card's processing chip as the Theater 650 Pro (http://ati.amd.com/products/theater650pro/index.html). They have a detailed pdf (http://ati.amd.com/products/theater650pro/ATITheater650WhitePaper.pdf) that's like an advertisement for the chip itself, not referring to any specific card. So I wonder if anything called "650 pro" made by ATI or their partners (like Sapphire) uses this same chip and has the same functions. I would be willing to capture with VirtualVCR if it offers the same huffyuv output that can be encoded later with CCE.

[chipzoller]

Well yes, it's the chip that is the 550/650 pro, which is then sold to other OEMs like MSI or Sapphire who then make it into their harware, but the TV Wonder 550 is a different card from the theater pro. The TV Wonders don't offer the hardware tweaking like 3D comb filter and hardware noise reduction.
I capture in huffyuv using VVCR to my 1TB raid array all the time with no problems. If you can help it, capture via S-video if your source offers it, otherwise you'll really appreciate the 3D comb filter offered through the hardware.

[pojke]

But according to the ATI site and literature, it's the chip itself that contains those capabilities like the 3D comb filter and noise reduction, so shouldn't everything be included on the TV Wonder? For example, this page (http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonder650/PCI/index.html) for the TV Wonder specifically says it includes those particular hardware features.

But it's actually the Sapphire I'm considering, not the TV Wonder. And this CNET review (http://reviews.cnet.com/graphics-cards/ati-theater-650-pro/4505-8902_7-31908877.html) from last year says, "Tuner cards featuring the Theater 650 Pro chip will be available from manufacturers such as MSI and Sapphire..."

Hmmm. After rereading your first post, it's unclear whether you're using the 550 or 650. Is it the latter?
Apologies if it seems like I'm being overly picky about this. It's just that I'd like to know if it will do these specific things so I can avoid buying it and having to send it back.

I just found out something else. ATI recently announced (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7967&commentid=157880&threshhold=1&red=1731) a new PCI-e version of the TV Wonder 650 that has dual tuners and should be available in September. That throws an interesting wrinkle into this, but it would be hard to wait another 2 months.

[chipzoller]

I'm currently using a 550 but previously had a 650. They do the same thing, only the 650 is HD capable. But the specific things you're asking about aren't so specific, in fact they're rather general if all you require is capturing via VirtualDub/VVCR in lossless format.
Rest assured the theater pro cards are very good and can do what you ask.

[pojke]

That's good to know. I'll probably go with the Sapphire version and try some third party software like Beyond TV. Their site gives detailed information (http://www.snapstream.com/support/help_file/btv/addeditmpeg_2quality.htm) about the settings, so it looks like there will be some flexibility in configuring the hardware encoder too.
Thanks for your help.

[urvieh]

External "card": Plextor TV 402 U (usb 2.0, excellent hardware encoder).

[Seraphic-]

pojke, are you still interested in a TV Wonder 650? I've gotten an new capture card and no longer have use for this.

(It is the official ATI version of the card 650, model revision two with the HDTV fix, in new condition, and has box and everything that came with it)

[ses]

I have at least 50 VHS tapes to convert, they're almost all NTSC. I have read that the ATI 550 had problems switching from it's native standard to an alternate and friends of mine here in Sweden have tried to convert NTSC tapes on their PAL based cards and had problems so I ordered an NTSC version from the US.
I'm using iuVCR from www.iulabs.com and Huffyuv, it works great. I have even succeded in running in pure, uncompressed AVI into my machine, no problems

[Blue_MiSfit]

@ ses:

You will have great results doing NTSC -> PAL with AviSynth :)

[Revgen]

If you're looking for an HDTV card that can work with 3rd Party apps then I'd look at the DVICO line of Fusion HDTV cards. http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/ENG/products/

I use a previous version of the FusionHDTV5 RT Gold. The gold uses a newer Connectix chipset for analog capture while the RT Lite uses a BT4x8 chipset that is so widely supported by 3rd party apps. I use the Gold with Dscaler to record to Huffyuv easily.

[WoodsieLord]

I got a Theatrix 650 pro NTSC card, when I need PAL.
I had no chance because I never found a PAL version (phisically, if its in russia I cant buy it!). Although I tried it and couldn't set it to pal, I though the composite input has no hardware limitations to input any format, just like the VGA TV-out that can be configured or even upgraded by drivers.

The card is Sapphire branded and I only installed the drivers for it. Not the software! (I use Vvcr, avisynth and vdub among other tools). I tried setting PAL-N in VirtualVCR, but it never changes. once you go back to the setup config, its still in NTSC. Any chances/ hints ?

Thanks a lot in advance.