Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP Recording Quality

[mbavb]

This TV Tuner is awesome and highly responsive but the problem is when I capture Video using the VCD, MPEG 2 the quality is not good compared to the Hauppauge PVR 250 [which has a hardware MPEG 1-2 Encoder Built-in]. Is there a way for me to capture video using this Leadtek Card 2000XP using Raw AVI format.. as I did not see any except the DVD, VCD MPEG 1 and 2 [different bitrates]. I tried a few of those formats and still the quality was not good. Advise please or directions on what formats or codecs can I install to get this TV Tuner to record other formats ? Thanks.. I like this unit as the TV Turner I believe is using a digital Tuner instead of the Hauppauge PVR 250 which the TV Tuner is probably a Analog one and slow as molasses. Suggestions ? As the TV Tuner Quality is amazingly good and I cannot understand how when recording and when playback was not good ... while on the other hard the video for the hauppauge PVR 250 was not as clear or sharp as the Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP but somehow playback was near DVD if the DVD format was selected and playaback on my stand alone DVD player which plays DVD-Rs. Help please anyone or directions at least in configuring ?
Tracy

[Swan]

Hi Tracy!

I checked out the card on Leadtek's site and they don't give out much info. (http://www.leadtek.com/mmedia/tv2000xp/tv2000xp.htm) Couldn't even find a place to download the user's manual. :)

But, since the card has drivers for XP, it must be WDM drivers (vfw does not work in XP). That opens up a few possibilites. If I were you I'd try using a different capturing software. I know I write this all the time :), but check out Cyberlink's PowerVCR or Intervideo's WinDVR for Mpeg-1 and Mpeg-2 capturing. I've used PowerVCR for months and I have a scheduled recording every night. It's been recording a show every night for 29 days now and has not failed me once. Both PowerVCR and WinDVR can capture in Mpeg-1 and Mpeg-2 format. Perhaps they will give the quality to have come to expect after using the Hauppauge card? Also, you can tweak the settings until you find something that suits your taste.

Obviously both these cost money, so if you want to capture to avi (with mjpeg, huffyuv, DivX or Xvid compression.. or none) you can try VirtualDub which is absolutely free. I personally get too many frame drops with it (although I have a quite new and powerful computer), but there is an enhanced version of VirtualDub that's supposed to work better. For avi-capturing I like Avi-Io, but it's shareware, not freeware.

/Swan

[SiliconSoul]

i also recently purchased the same card and the software thta comes with the card take up too much cpu! 100 % when capturing with all codecs. i even installed huffyuv and the results were less than i expectected. i will try powervcr. i have also found iuvcr (http://www.iulabs.com) but u have to add the filers manually and i was having problems with that... i noticed there are updated drives on the leadtek website and im going to update them once i get a chance this weekend. but if you find anything out please keep me updated... Also im wanting to capture at 480x480 so i can then encode or have the hardware encoder encode it to mpeg2 and burn as svcd in nero. but the card does nto let me select 480x480 in the options... maybe in the driver update?

[SiliconSoul]

how do i fix this horrible captures... the quality is not what i expected to get... is it the card... software... my cable is decent... not as bad as im getting when i capture...
or is this as good as it gets and thats what im stuck with?



here is a rar file of all the picture i took of captures that i have. (http://www.etaxisigs.com/n/screenshots of bad picture.rar)

these two show ya what i mean the best


picture 1 (http://www.etaxisigs.com/n/Image0928-1221(TV14).jpg)

picture 2 (http://www.etaxisigs.com/n/Image0928-1221(TV16).jpg)

[wotef]

if you have the "deluxe" version of this card, then i think you should try the btwincap drivers and virtualdub as per this thread and don't bother using the leadtek capture programs

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=67909965&m=1180906135&r=3460936135#3460936135

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/download.html

[SiliconSoul]

bump look at the pictures now they are back up sorry about that forgot to pay the domain name fee :P

[Shayne]

I also have the deluxe card and this card rocks. Sat capture @ dvd quality ......... better with the right filter chain.

Does this card come with software? dont need it, dont use it

Mod http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ drivers
Vdub sync
Audio into the herc card
Huffy code

Lame _ XviD

Just my 2 cents seeming i dont think the card needs a slam

Cheers

[dilly]

Originally posted by SiliconSoul
bump look at the pictures now they are back up sorry about that forgot to pay the domain name fee :P

404.

I have this card (Deluxe) and it's spectacular. I don't ever encode with hardware, because I believe you can only use hardware encoding with shipped drivers & software - plus encoding straight to MPEG-2 (hardware or not) is a bad idea because then you won't be able to cut out commercials or anything. Don't use Winfast PVR - I use VirtualVCR (works with both shipped drivers, which are suprirsingly stable and compatible, and BTWinCap) which is a very good program once set up properly.

How are you hooked up? If you're using the TV-tuner itself, your picture quality will be terrible, not because of Leadtek but because of your cable co. - if you hook up a satellite or digital cable box via the Comp/S-Vid inputs it will look 1000X better.

I capture to HuffyUV and encode to XviD-2 Pass. Take a look at some samples (stills) of my digital cable, hooked S-Video (not filtered or deinterlaced, straight screen-cap from WMP window of Huffy cap, cropping done w/PSP, JPG compression 15)

I will get some motion samples up when dar1us hooks up some space and I get time (re: Samples thread)

good (digital) source
http://tinyurl.com/6v6s
http://tinyurl.com/6v6v
http://tinyurl.com/6v6y

text source
http://tinyurl.com/73ij

good (analogue) source
http://tinyurl.com/73im
http://tinyurl.com/73ip -> heavy interlacing artifacts

poor (analogue) source
http://tinyurl.com/73j1
http://tinyurl.com/73j2

[dilly]

Another good feature of this card is the DirectShow deinterlace filter for you progressive-monitor-capture-viewers (all my caps end up being viewed on a TV anyway, so no sense in deinterlacing) - called 'Leadtek YUY2 Deinterlace' - you can actually use this on the fly at 640x480 with 0 frame drops, so long as you're in YUY2 color space (HuffyUV). I do not know how this deinterlacer works (I don't believe it discards a field, maybe a blend) but if you want to D/I your video it makes sense to do it at capture instead of wasting precious CPU cycles at encode.

[Shayne]

poor (analogue) source


Filtered and xvid down to one cd

just to let you know that a poor source can be cleaned up

Edit guess zip file no go thru

[SiliconSoul]

it can be filtered but the results are not as good as a clean sat connection

[dilly]

Yes, I know they can be filtered - if you read the samples thread you'd see why I posted pictures with no filters - and why I posted pictures that are of noticably poor quality.

[SiliconSoul]

well my analog source compared to the one you have is VERY VERY poor. i think its partly related to where my card is at in the machine and how many other cards i have in there right now... right now there is not an open slot last i checked. i badly need to get a new motherboard with built on ethernet and firewire and audio and whatever else is built onto these new kickass motherboards!

[homersapien]

I have this card. Asside from the lousy factory software, the caps look great. Capture-->MJPEG (640x, quality 17)-->XviD played back via TV out looks practically like the original broadcast. The built in deinterlacing is really good...one less filter to run in Avisynth.

Capture to Huff or MJPEG (smaller file sizes.) If the codecs are installed on your comp, then the factory Leadtek software can use them. Setup a profile called 'raw' or whatever, and select the compression from the drop down menu. The factory software is perfectly adaquate for straight up capping...its "VCR" functions suck though.

Don't ever encode straight to MPEG1/2.

@Silicon, the position of the card doesn't affect the capture. The compression is handled by the codec.

[SiliconSoul]

well im getting BAD horizontial lines that are not in the normal cable broadcast. so it has to be interfernece where the card is at or something in the machine.

[leoncheong]

Originally posted by dilly
Yes, I know they can be filtered

But I do not. :confused: Care to share how it is done?

[dilly]

Convolution3d is a great AviSynth filter for cleaning up TV captures and it also helps in increasing compressability.

If you don't know about AviSynth, I suggest you read up, my friend :)

[draggoon01]

for people using btwincap drivers, what options did you use during install? it keeps crashing on me during install process.

i have winxp, ecs k7s5a pro. latest leadtek drivers already installed.

if i reformat, can i straight install btwincap?

[Shayne]

I would try the uninstall in windows and then the uninstall drivers with btwincap software with a reboot after each make sure windows is looking for drivers for your card and then install the btwincap drivers when clean. I used no special settings just installed and all was fine with default next next ..........

Hope it helps, dont really think its time for format c:

Peace