Capturing AVI with Pinnacle PCTV and VirtualDub

[SuperFresko]

Hello everybody.

It's some months I'm trying to do VHS -> DVD, but cannot find a saisfying solution for video capture.

What I'm looking for is a "plain" PCI capturing card that captures in AVI (Huffyuv), that I will later convert with TMPGEnc and put on DVD.

I tried an ATI All In Wonder, but I had some problems... when finally I had it working, I found out it was broken (video sometimes starts blinking)... In the meantime I bought a GeForce4 for playing :), so now I'm looking for a PCI card.

I've seen what the market offers... I've seen that there are lots of cheap cards, that if properly set up, they give acceptable quality (according to those who write in the forums).

For me acceptable quality would be almost no quality loss from VHS and my authored DVD.

So I've decided to buy a Pinnacle PC-TV... questions are:

- will it work with VirtualDub?
- will the drivers let me capture at high resolutions (704x576), or anyway the resolutions I want (e.g. 640x576)?
- are there good drivers? :)
- where can I find WDM/VfW (I'm still a bit confused about them...)?
- will it work? :D

Thanks to anybody who will anser.

Byebye.

[Swan]

- will it work with VirtualDub?
Yes, but not with Pinnacle's latest drivers (only at 352 x 288 PAL, or 352 x 240 NTSC). Capturing full resolution (704 x 576 or 720 x5 76)in VirtualDub with the Pinnacle card only works with Btwincap drivers (http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/). They are generic WDM drivers, which work with cards that has a BT878 chip. The Pinnacle has that. I have a Pinnacle PC TV Pro and Btwincap works fine with it.

are there good drivers?
See above. Pinnacle's version 5.1 drivers are stable on my Win2K machine and captures fine in full resolution with WDM software, such as Ulead VideoStudio, WinDVR, PowerVCR and also with IuVCR. On my machine, IuVCR won't start for some reason, but others have reported that it works (and is designed for) cards with WDM drivers. But if you want to capture full resolution in VirtualDub you have to install Btwincap drivers.

/Swan

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

there are LOTS of possibilities with bt8x8 cards (pinnacle being one of those cards)
for the money,they CANNOT be beaten....
(and there's much more expensive equipment that will struggle to beat bt+huffyuv...struggle and loose that is...hehe)

anyhow,try it...huff or mjpeg will give you decent quality....
will you be able to have EXACT THE SAME image quality as on VHS?
NEVER!
will you get close?
SURE!

cheers

Ivo

[Iznogoud]

Read what happy owners of PCTV card have to say over here...

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/wwwsupport/Forums/uk/frameset.htm

[SuperFresko]

Capturing full resolution (704 x 576 or 720 x5 76)in VirtualDub with the Pinnacle card only works with Btwincap drivers (http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/). They are generic WDM drivers, which work with cards that has a BT878 chip. The Pinnacle has that. I have a Pinnacle PC TV Pro and Btwincap works fine with it.

Thanks!

I've read somewhere that VDub works only with VfW, and that there is a MS WDM - VfW wrapper that lets you use the WDM drivers with VDub. Is that true? I've also read (if I'm not wrong, on the VDub site) that anyway the wrapper doesn't work very well...

But if you want to capture full resolution in VirtualDub you have to install Btwincap drivers.

So...

Since my system runs on W2K (and I'm thinking to switch to XP), you suggest to:

- Buy a BT8x8 card (for example a PCTV)
- Load the Btwincap drivers
- Load the MS VfW - WDM wrapper? :confused:
- Install VDub and TMPGEnc
- Start capturing at High Res and be happy! :)

Is that correct?

Thanks for the infos!

Byebye,
Max.

[Swan]

Hi Max/SuperFresko,

I've read somewhere that VDub works only with VfW, and that there is a MS WDM - VfW wrapper that lets you use the WDM drivers with VDub. Is that true? I've also read (if I'm not wrong, on the VDub site) that anyway the wrapper doesn't work very well...
VirtualDub is a software designed for working with VFW drivers, VFW codecs, yes.

This is all I know on the subject. If I have any facts wrong, I'd appreciate if someone would step in and correct it. This topic comes up all the time and it would be nice if we all joined in and explained this phenomena of the buggy Microsoft wrapper, WDM/VFW drivers, the advantage (and need) for Btwincap in VFW software such as VirtualDub.

Having said that, this is *to the best of my knowledge* the facts:
VFW (Video For Windows) is Microsoft's old driver model standard for video capturing, video conferencing, web cams, etc. WDM (Windows Driver Model) is the new standard. Just how new it is, I don't know, but I have not seen any recent capture card that comes with anything but WDM drivers.
Microsoft must have understood that when they swapped driver standards like this, there would be compatibility issues. So, they included a so called wrapper, which is included in DirectX. I believe it comes with DirectX8 and higher.

Think of the wrapper as an interpreter or a translator.
It translates from WDM to VFW, so that applications that were designed to work with VFW drivers, can be used with hardware that has only WDM drivers.

This sounds fine, but the wrapper has some serious limitations.
One of these limitations affects full resolution capturing with a BT chip in VFW software. By full resolution I mean any resolution higher than 352 x 288 PAL and 352 x 240 NTSC.

The mistake the wrapper makes is that instructs the driver to both show the Preview in full resolution and Capture at full resolution at the same time. The BT chip is unable to do this. So, some sort of workaround is needed in the WDM driver, and this should of course be obligatory in all drivers that ships with hardware such as capture cards, especially since the stupid "Preview/Capture at full resolution" behavior of the wrapper isn't exactly a secret in the "capturing community".

However, it seems few (if any) programmers of drivers are aware of it and doesn't write drivers that take this flaw in the wrapper into consideration and designs "around it".

The Pinnacle drivers I have for the PC-TV and the drivers I had for the AverTV Studio card I used previously, both programmers who made the drivers did not bother to find out or did not know about the wrapper problem, so their drivers do not work properly for full resolution capturing in VFW software that needs the wrapper to talk to the WDM driver.

This is where Btwincap steps in. The guy who wrote it has taken the problem head on and solved it. Btwincap are also WDM drivers, but with a workaround of some sort for the wrapper problem. That's why it is the only WDM driver I know of that actually let you capture in full resolution in both VFW and WDM software.

- Buy a BT8x8 card (for example a PCTV)

Yes, buy a Bt8x8 card. This way, for whatever reason you should wish not to use the drivers that ship with the card (for example if the manufacturer's drivers suck), you can always use Btwincap.


- Load the MS VfW - WDM wrapper?, Load the Btwincap drivers The wrapper is installed with DirectX for sure. You can verify that you have it on your system, by looking for a file called "vfwwdm32.dll" in WINNT\system32.

Before installing Btwincap drivers, I recommend you take a backup of all the files you care about. Installing drivers is always a bit dangerous and I have at one occasion been presented with a blue screen of death after installing Btwincap. I was able to get things back in order by going into Safe Mode and removing the driver, but even so, it's better to be safe than sorry and make backups of important files first.

Install VDub and TMPGEnc.
Yes. TMPGEnc is excellent for Mpeg-1 and Mpeg-2 encoding.
I suggest you install Vdub and test capture for 45 minutes using PicVideo Mjpeg at quality setting 19 or the compression of your choice.

Start capturing at High Res and be happy!
Hopefully. If you get sync problems (audio and video get out of sync, it usually shows after about 35 minutes and after an hour the audio and video can be a second or more off), then install the modified version of VirtualDub called VirtualDubSync. Hopefully this solves the problem for you.
VirtualDubSync (freeware) makes certain adjustments to the audio so it fits the video stream and many people here use it to combat bad sync on captures. Some people also use IuVCR, which also makes adjustments to the audio. That software is shareware. It works with WDM drivers, so you won't need Btwincap to use it. It won't even start on my machine (I get an error message, that's all). Perhaps you have better luck. :)

I am personally against "mucking around with the audio" like that (and the video) so instead, I capture directly to Mpeg-2 where sync issues are taken care of in the encoder and by the file format itself, without altering the audio or the video so they match.

Depending on the quality of the Mpeg-2 encoder (the Mpeg-2 capturing software), this may also lead to sync issues, but in my experience only when one edits the Mpeg-2 files or tries to export them to DivX using DVD2avi and Avisynth for frameserving, for example.

I have now bought a Canopus ADVC-100, which is an external box that captures audio and video and encodes it to avi with DV compression. The video and audio is then transferred to Windows via Firewire and the audio/video sync is guaranteed. When I have got to know the device better I will post a full review here.

/Swan

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>I've read somewhere that VDub works only with VfW, and that there is a MS WDM - VfW wrapper that lets you use the WDM drivers with VDub. Is that true? I've also read (if I'm not wrong, on the VDub site) that anyway the wrapper doesn't work very well...

on my cel600 system it does:
btwincap->wrapper->VD capture is OK
(!given that i enable "directdraw acceleration" for both fields!)

this way i can capture 720x576 and in the background VD (or ND) encodes
in "even lower" priority.......

[nice FAQ on the driver issues,Swan....]