which card for tv, vhs capture ?

[jogy1983]

hi,

what could be a good choice for capturing tv or get vhs digital on pc?
i dont want to pay much :) but it should work reasonably.

i have a tv-card and a video recorder to get tv-signal, so the card or other hardware dont necessarily needs to have a tv-tuner.

thanks for your suggestions.

[Mug Funky]

if you have a TV tuner in your TV card, why not tune into whatever the VCR is set to and use that? it'll cost you nothing, but quality will be slightly less than regular composite.

an external DV box could also be useful (canopus ADVC 110 for example is quite nice). the advantage of these is you can firewire then up to any computer that has firewire on it and it works the same. the disadvantage is that NTSC DV looks like crap (PAL looks just fine most of the time, but 25Mbps often isn't enough in an i-frame only codec, and noticable blocking may appear. it's perfectly safe for VHS though). just don't use premiere pro to capture with - it'll drop frames on the highest spec systems available (because it sucks...).

[jogy1983]

when i capture with my old tv-card: i get a fu**** peep sound and video is only 720*288. also notice audio-video is not properly synched.

so, im looking for better(newer) hardware.

[mic]

Some of the bt chipset based cards will only capture half frame (720 x 288). There is software for capturing that will double this to a sort of fake full frame, often it comes bundled with the card &/or built into the drivers.

If you want to capture true full frame, you'll have to do some research with any potential (inexpensive) replacement to make sure that it does capture full frame, and not just with the bundled software. Unfortunately the only way I know of is to do a lot of googling, reading what others have posted for any brand/model of hardware. And generally, the less you pay the more you have to be careful about what the hardware actually does rather then what's claimed in the ads.

It's also very important to consider the format you'd like to capture in. Mug Funky talked a bit about DV & the ADVC 110. Other hardware might be designed to work only or mainly with mpg2 - the ATI theater based cards have hardware mpg2 for example. Some hardware will capture to almost any format.

Zeroing in on your: "i dont want to pay much", surpluscomputers.com usually has some excellant deals on WinTV cards and similar, but you have to really watch, do a bit of research to make sure you don't wind up with another half frame height card.

[jogy1983]

actually, i could live with the 720*288 (i resize to 720*576). but theres also the high peep sound in the background. so i probably die fast when listening to my captures movies.

[mic]

actually, i could live with the 720*288 (i resize to 720*576). but theres also the high peep sound in the background. so i probably die fast when listening to my captures movies.
How are you getting the audio?
Often there's a jumper cable from the TV card to the sound card at the line in jack. Usually pretty straightforward unless it's a shared mic-in line-in affair. In that case make sure the extra volume for microphones is off in mixer, or try to use auxillary input if there is one (often on the card or board).

Otherwise, run one or two coax cables with rca connectors from vcr, cable box etc. directly to sound card or inputs instead of connection from TV card.

ALmost forgot, you'll probably go deaf or mad or both long before the audio noise kills you :D

[jogy1983]

i tried using vcr as tv-tuner instead of the tv-card. the sound changes, it is deaper, but still kills you.
also tried using mic-input on the sound card with no difference.
i changed all audio-bars in the windows mixer (including microphones volume) with no luck.
other devices for the sound card have been installed.

no luck.

[Mug Funky]

high peep? what sample rate are you recording the audio, and what sample rate is max for your card? it sounds to me like aliasing caused by poor hardware resampling.

TV's will often (usually) output a very strong 15625 Hz pilot tone in their AV outputs, which is usually not too bad (it really irks me though - TV noise is the worst), but can be pushed into a more audible range by bad resampling. try capping at 48000 if you've got an SB live or variant. try 44100 if you've got an on-board sound chip like an ac97 or something. that might help, but it may not...

[edit]

if none of that helps, try find a directshow realtime audio filter that allows you to do a notch filter, and run that while you capture. if there's no aliasing happening, this should kill the noise completely. however, i haven't heard this noise so i'm just guessing.

[jogy1983]

i have this ac97 onboard sound. i played a bit with audio capture configuration. nothing helped. (tried 48000, 44100 and others..)

im going to install a audio filter as you told me.

let me add this note:
when i just enable playback of line-in sound, then i get good sound from my tv-card. the problem with the peep-sound starts when i capture it (it also appears when i do "enable audio playback" in vdub.)

[jogy1983]

all i find is this one:
TFM Audio Filter - Movie Soundtrack Compressor/Channels Effect
FREEWARE
ver. 1.0 beta 8

its a very simple one i think, and i cant filter out my peep-sound :(

[mic]

Totally, totally guessing...

Could your peep sound somehow be feedback? Like when someone at a podium goes to speak into a mic & it starts squealing?

Also, what happens if you don't start Video capture program, but just try to record audio from your vcr?

[jogy1983]

i hear an interesting thing in a shop: my peep-sounds comes from the cpu ! its to much for the cpu. so i would need a hardware encoder.

but i checked: cpu is at 30%. im not doing any encoding when capturing.

[mic]

"i hear an interesting thing in a shop: my peep-sounds comes from the cpu ! its to much for the cpu. so i would need a hardware encoder.
but i checked: cpu is at 30%. im not doing any encoding when capturing."

Capturing mjpeg without hardware encoding has been practical since 300 mHz cpus I think. Greatest stress on your system is in getting data on drive. Only noise I'm aware of associated with cpus are beep warning/error codes from motherboard, & cursing from users. :)