Audio & Video Sync Problems

[Hyphven]

I have had a horrible time with this I have tried just about every thing, Is my computer not fast enough? I have P4 1.39GHz, 256mb, 200gb HD, my capture card is this: $36.50 KWORLD VS-TV878RF PCI Interface TV Tuner, Video Capture Card, REMOTE - Retail. I am thinking about returning it and getting a analog to digital vidoe converter box thing and spending a little more money on it. What should i do? Thanks in advance.

[jggimi]

Have you seen FAQ questions 20 and 21? Chapter 18 of the Capture Guide will be helpful as well.

[Hyphven]

I have read through the guide and done exactly the things it suggests and have had no success. Do the boxes that convert externally work better than a capture card?

[jggimi]

All I know about your PCI device is that because it has "878" in the name, it likely uses a BT878-based video chipset. I know nothing about the software or drivers you are using; you might find that switching drivers and/or capture software solves your sync issues. If you'd like to try some different things before giving up, let us know what you're using, and the membership will try and help you.

If you wish to switch to an external device rather than continue to try to make your PCI device work, that's your choice. There are two basic types: USB connected and IEEE-1394 (FireWire) connected.

The USB devices all use proprietary software, and I have not heard anyone praising their image quality, as USB bandwidth is relatively low.

FireWire connected devices that capture to DV format -- including many DV camcorders that can also be used for analog capture -- are usable with a wide range of DV software, both commercial and free. There are image quality differences, due to DV colorspace restrictions, but not due to bitrate.

DV is a compressed digital video format that when "captured" to a PC over FireWire -- copied to disk, really -- is placed in AVI files, and is used with a DV codec. It consumes about 12MB of disk per second of video, and is lossy. If this format is of interest, see our DV forum.

[mic]

My opinion only...
If you spent less then $40, a good DV box will cost you more then "a little more money". Get what you pay for. Might look into some of the cheaper ati products, but google first and read user reports to find out if it will do what you want first.

I don't know what format you want to capture into, and should decide this 1st. A DV box might be a good choice because of external hardware compression, or ati home theater chip based mpg2 cards. With CPU should be able to handle at least I frame mpg2, might be able to handle smaller frame sizes mp4.