need tips - Capture Resolutions, encoder

[WoodsieLord]

Hi there everybody... I'm asking for help because I'm not completely happy with my captures, and I would like to learn more. I am WoodsieLord, and I am from Argentina (Pal-N), please forgive my poor english level.
Near 2001, I got a pinnacle PCTV pro and since then I like video capturing.
In 2004 I got an asus 9600XT with Video In (ati rage theater), and since then I'm using it to capture video.

I like anime, so my firsts tests where anime captures. I'm using VirtualVCR and I'm trying to encode in DivX or Xvid on the fly. I think there's no need to use a super lossless codec like Huffyuv in this case because the analog signal is not that great (Its just a standard CaTV). I don't think I would say the same if I had DirectTV... but sadly that's not the case.
So! I captured some episodes and I'm quite happy with them, except I would like them to be in a bigger resolution.
My current Capture settings:
352x288, YUY2, 25.000 FPS
DivX Pro 5.05 codec @ 800 kbps
Audio in PCM, Mono. --> then compressing to mp3 with virtualdub

I'm reading tutorials and forum posts since the last year and experimenting with my video card. Choosing 'The resolution' is something annoying... I'm getting noise or lines depending on my selection. The resolution which gave me the best results is 352x288. I'm alright with it but I would like it to be bigger.
If I choose any bigger resolution (including: 640x480, 704x576, 720x576, and others) I get noises or lines like in the next images:
http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/8336/capture8jd.th.jpg (http://img379.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture8jd.jpg) http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/6514/captura22et.th.jpg (http://img397.imageshack.us/my.php?image=captura22et.jpg) http://img395.imageshack.us/img395/8341/captura32cx.th.jpg (http://img395.imageshack.us/my.php?image=captura32cx.jpg)
This is the first time I post images from my captures, I would like to know what do you think about them. Maybe its allright with them and has nothing to do with the hardware, software or me - but I'm not sure about the last one :D
Note: The noises/lines are present no matter if I capture uncompressed, divX, mpeg4 or huffyuv.

About Encoding...
I never thought I would ever post process my captures... but I tested the DeLogo filter and now I love it. So, its stupid to loss quality by capturing in divX compression now, so I'm starting to think that I should consider using another better codec, Then post processing...
But I don't know which should I use. If I could find a solution to the resolution issue... I'll try huffyuv, I read a lot of good comments about it.

Audio Encoding...
With my current capture settings I'm having AV Sync problems.
The best solution I found is to capture audio without compression, then use VirtualDub's 'video frame rate control' feature to correct it. The result is not perfect but its quite good. I'm worried If I'm doing something wrong or if this is normal...
Changing the video frame rate is not that good. I could'nt find a way to append an avi segment.

My computer: 2.4Ghz northwood 400mhz FSB, 512DDR 266mhz, RAID0 (ICH5-R) 2x 80GB SATA Seagate Barracuda ST380013AS

Thanks a lot for your tips.
Woodsielord.

Edit: uoops, I pressed submit post instead of Preview before the post was ready!

[mic]

My own 1st impression is it's been softened through possibly deinterlace, ivt, or enlarging. You might want to search on-line, research your card -- can it capture both fields, or is it creating a full frame after capturing at 1/2 frame height. Also is it set to deinterlace? Otherwise capturing to a high compression format it's hard to tell how much is caused by the codec's compression. Uncompressed is often rgb, HUFFYUV is ugly until encoded into something else, so it's hard for me to say more about the noise. How does the HUFFYUV look after encoding to divx or other final format.

Generally capturing both fields (720 x 576) at lower compression, then using this to create your final files will produce better results, and you can use added filters to improve the looks a bit along with delogo. Many use HUFFYUV or mpg2 for codecs. You should be able to capture without many sync prob to uncompressed wav, usually stereo. You might want to try the ati mmc software if it came with your card - much later versions are available. Generally you might have to delay or advance the audio, might have to change it's total length, but shouldn't change fps to match.

[WoodsieLord]

Thanks a lot for your repply!
I'll try to find out more information about my card, then try to find a better resolution and also try out some filters too.
Greetings!

[Boulder]

HUFFYUV is ugly until encoded into something else
HuffYUV is exactly "what you see is what you get". I wouldn't call it ugly, in fact, I would call it beautiful. It's lossless so you get to do all the processing yourself. And that's where Avisynth comes in ;)

[WoodsieLord]

Ok! I've done some tests with my old pinnacle pctv card too. I can say that my primary problem is my TVCable's/connection's bad image quality.
I'm getting some strange 'errors' with the PCTV that I dont get with the ATI card, this (http://img199.imageshack.us/my.php?image=errores9up.jpg) for example.
Also the pctv captures with less color and darker than the ati (both without any filters applied)
I never tested any colors correction filter yet.
I would like to ask something that I'm afraid off, because I will be breaking a forum rule by asking "what's best"... but I really want to hear some opinions:
Which card should I use? I've done a small comparision clip where I put a same scene captured with both cards one after another:
hxxp://rapidshare.de/files/4844736/Pinnacle_ATi_comparacion.avi.html
(I hope this link is allowed) The first part was captured with the pctv card and the second with the ati card.

A friend of mine, sent me some capture tests that were done with an old card of his. The tests look awesome, and that's because they were captured from DirectTV!

Thanks a lot for your answers and comments,
Woodsielord.

[DrP]

I tinkered with PCI video capture cards for a long time and made plenty of captures using my aged Matrox Marvel G400 with AVI_IO (PAL 352 x 288, drop / insert video frame to keep audio sync), but couldn't stomach the colour issues when I moved up to full frame instead of single field based capture. After than I wandered through a seemingly endless desert of various capture cards based on various chips, none of which really made me happy with issues from RFI, inexplicable occasional frame drops (so I'm a perfectionist!) and audio sync problems which while not strictly the problem with the card, were still annoying (not gross errors, just wandering around a bit).

So I bit the bullet some time ago and bought a Canopus ADVC100 and haven't looked back. I live in PAL land so the results as far as colour goes are quite acceptable. Right now, my PC is humming away to itself at home dumping 7 hours of music clips to HDD via the Canopus. When I get home, I *know* it will have worked and I *know* there won't be any audio sync problems, even after 7 hours of capturing. DV is not lossless and IMO doesn't agree well with noisey video sources because of that.

As far as I am concerned, a decent DV bridge is just too easy to use and shouldn't be passed by.

That black line you see in the captured frame is probably a PCI bus contention issue. Even the improved BT878a doesn't have deep enough buffers to cope with latency caused by the PCI bus being occupied elsewhere and can mess up just like that. Some SATA controllers such as the SIL311x are notorious for invoking bus latency related problems and can even give digital TV cards using the BT878a as a bridge grief. If you have to use a PCI card, look at something based on the CX line or perhaps the Philips 7134 (not that either of those is without their own problems!). If you can get it to work, the 7134 card may be able to clock lock the audio to the video avoiding audio sync issues completely.

[video_magic]

A couple of things I thought of in relation to the above post (Last Paragraph) which might help with PCI issues:

(1) Minimise the number of PCI cards in the PC. (For example take out a Network Card if you don't really need it - if it's for Cable-Modem could you connect using USB instead?)

(2) Then move your PCI cards to slots so as to have free slots between the cards as much as possible. You should think about which order is best for things like heat, cables reaching, interference etc..

(3) Some Bios's have a 'Stop Unused PCI Clocks' option - try turning that on

(4) There might be a BIOS setting called 'PCI Latency Timer' or similar, maybe you could change it to a better setting. There may also be a 'Turbo' option somewhere for speed which you should turn off.

(5) If possible see if you can sort out your cards resources like IRQs - you might be able to do this in both the BIOS and in Windows.

(6) If you still get PCI problems you could see if there are updated drivers for your Motherboard/Chipset.

(7) If none of that helps you might have a low-quality motherboard :( (which are plentiful).

Anyone got any other advice for PCI troubles? What about checking out for a BIOS update?

[Boulder]

PowerStrip allows setting the PCI latencies, don't remember where the setting is though, but it should be there anyway.

A BIOS upgrade might help, that's true.