Attaching a TV to Your Card

[Zanon]

Instead of capturing from my vcr with my tapes, if I were to capture straight from my tv... would the quality be much better?

[Mug Funky]

if you capped live broadcasts straight from your TV then it'll be quite a bit better than taping to VHS and capping from there.

but if you were to play a tape from your VCR to your TV and then capture from there, the quality will be worse.

[AVIL]

Hi,

Usually, TV sets can't output video signals to PC. Capture cards provide TV capture with a tuner of his own. The golde rule is "less intermediate devices, better quality". If your footage comes from TV stations capture it from the tuner (capture card's tuner, TV tuner if any). If comes from VHS tape capture it from your VCR

Good luck.

[DrP]

One thing with onboard tuners, unless the card maker has done their homework well, they'll suffer from a fair degree of RFI (lines on picture). In the case that the design is poor and RFI is a problem, capturing using a VCR (or TV if it has video out, mine does) as the source would be a good idea. Locate the VCR as far from the PC as cables reasonably allow to keep the amount of RFI from the PC to a minimum.

[jggimi]

In general, there are quality differences that can be seen with analog video signals sent over cable. Ranked from "usually better" to "usually not quite so good" they are: Component video S-video Composite video RFMost PCI-based analog capture cards don't have component connections, but cards with S, composite, and RF are commonly available.

DrP is correct, on-card tuners are often impacted by RFI; some of our members have reported reducing RFI problems by moving the PCI card to another slot. Some have had less sucess with that.

AVIL's point is also well put -- the number of conversions will have a significant impact on overall quality. The fewer transitions, the better.