Good TV Tuner Capture Software?

[kylef]

Hello all,

I have a Pinnacle TV tuner/capture card and would like to use something other than the Cyberlink PowerVCR II software that came with my card. The software attempts to do realtime MPEG encoding while recording, and the results are less than spectacular.

I would MUCH rather record to an AVI file and then encode with a high-quality encoder like DivX or something similar. Is there a commercial package that can use my Pinnacle card, or am I stuck with what came with it?

Thanks for any links or pointers!

Kyle

 

[kylef]

I take it that since no one replied that there is no good software available? I'm looking for something comparable to PowerVCR II by Cyberlink...

Power VCR Link

Thanks for any replies!

 

[NutBucket]

I think that maybe you could use something like ULead's Vid Studio or some other editing package to capture straight off the card. As far as stand-alone capture software I'm not sure what exactly is available, if anything.

 

[masterc]

As far as affordable software goes, the Cyberlink Power VCR is pretty decent.

I know that Adobe's Premier is supposed to be very good, but it is pretty expensive...

 

[ABErickson]

I'm using this with my Hauppague WinTV and I'm pretty happy with it (and I tried a number of different programs). It let's you use WMV8 to capture, which gives excellent results (although it does take a little bit of horsepower).

http://www.iulab.com/

 

[alexruiz]

I used to have a Pinnacle card as you, so I feel your pain. The bundled software is useless.

I suggest getting VirtualDub (www.virtualdub.org), this is the best tool to edit video and it is free. Second, get an MJPEG codec (picvideo, morgan or mainconcept). Virtualdub site has links for them.

I don't know about your CPU. If you have a TBird 1.33 or faster and at least 256 MB of RAM you can capture directly to DivX 4.12 realtime at 640x480. I suggest using MJPEg because is much faster, and even my former Duron 700 could capture 640x480 realtime.

If you don't want to capture at full size, then use DivX to capture quality based at 93 , frame size at 320x240. Even a celeron 800 could capture that.

Now, the real trick here is that you need to realize the BT848/878 (chipset in the pinnacle) doesn't allow capture at full size in overlay. That means, you cannot capture and watch what you are capturing, so you will need to see the source either on your TV or camcorder To capture, use virtualdub, go to video options, disable both overlay and preview (you should have after that a green screen). Select MJPEg as compression and go.

Remember to capture the audio as PCM, because compressing to MP3 on the fly always takes the audio out of sync with the video. I have captured programs as long as 1 hours with no problem at 640x480.

Stay away from WMV8 or realvideo, those are good only for bitrates below 500 kbps, anything above Divx is King.

VirtualDub is the key component.

 

[kylef]

Thanks for the links!

I actually have a Tbird 1.4 with 512 megs of PC133 and a fairly quick HD, so I'm hoping that this will work out.

I'll keep you posted on my results. If I get this working, I'm going to post a do-it-yourself page to explain this to others... or perhaps make a FAQ about it.

 

[BlueScreenVW]

I use preferentially iuVCR. I've tried a lot of expensive commercial bundles, with less than satisfactory results... This is my working setup:

Capture program from: iuVCR from http://www.iulab.com/
Drivers from Btwincap: http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/
Code: DivX 4.12 or the new 5.xx codecs, but don't compress audio the first (real-time) recording session. Instead record as uncompressed PCM audio, and LATER compress the audion of your .avi to mp3 format. Otherwise sync problems will appear. Done!


EDIT: I just tried the last btwincap drivers (5.2.5), and iuVCR wouldn't really work with them. So the 5.2.2 is what I'll continue using.

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

What about SnapStream?
www.SnapStream.com

 

[rbV5]

I'll second the VirtualDub recommendation, even if you don't use it to capture, it invaluable for processing video.


<< I don't know about your CPU. If you have a TBird 1.33 or faster and at least 256 MB of RAM you can capture directly to DivX 4.12 realtime at 640x480 >>


Just out of curiosity, how do you handle interlacing artifacts capping 480 lines realtime? I routinely cap 240 lines realtime(3.11a codec however), but use the HuffyuV>Nandub method for full 480 line encodings due to interlacing artifacts, and I prefer Nandubs SBC 2 pass quality for my encodings I'll burn to CD. Just wondering.

 

[kylef]

Hmmm... Well, I downloaded the latest version of iuVCR, and I was NOT able to get it to change channels on my Pinnacle card... It seemed to think that the only input available was the composite in... The "cable" option is grayed out as though it is not available. I wonder why?

I have not yet tried VirtualDub, but it's looking like my next step if I can't get iuVCR to set channels properly...