___ TV capture... Editing... Archiving to DVD... AIW the best game in town? ___

[Blain]

*** I'm hardware shopping ***

I'm not asking for much.
I want to retire my VCR and capture TV programs with as high a quality and little hassle as possible.
* Capture the TV programs,
* Edit commercials,
* Archive to DVD-R

Sounds pretty simple doesn't it?
But after reading about video capture quality, dropped frames and audio sync problems... Of course I want to future-proof my rig with an AGP card and PCI TV card. But the sync issues haunt me.
It's beginning to look like the 9700 & 9800 Pro AIW cards with their Theater 200 chips are the best option out there.

Is my observation correct, or am I overlooking something?

My system...
P4 2.4B / 854pe / 1GB PC3500 / GF4 4600 / Audigy / 120GB WD JB

 

[Peter]

Sync issues are a matter of the sound equipment, not so much the video equipment. They may or may not occur, no matter whether your video capture thing is on PCI or AGP.

That said, ATi's RageTheater chips are most excellent video grabbers, with fine hardware deinterlacing filters and all that.

If it's going to be a PCI card, use one with a recent Philips chipset rather than the quite ages Conexant/Brooktree 848/878 series chips, for the same reason of getting a more advanced chip with better filtering methods. You might even want to think about getting one that does the MPEG compression in hardware.

 

[milehigh]

I've used an ATI AIW 9800 Pro to retire my VCR.

I capture with the ATI MMC program and use TMPenc DVD to author and burn the DVD. Once the capture is complete I've got a burned DVD in under an hour.

I've tried Pinnacle, Ulead etc... and fought with dropped frames during capture, audio sync problems, crashes, all night long rendering of projects etc...

I found that the simple setup described above works perfectly and I've been very happy with the quality and ease of use. I figure with the 9800 AIW I should be future-proofed for a little while at least!

 

[pulse8]

Sync problems? I've got an Asus TV Card and a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and have never had sync problems.

Also, you'd probably be better off getting something like a PVR250 or 350. They have great hardware encoders on them.

 

[Todd33]

Hauppage WinTV 250 PCI cards are the best option.

1. Hardware encoding (hardly any cpu use).
2. Not tied to the GPU, upgarde you video card at will.
3. Huge support, industry standard for PVR on a computer.
4. Cheap. You can find the MCE version for $70 online.

 

[TerryMathews]

Unless something has changed recently, the AIW cards capture audio through your sound card, making them no different than any other PCI video capture card.

The 250MCE does it's own audio encoding, negating any sync issues. Of course, that's blown out of proportion. I use an Audigy and a CX23881 based card and never lose sync. I capture using VirtualDub into HuffYUV and then encode to MPEG2 using TMPGEnc.

 

[rbV5]

Sounds pretty simple doesn't it?

PC PVR's are not simple. The AIW cards do make it pretty simple however. The included software has everything you need from capture to burn (except burning software, IIRC the AIW 96xx models even icludes that) The DVD presets are compliant. The biggest PITA will be editing the commercials IMHO.

No reason you can't use a seperate tuner card either. It may be a little more daunting setting everything up, but plenty doable.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Buy a standalone DVD Recorder!