Sony VidCap & TV Tuner Card

HaroldC wrote on 3/19/2006, 6:15 PM
I see where the capture function of VMS allows video to be brought captured from a Firewire. But what I'd like to know is whether VMS can capture video from an internal video card. Currently I'm capturing into mpeg-2 using Giga Pocket software and the tv tuner card. Also is there is likely to be a better quality of capture?

Thanks

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 3/19/2006, 6:40 PM
Do you have Vegas Studio & VidCap? If so, try it and see if it works. There are so many different video cards and drivers out there that we probably couldn't tell you if yours would work, even if you had told us what card you have. I've used VidCap somewhat successfully (though somewhat sporadically) with both the Hauppauge WinTV cards and ATI's VIVO/AIW cards. It works well if you capture uncompressed, but then you end up with about 1.7GB/minute which eats up disk space very very fast. You can capture with more or less compression, but most AVI compression formats that you'll have available are scummier than good high-bitrate MPEG2. Basically, the higher the bitrate, the larger the file and the better the quality of the capture. Even with that though, some hardware just works better than others. The captures i get from an ATI card in uncompressed format are still not very good.

If you really want something with good quality and a very stable, reliable capture method, look into getting some sort of analog -> DV converter box such as the Canopus ADVC110 you see discussed in these forums. This takes care of all the capturing for you and sends a DV stream through firewire to the computer. Consumer video capture cards just simply cannot compare to the quality and reliability of using an external converter.
HaroldC wrote on 3/20/2006, 2:54 PM
VidCap only had a Firewire as the source for video input as far as I could see. I'll look into that external converter. Also I assume that it would lighten the load on my cpu. The way my setup is right now. A mpeg-2 file plays about the quality of a vhs. I run the DirecTV signal through the VCR which cleans it up and also run the signal through an amplifier.

As to which particular capture card I have, I'm having trouble figuring that out. The driver is Microsoft WDM Image Capture (Win32).

Thanks
Paul Mead wrote on 3/20/2006, 4:36 PM
VidCap should see your WDM capable capture card. Personally, I could never get my ATI AIW video card to work right with VidCap (I couldn't figure out how to fix the aspect ratio; it insisted on wide). I could get it to work with Nero Vision (but the results were lousy); I could sporadically get it to work with the MS Windows Media video capture utility (and the results were still lousy). I finally gave up and bought the previously mentioned Canopus converter. What a difference! No more screwing around with the flakey ATI WDM drivers; excellent results. If your time is at all valuable then take Chienworks' advice and just get a converter. From my experience, it is worth it to avoid the hassle and aggravation of trying to get decent results out of mediocre video capture cards.