Help deciding on TBC and capture device

[admin]

The ATI 750 is different hardware from the ATI 600 that's suggested. If I'm not mistaken, the 750 is different from the 650 as well, which is supposed to act similar to the 600 (although it's different hardware there, too).

Any time ATI supplies third-party software, you're in for a rough ride. The only ATI hardware that is ever suggested is hardware that comes with custom ATI software to control it. The ATI 600 card, for example, came with ATI Catalyst Media Center (ATI CMC), which was pretty similar to the classic ATI MMC of yesteryear.

Much of that was covered here, this summer: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/show...-jvc-2312.html
Too bad you didn't see those posts before getting the 750!

Don't get the PVR-150, as it had issues with IRE and audio. Definitely look for a PVR-250 or PVR-350 if you want to use a good Hauppauge analog-in MPEG hardware capture card. My only complaint about Hauppauge PVR cards is that the encoding is a bit soft-focus -- not a lot, just slightly. It's not true to source like ATI has been, on its good MPEG-encoding cards (ATI 600, ATI AIW series, etc). But it may be one of your only choices, so it's tolerable. On a big HD screen, you won't really notice anyway. It's most obvious when 1:1 or so in a computer editing window.

[Nightshiver]

All's well though. I get a full refund, so it's not that bad. Yeah, I actually did read over much of this forum before I registered, I only bought the 750 out of spite over so much trouble with Amazon I suppose. I realize the Hauppauge cards are somewhat old, are there any "somewhat current" ATI all in wonder PCI cards that you might suggest over the Hauppauge cards?

[NJRoadfan]

Got any screencaps? I'm interested to see what the input looks like as I was toying with picking up the 750 for its ATSC tuner. Also have you tried adjusting the capture device's onboard proc-amp?

For PCIe cards, your choices for uncompressed capture are going to be a bit limited. Most cards have built in MPEG encoding these days and don't have WDM drivers to use in VirtualDub.

I landed up with an AVermedia HD DVR PCIe card. Supports VirtualDub and has HD input. Just be aware that the SD inputs are very sensitive to video sync on this card and that a TBC is a must in order to avoid random frame drops.

[Nightshiver]

Yes, I toyed with as much as I could toy with. Tweaked many setting many different times and no, I don't have screencaps. I already re-packaged it and sent it back. Also, I never said I was going to capture uncompressed, so that's not a very big deal for me, even if it does give a slight boost to quality. As for the Tuner aspect of the 750, you should definitely get it. The tuner worked just fine for me, but the s-video connection did not. I would only use that usb stick for viewing TV, nothing else.

[admin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightshiver

are there any "somewhat current" ATI all in wonder PCI cards that you might suggest over the Hauppauge cards?

The only ATI All In Wonder series cards were made for the Windows XP generation of computers. (There was some success, however, with Win98SE, WinME and Win2K, seeing how several of them were designed pre-XP. But latter ATI MMC required XP.)

I have one ATI All In Wonder Radeon 7200 PCI card available for $75. It's my only one left, if you're interested. The other two cards I have left are for AGP slots. And then I'll be out of extra ATI AIW cards.

The "downside" is that AIW's do not work with WinVista or Win7, but you honestly should not be using that OS for serious video work anyway. Most good video/audio software works best (or ONLY works) in Windows XP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NJRoadfan

For PCIe cards, your choices for uncompressed capture are going to be a bit limited. Most cards have built in MPEG encoding these days and don't have WDM drivers to use in VirtualDub.

This is almost an understatement.

With their wallets (mostly by way of returns to big-box stores like Walmart and Best Buy), consumers destroyed the digital video recording industry. They cried about devices being "too hard" as compared to a VCR -- nevermind that few took time to read instructions or try to understand video in any way. They never went online to seek help or advice. A TiVo/DVR/PVR was the only style of item with any success, as it was easy to use. Of course, the downside was an inability to keep recordings. Anything that allowed you to keep recordings took extra effort to understand blank media, editing, etc.

As time went on, idiot-proof "PVR-style" video recording cards replaced true capture cards. These took the dummy-friendly PVR format of operation, and mixed it with barebones recording "to keep" abilities. To keep it easy, these new PVR cards only record in 1-2 formats, generally MPEG-2 for DVD-Video and/or H.264 stream downloads, with limited presets (if any), and software that treats you like a child (or a moron). It was designed for the lazy, which is sadly your average consumer. A few have "extra features" to record in "Youtube format" or Divx -- both of which are terrible ideas, as neither should be used as a direct-capture format (it looks AWFUL).

Since much of the PVR style aspect of the card required hardware, software interfaces (WDM) like VirtualDub were locked out. So these don't even work well as AVI capture cards. It's crappy MPEG/H.264 A>D encoding, ATSC/QAM stream download, or nothing.

[NJRoadfan]

To AVermedia's credit, their "MediaCenter" software does support AVI capture either uncompressed or compressed with one of your installed DirectShow codecs, in addition to the "user friendly" MPEG2 (pretty much a must with HD unless you have a fast RAID) and h.264 iPod formats. The only thing I wasn't crazy about with it was its stability. It crashed... a lot. It also seemed to process the video, making it darker. It might have also tried to deinterlace, but I have to test that. The good news is, I can use VirtualDub to do "raw" captures. Note that this applies to the PCIe version of the HD DVR, which has NO hardware compression chips. The USB version does have a hardware MPEG encoder and it may not support WDM capture.

In terms of old ATI AIW cards, your choices are limited. The only PCI card with the original Theater chip was the 32MB version of the AIW 128. the 16MB AIW 128 along with the AIW Pro and original AIW (which I actually own) have a Brooktree Bt829 capture chip and use ATI's ImpacTV2 chip for composite/s-video out. As far as software support goes, the bt829 based cards will work with Windows 3.1x(!) and 9x. They may work with 2000/XP too. The original Theater chip should work in Windows 2000/XP as well. Just keep in mind that these cards will likely have only VfW drivers, not WDM/Directshow.

Fun Fact: The bt829 is well supported in Windows 9x because the ATI All-in-Wonder was the first official card to be supported by Microsoft's failed "WebTV for Windows". When I was beta testing Windows 98, I knew it was going to fail early on. Nothing but a bloated and buggy piece of software, but I'll save those details for another post.

[Steve(MS)]

Found this on another forum and have no idea exactly how accurate or how much it affects capturing.
There was no mention of the ATI 600 so not sure if it relates to it either.

"First the ATI 650 has a problem with its over-aggressive automatic gain control. It sometimes crushes blacks and blows out brights. No amount of adjusting the driver's proc amp controls could fix this."
"This is also true for Ati HD750. Theater 550 don`t have this issue. The reason behind this is that Theater 650 have a new Auto Gain and Auto Color over the Theater 550. There is no user way to fix those."

[admin]

The hardware in the 600 should be different from the 650 and 750. The 650/750 hard MPEG-2 hardware encoders, while the 600 series relied on ATI's older software/hybrid method (which was superior in quality, as strange as that may sound to some!).

I believe the 650 and 750 are related, possibly sharing much of the same hardware -- most like the Theatre 650 chipset.

The 600 USB (and PCI-e) is based on something older, be it a dedicated 600 chipst, or maybe the ATI 500/550 Theatre chipsets. I've not had time to look into it. After the Radeon All-In-Wonder (AIW) series ended, and the 550 chipset came out, I lost interest in ATI. AMD had been plundering it, as far as I was concerned. When the 600 cards came out, I was pleasantly surprised to see a return to "ATI quality" video capturing options.

Chipset data is missing, but you can compare the cards at http://www.amd.com/us/products/pctv/...ct-matrix.aspx
And then I've archived a PDF of it, too -- in case AMD/ATI deletes the page later on.

In fact, according to that chart, if I'm reading it correctly, all of these cards come with ATI Catalyst Media Center:
ATI TV Wonder™ HD 650 Combo USB
ATI TV Wonder™ HD 650 Combo PCIe
ATI TV Wonder™ HD 650 PCI
ATI TV Wonder™ HD 600 PCIe
ATI TV Wonder™ HD 600 PCI
ATI TV Wonder™ HD 600 USB

I'm not entirely sure if that's accurate. Do those listed 650 cards come with ATI CMC?

AGC issues have been problems on other cards in past years, such as the Hauppage PVR-150 (if I'm remembering correctly). While you'd like to think such problems would disappear over time, sadly it's just not the case. So many errors get repeated in the DVD recorder / capture card / PVR box market, such as blocky video encoding, insufficient bitrtes (720x480 Half D1, as dumb a move as that was), audio issues, etc.

[Nightshiver]

I've got an ATI 600 USB that's been on the way for over 2 weeks. Hopefully it will be here sometime this week.

[NJRoadfan]

The HD 750 appears to be a new chip. A true world tuner with ATSC and DVB-T in one chip. Video encoding is software with hardware assist only with ATI video cards.

AGC problems scream overactive Macrovision protection to me for some reason. I can't say its a problem with the AVermedia card I bought, I have my VCR hooked into a TV and the monitor with the capture preview side by side and no strange brightness/contrast shifts. The drivers are wonky though, but thats a problem with most video capture cards.

Avery Lee makes a note about problems with some capture cards and AGC calibration, ATI is called out as being an offender: http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=35

[kpmedia]

Quote:

AGC problems scream overactive Macrovision protection to me for some reason.

Very astute observation. I would have to agree.

Quote:

Avery Lee makes a note about problems with some capture cards and AGC calibration, ATI is called out as being an offender

In all the ATI All In Wonder Radeon AGP/PCI cards I've used to date, I never ran into AGC issues in terms of it affecting quality. Potential anti-copy, yes. But quality issues, no. Whites and blacks are proper, as are colors.

Hauppauge, on the other hand, I've seen with some pretty wonky output.

[Nightshiver]

You know, out of sheer curiosity, what are your (kpmedia), lordsmurf, and admin's personal configurations for transferring VHS? Meaning, what player do you guys use, what TBC, what Proc Amps, Capture Methods, everything. Just curious as to what all of you guys use yourselves

[Nightshiver]

Small update. The ATI 600 USB just came in, and I have to say, I'm impressed. The quality is MUCH better than the 750, and there is much more control that I have in the CMC than in the other software for the 750. I'll be posting a small sample of video and what I've done with it in a little bit.

[lordsmurf]

JVC HRS9600U
DataVdeo TBC-1000
Elite Video BVP-4 Plus
JVC DR-M10S or ATI All In Wonder 9600XT

That's the primary.

Lot of other gear available, too, but that takes care of the bulk of what I need for personal use. That's my setup for my own tapes.

[Nightshiver]

I have a chance to get a Datavideo TBC-3000 for $100, used but in great working condition. Should I go for it?

[kpmedia]

Sounds like a great price to me.

[Nightshiver]

Is there anything radically different between it and the TBC-1000 that might harm anything I do, or is just a straight up upgrade?

[admin]

It's not an upgrade -- just different.
Compare features: DataVideo TBC-100, 1000, 3000, 5000, 7000 Time Base Corrector user manuals

TBC-1000 was a full-frame sync/TBC with distribution amp.
TBC-3000 has no distro amp, but instead has some testing features, and some mild proc amp controls.
Base TBC is probably identical. Just different secondary features.
Each model differed in secondary features, but that was really it. I think the 7000 model is like a 1000+3000.

TBC-100 is a TBC only -- nothing extra, not even a case. Bare card. ("100" is not a typo.)
You don't see many of those anymore.

What's funny is everybody seeks the TBC-1000 because it was, when this site was founded almost a decade ago, the lowest-price TBC that worked well. Therefore it made it into the guides you see here, as well as posts by members of this site on their posts on other sites. Fast forward a bunch of years, and everybody is so busy looking for the "1000" models that they overlook the others, which can be taken for a steal on the used market, as the demand is lopsided towards the 1000. Go figure. Take advantage of this now, before anybody else catches on -- because I'm going to tell them with posts like this! Not that the other models can be found all that often.

[Nightshiver]

Well, I bought it and now I'm selling it Wonderful device. Thought I'd try to sell it here first before going to eBay.

[rlschoemer]

Is their a comparison list on this forum of the many different PCI capture boards? It is time for me to buy something that supports HD and need some assistance. Budget allows up to $250, was looking at AverMedia HD DVR and BlackMagic Intensity or ? ? Any thoughts are appreciated.