Capture card alternatives to the Philips SAA7134 chipset cards ?

[metaleonid]

Hi lordsmurf,

Now after reading posts from you and the guidelines I started to doubt that I have good capture hardware. I have both Canopus ADVC-300 and Philips SAA7134 chipset based LifeView FlyVideo 3000.

Canopus does a very good job capturing more or less crappy VHS. I have no frame drops and audio sync seems to work. I thought quality wise Philips does a good job as well, but it's not as reliable and if VHS is a bit jammed, I get dropped frames.

First off, in your opinion looking at images that I posted, are images produced by Philips based tuner card considered excellent quality?

What capture device would you recommend so that I can capture in Huffyuv, which wouldn't drop frames, capture from NTSC and PAL (possibly with SECAM too) and would sync audio and video. ATI, Dazzle? Thanks.

Now I see people recommend ATI All In Wonder

[lordsmurf]

Note: Moved from PM to forum, because I think others can give some great input.
Topics like this also help others, so we want to avoid hiding good advice in PMs or emails. Thanks for understanding.

Quote:

Originally Posted by metaleonid

Hi lordsmurf,
Now after reading posts from you and the guidelines I started to doubt that I have good capture hardware. I have both Canopus ADVC-300 and Philips SAA7134 chipset based LifeView FlyVideo 3000.

Quote:

Canopus does a very good job capturing more or less crappy VHS. I have no frame drops and audio sync seems to work.

The ADVC-300 has a hit-or-miss filter (claimed to be a TBC, but that could be argued) on the input, so it's likely the cause for your "no frame drops" situation. And audio sync is almost always tied to dropped frames, so that's also understandable. The problem with an ADVC -- specifically the 300 model -- is that it's (1) a Canopus DV codec, which isn't great and is 4:1:1 DV NTSC, and (2) the noise reduction on this model is horribly unacceptable, butchering video more than fixing it. When the NR is so strong that it causes ghosts, you've messed up.

Quote:

I thought quality wise Philips does a good job as well, but it's not as reliable and if VHS is a bit jammed, I get dropped frames.

What's your total capture workflow? Is there a full-frame external TBC ahead of the capture card? That, more than anything else, would help avoid dropped frames. Also be sure your hard drive is acting as it should. SATA should really be on AHCI (BIOS setting), while IDE needs to be in Ultra ATA mode. Slow/laggy hard drives also cause most dropped frames.

Quote:

First off, in your opinion looking at images that I posted, are images produced by Philips based tuner card considered excellent quality?

I've not seen anything that would make me call it a bad card. And in my world, capture cards only come in two flavors: non-damaging and damaging. If the card is not damaging the signal, I think it's fine. If there is obvious quality loss from the card alone, I tend to be pretty insulting toward the card, as I think it's unacceptable and any video company should know better.

Quote:

What capture device would you recommend so that I can capture in Huffyuv, which wouldn't drop frames, capture from NTSC and PAL (possibly with SECAM too) and would sync audio and video. ATI, Dazzle? Thanks.
Now I see people recommend ATI All In Wonder

The ATI All In Wonder is one of the few cars that can capture PAL and NTSC and SECAM, and do it with uncompressed or lossless AVI, and even with MPEG-2 encoding. Any decent computer will be fine with not having dropped frames, also assuming the VCR is outputting a good signal and there's an external TBC / frame sync between the VCR and capture card.

I don't think your current method is "bad" -- but there may be some other methods that are an improvement on what you're doing.

[metaleonid]

Hello,

I PM-ed before I found the comparison screenshots between ATI, BT and Philips. But still it is great to hear expert's input.

There's no TBC between VCR and the capture card. And yes, my computer is old and has IDE. I purchased new hard drive and it seems to work fine if I capture from LaserDisc or even excellent quality VHS. But if VHS is jammed, I get dropped frames and/or capture breaks. I understood about TBC and SATA. Time to upgrade.

The audio/video sync with my TV Tuner card is gradual. The audio is either stretched or squeezed depending on what VCR I use, depending on what sound card I use. Usually I can see the pattern depending on VCR/SoundCard combination. For example Samsung VCR and M-Audio soundcard makes audio behind 100 milliseconds after one hour of capturing. If Terratec card is used, then I get only 60 milliseconds behind and so on. This can be corrected, just annoys me to every time stretch/squeeze the WAV file.

Thank you for your input.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

There's no TBC between VCR and the capture card.

This is your current major fail point in your workflow.

Quote:

And yes, my computer is old and has IDE. I purchased new hard drive and it seems to work fine if I capture from LaserDisc or even excellent quality VHS. But if VHS is jammed, I get dropped frames and/or capture breaks. I understood about TBC and SATA. Time to upgrade.

IDE is fine, if it's 7200rpm and on a good system. SATA (setup as AHCI) just helps to eliminate drive-related issues, as IDE is a reduced data throughput (ATA66-133) as compared to 1.5 to 3.0 Gb/s. Not that you'll even hit those speeds -- they're theoretical, not practical -- but you'll get at least twice the speed performance as compared to IDE. Note that I still use IDE drives in my main capturing computer. So it's not all bad.

Quote:

The audio/video sync with my TV Tuner card is gradual. The audio is either stretched or squeezed depending on what VCR I use, depending on what sound card I use. Usually I can see the pattern depending on VCR/SoundCard combination. For example Samsung VCR and M-Audio soundcard makes audio behind 100 milliseconds after one hour of capturing. If Terratec card is used, then I get only 60 milliseconds behind and so on. This can be corrected, just annoys me to every time stretch/squeeze the WAV file.

I can pretty much guarantee this is caused by dropped frames. Stretching the audio is just hiding the problem, not correcting it. That TBC will potentially solve much of what you face.

[metaleonid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

I can pretty much guarantee this is caused by dropped frames. Stretching the audio is just hiding the problem, not correcting it. That TBC will potentially solve much of what you face.

While I would agree that TBC might solve the problem, the audio/video sync is not caused by dropped frames. In fact, when I capture from the good quality VHS, I have no dropped frames. Yet audio video is out of sync. The explanation is simple. Each sound card uses its internal clock to sample audio. Each VCR has it's own speed which deviates from 29.97 fps in NTSC and 25 fps in PAL domains. Capture card captures video frames at the VCR speed but stores them digitally at precisely 29.97/25 fps. Sound card samples audio at its own pace independently of the capture card thus deviation occurs. So TBC might correct the frequencies video frames arrive to the capture card whereas sound card would still sample audio at its own pace. I will have to acquire it and test.

Keep in mind that when I capture from LaserDisc with digital sound, I use optical toss link to record sound digitally. In this scenario, I never get sync problems because the sound card doesn't sample the sound but copies it directly. In one hour of video there are discrete number of video frames and discrete number of audio samples stored on LaserDisc. And even if the speed of an LD player deviates from 29.97 fps, this certain number of video frames and the certain number of audio samples get copied to the computer regardless of speed of the player. Thus no sync problems.

--Leonid

[metaleonid]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

The ATI All In Wonder is one of the few cars that can capture PAL and NTSC and SECAM, and do it with uncompressed or lossless AVI, and even with MPEG-2 encoding.

Would ATI 600 USB be a good choice. Will it handle Huffyuv? Does it have 3d comb filter for Y/C separation?

[NJRoadfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by metaleonid

Would ATI 600 USB be a good choice. Will it handle Huffyuv? Does it have 3d comb filter for Y/C separation?

It can capture with VirtualDub, it does NOT have a 3D-comb filter however. Whatever is built into your laserdisc player is likely better. You can also use a SVHS VCR or some DVD recorders as a pass through comb filter. Many of them have surprisingly nice 3D adaptive comb filters built in.