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-   -   Philips SAA7130HL Chip Capture Card vs ATI and Canopus ADVC (https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-capture/3644-philips-saa7130hl-chip.html)

naripeddi 11-07-2011 11:46 PM

Philips SAA7130HL Chip Capture Card vs ATI and Canopus ADVC
 
Hello,

My goal: Digitize VHS, perform restoration and burn DVD-Video (also, store the original uncompressed huffyuv video for future use)

My constraints: Cannot get hold of ATI TV Wonder 600 USB in my part of the world

What I have:

1. A TV Tuner card purchased in 2009 that has Philips SAA7130HL chip, with Composite, S-Video inputs.
2. Pinnacle PCTV USB 2.0 purchased 8-9 years ago (with S-Video, Composite)
3. Canopus ADVC 110

My questions:

a. Since I am unable to get hold of the much recommended ATI 600 USB, is the Philips SAA7130HL as good as the ATI for uncompressed capture using VirtualDub (or any other compatible software)?

I found the datasheet for this TV Card here:

http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/SAA7130HL.pdf

It says:

The SAA7130HL meets the requirements of PC design guides 98/99 and 2001 and is PCI 2.2 and Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) compliant.

The analog video is sampled by 9-bit ADCs, decoded by a multi-line adaptive comb filter and scaled horizontally, vertically and by field rate. Multiple video output formats (YUV and RGB) are available, including packed and planar, gamma-compensated or black-stretched.

Audio is routed as an analog signal via the loopback cable to the sound card.


b. ATI 600 USB is not available from Amazon anymore. Are the other newer models 650, 700, 750...etc are as good as the 600, since my only goal is to capture analog tapes (and NOT to use it as a TV Tuner Card to receive Sd or HD signals)? I read in the forums that the newer ATI models are not as good as the 600 for capturing uncompressed video from analog tapes.

c. Given the criticism on ADVC 110 for analog tapes (DV color sampling...etc), what can I use the device for? I am currently using it for capturing SD broadcasts (PAL) from Satellite box. It works pretty good. Can I use it effectively for any other types of tape capturing? (in fact, I used it for VHS Tape capture as well and converted to DVD, but I wanted to try huffyuv using some other capture hardware to see the difference).

Thanks.

lordsmurf 11-08-2011 09:07 AM

The DV25 codec doesn't have the same colorspace issues as NTSC. For DV, PAL is 4:2:0, which is acceptable, while NTSC is a more-compressed 4:1:1, which often results in less-acceptable color rendition. It's more uneven than 4:2:0, and easily chews up color accuracy and color detail. 4:2:0 is not as bad, and is the same colorspace used for DVD-Video. (Although, to be technical, the precise implementation of 4:2:0 varies some between DV and DVD-Video MPEG-2.)

Is that the rounded-off Pinnacle USB box? It's sort of like a giant mouse, with an ergonomic shape? If so, use it for a paperweight. It only works with the version of Pinnacle Studio that it came with, and that software is a nightmare. You'll never get successful captures with any mainstream AVI capturing tools, like VirtualDub or iuVCR.

The Philips chipset card may work fine in VirtualDub. Try it. It should be a fine AVI-only capture card. Forget about using it for MPEG capturing, however. What is the brand name and model of this card? I don't remember chipset models off-hand, and without looking, I don't believe this is an MPEG hardware chipset.

Newer ATI cards are not just "not good" at recording AVI, but it's not even possible. The full transition to "PVR" has been reached with a number of manufacturers now, as sad as that is.

eBay may be a good option for finding an ATI card, worldwide.
Amazon.com did have ATI 600 cards just a few days ago -- stock comes and goes, new and used, as people put them in the Amazon Marketplace.

jmac698 11-08-2011 11:11 AM

There's a nice comparison here:
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...on-screenshots

As far as technical quality, in my opinion there's not a huge difference. However, for the record here's some differences:
-your image could be shifted upwards 2-6 lines from the technical standard. This is a driver issue. They do this to hide the "flickering dots" caused by Closed Captions.
-some cards have a better comb filter - this eliminates moving dots on brightly colored edges. I'm never seen this problem on VHS though; as it can't create sharp edges.
-the image can be slightly wider or narrow and out of spec with no way to adjust it. If it looks really distorted you can just resize it to taste yourself.
-some card/software combinations might have a/v sync or video missing frames problems. I made a test program just for this. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1462931

More important is the ability to get uncompressed avi's and program compatibility. You can get uncompressed avi's but it may not be simple. I used graphedit to do it with two of my mpeg2 cards; one was USB. It would not work in Virtualdub.

The problem with some mpeg cards is the built in compression affects the image quality. Sometimes you can't set the quality high enough. There's a tweaker program for my Hauppage PVR though which lets me set a very high quality and it's ok; my USB device has no tweaks and I have to use graphedit to get full quality.

So my final advice is just use whichever one works for you. Test yourself; if you can't see the difference then it doesn't matter ;) Far more important is capturing with good brightness levels and a/v sync, then the processing that you do on it afterwards, and finally using a TBC device.

naripeddi 11-11-2011 04:54 AM

Thanks LS & jmac698..

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf (Post 17994)
For DV, PAL is 4:2:0, which is acceptable. 4:2:0 is not as bad

That makes me very happy, since I have invested in the expensive ADVC. Also, I hope the Canopus hardware DV codec is as good as any other DV codecs out there???

Quote:

Is that the rounded-off Pinnacle USB box?
The image is availabe on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Pinnacle-21010.../dp/B00028CAJ4

Quote:

The Philips chipset card may work fine in VirtualDub. Try it. It should be a fine AVI-only capture card. Forget about using it for MPEG capturing, however. What is the brand name and model of this card? I don't remember chipset models off-hand, and without looking, I don't believe this is an MPEG hardware chipset.
It is a very cheap TV card. The software that came with it (HonestTech PVR) allows capturing in MPG, so I guess the card had hardware MPG. I tried capturing from satellite box today (S-Video) and the picture quality is not as good as Canopus ADVC.

kpmedia 11-11-2011 09:49 AM

I don't believe the Philips SAA713xxx chipset is MPEG hardware.
The MPEG recording is probably purely software encoding, which is rarely good quality, or even passable/acceptable quality.
Pinnacle primarily makes low-end junk video cards, sold in store like Best Buy and the defunct Circuit City.

Canopus has one of the more lousy DV codecs, compared against somebody like Canon, Sony or Matrox. But everything is relative.

metaleonid 12-06-2011 09:25 AM

Why don't you view this thread:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...7314-chip.html

There are images that I made with Canopus ADVC-300 and Philips SAA7134 chipset based card LifeView. That should answer your question.

lordsmurf 12-06-2011 06:51 PM

If there's something specific you'd like to point out, please let us know what it is. :)

And the Philips is not MPEG-only, but apparently a BT8x8 replacement, meaning a WDM AVI capture card chipset.
Just to set the recording straight.

metaleonid 12-06-2011 07:42 PM

The Philips SAA713x tuner cards don't have MPEG2 hardware encoding. Absolutely not. If capture is done properly using Huffyuv codec, the results can be outstanding. The only con is you might get audio out of sync, but you can correct it. I gave the link of the other thread so that naripeddi can check out the screenshots that I made with Canopus ADVC-300 and the Philips based Tuner card. I would say Tuner card has a bit better quality due to capturing in Huffyuv.

I have also read here that someone opened ADVC-100 and found that same Philips SAA7134 chip inside ADVC. The post is Comments posted by alan from Netherlands, February 27, 2004

Also I suggest that naripeddi tries this http://auzol.narod.ru/index_e.html and get native Philips drivers as well as Fly2000 TV software. Try to set up and capture. See if it works for you. Make sure you adjust sharpness and set gain to manual.


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