TV Capture Card Help Please !!!!

This and That · Sun 15 Aug, 2004 13.12

I bought a Win TV 2000 capture card it's been fitted to my PC and i don't know how to work it. (i know i'm thick you don't have to tell me )I am looking to capture live video too i have tried putting the TV aerial socket in the back of the PC but nothing ? i have SKY and it's scart leads going from my TV to Video etc .Basically i'm wondering how i can capture live video there must be a way of doing this .

Can anyone help please can you explain it in John and Janet language

Chris · Sun 15 Aug, 2004 13.36

Have you tried scanning for channels using the WinTV application software?

That should pick something up.

This and That · Sun 15 Aug, 2004 16.26

Thanks Chris i'll try that and see .

This and That · Sun 15 Aug, 2004 19.15

I bought it at PC World and they did the instalation for me so i presume it's working ok.I have the icon on the desktop for Win 2000 and when i click on the icon the pic is all frosty even when i put the aerial socket from the tv in the back .Sorry to be so thick .

Neil Jones · Sun 15 Aug, 2004 21.44

Sounds like it needs tuning in then, if by "frosty" you mean you see static.

Somewhere in the program options should be an option to tune channels in - it'll either use UHF channel numbers (21 to 69 inclusive) or frequencies. These will vary depending on which part of the country you're in.

itsrobert · Mon 16 Aug, 2004 21.04

This and That wrote:I bought it at PC World and they did the instalation for me so i presume it's working ok.I have the icon on the desktop for Win 2000 and when i click on the icon the pic is all frosty even when i put the aerial socket from the tv in the back .Sorry to be so thick .

What you'll need to do is:

1) Plug the aerial lead into the tv card.
2) Open WinTV 2000.
3) Click the menu button, and then click "Suite Manager".
4) Make sure the reception details are correct, i.e. ensure you select "antenna" if you're using a TV aerial, and that you're in PAL-I (if you're in the UK).
5) Select "auto scan", and it'll do the hard work for you. You'll see it scan all the UHF frequences, and it will list all the ones your aerial can pick up from local transmitters. Most of these will be useless, but amongst them will be BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five.
6) Once you've sorted them into the right order and deleted any channels you don't want, save the setup.
7) Click capture/record, and it'll save as either AVI or MPEG depending upon which tv card you have.

Hope that makes sense, and is helpful!

This and That · Mon 16 Aug, 2004 21.25

itsrobert wrote:
This and That wrote:I bought it at PC World and they did the instalation for me so i presume it's working ok.I have the icon on the desktop for Win 2000 and when i click on the icon the pic is all frosty even when i put the aerial socket from the tv in the back .Sorry to be so thick .
What you'll need to do is:

1) Plug the aerial lead into the tv card.
2) Open WinTV 2000.
3) Click the menu button, and then click "Suite Manager".
4) Make sure the reception details are correct, i.e. ensure you select "antenna" if you're using a TV aerial, and that you're in PAL-I (if you're in the UK).
5) Select "auto scan", and it'll do the hard work for you. You'll see it scan all the UHF frequences, and it will list all the ones your aerial can pick up from local transmitters. Most of these will be useless, but amongst them will be BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five.
6) Once you've sorted them into the right order and deleted any channels you don't want, save the setup.
7) Click capture/record, and it'll save as either AVI or MPEG depending upon which tv card you have.

Hope that makes sense, and is helpful!

Hi- it does many thanks for that i'm gonna try can i just ask one more thing grovel grovel where does the video source come from then ?.

Thanks to all who have taken the time and trouble to reply to me .

Neil Jones · Mon 16 Aug, 2004 22.47

This and That wrote:Hi- it does many thanks for that i'm gonna try can i just ask one more thing grovel grovel where does the video source come from then ?

The TV signal is your source. This is why you connect your aerial to it to be able to pick anything up.

itsrobert · Wed 18 Aug, 2004 22.48

Neil Jones wrote:
This and That wrote:Hi- it does many thanks for that i'm gonna try can i just ask one more thing grovel grovel where does the video source come from then ?
The TV signal is your source. This is why you connect your aerial to it to be able to pick anything up.

Yep, that's if you're just looking for analogue television. I noticed in your first post that you also mentioned Sky. That complicates it a little. The way I've had it set up since 2001 is to have a SCART -> S-Video and 3 Phono socket adapter, as shown below...

Plug the SCART end into one of the SCART sockets on the rear of your Sky digibox, then connect an S-Video lead from the socket on the adapter to the socket on the TV card in the computer. To deal with audio, get an audio lead, and plug the two ends into the adapter, and the single end into the audio in socket on your TV card.

Once that has been done, you'll have to select the appropriate channel via WinTV to view Sky.

This and That · Sat 28 Aug, 2004 23.33

Thanks for that managed to get the tv aerial side of it working but have to get the scart adapter thanks for your help.

DJGM · Fri 22 Oct, 2004 04.20

Yes. Plug one of these into the SCART out socket on the back of your VCR . . .

Get a composite video lead (as in the pic below) and plug one end into the correct socket on your WinTV card.
Plug the other end into the yellow socket on the SCART adapter you'll have plugged in the back of your VCR.

Then get a stereo jack to phono lead like this one . . .

I'm fairly sure you'll already know by this point, exactly where to plug the red and black phono plugs
from this type of cable, and which socket on your PC's sound card the stereo jack needs to go into.

After all that, you'll then need to make sure "Line In" is active on the Windows sound mixer . . .

Right, that's all the hardware done and dusted. Now go and get some videocapturing software. VirtualDub is
a particularly good, full featured package for that purpose, available at a 100% unbeatable price . . . It's free!
It captures video in uncompressed AVI format, so you'll need to ensure you've got a generous amount of
spare capacity on your HDD. You'll also want to get a program that'll encode your AVI's into smaller files,
such as AVI2MPEG, RealProducer, Windows Media Encoder or any other suitable program.

Now though, it's gone 04:20, and I need to get some kip! Assuming at least one other person round here
has used VirtualDub, I'll leave up to others to guide you through how to capture your AV content with it.