TV Capture Card Help Please !!!!

Neil Jones · Fri 22 Oct, 2004 17.51

DJGM's method is terribly complicated - I just plug my standard coaxial cable in from my VCR's RF Out socket to my card and can work with that for a piccie and sound.

DJGM · Fri 22 Oct, 2004 18.39

True, the method using ordinary RF coax cable maybe easier, but I think you'll find that you'll still need some suitable audio cabling,
since the RF cable cannot carry sound from the VCR to the PC.* You'll get a somewhat better picture if you follow my guidelines.
Exactly how much better the quality will be depends on the grade of the cabling you get. It can also depend on how well your
monitor and/or WinTV card works. Everyone's configuration is different . . . your mileage may vary, so to speak . . .

(*Unless Hauppauge have released a WinTV card that takes sound via RF coax since I bought my own WinTV card, 5 years ago)

Chris · Fri 22 Oct, 2004 20.59

DJGM wrote:True, the method using ordinary RF coax cable maybe easier, but I think you'll find that you'll still need some suitable audio cabling, since the RF cable cannot carry sound from the VCR to the PC.* You'll get a somewhat better picture if you follow my guidelines. Exactly how much better the quality will be depends on the grade of the cabling you get. It can also depend on how well your monitor and/or WinTV card works. Everyone's configuration is different . . . your mileage may vary, so to speak . . .

(*Unless Hauppauge have released a WinTV card that takes sound via RF coax since I bought my own WinTV card, 5 years ago)

RF will do sound but it will be in mono and IMO will usually be of crappy quality and fuzzy or have some sort of interference in the background. You just need to connect the little wire out the back of the TV card and plug that into the line in line of your sound card.

But yes, a separate line for video and sound will improve quality somewhat. Actually, make that substatially.

And I would suggest using an MPEG capable capture application such as Cyberlink's Power VCR which will enable you to record more footage than uncompressed AVI. Unless you have a very very large HD or have a need for ultra high quality video, that is.

Neil Jones · Sat 23 Oct, 2004 00.20

Chris wrote:
DJGM wrote:True, the method using ordinary RF coax cable maybe easier, but I think you'll find that you'll still need some suitable audio cabling, since the RF cable cannot carry sound from the VCR to the PC.* You'll get a somewhat better picture if you follow my guidelines.
RF will do sound but it will be in mono and IMO will usually be of crappy quality and fuzzy or have some sort of interference in the background. You just need to connect the little wire out the back of the TV card and plug that into the line in line of your sound card.

But yes, a separate line for video and sound will improve quality somewhat. Actually, make that substatially.

For what I use it for (video clips for my website), I don't need stereo sound or a super sharp picture because I deliberately compress the picture and sound at low bitrates so they don't take all day to upload and download for 56k users like myself. Therefore I'm happy with the RF cable in mono and any picture degrading (detail is lost anyway when it's compressed so hides any interference).

But having said that, if you're serious about this sort of thing then it may make sense to have the equipment that DJGM has outlined.

And I would suggest using an MPEG capable capture application such as Cyberlink's Power VCR which will enable you to record more footage than uncompressed AVI. Unless you have a very very large HD or have a need for ultra high quality video, that is.

Check the software that comes with your card; you may find that it will do MPEG1/2 on-the-fly but this, in my experience, pixellates the picture if you don't have super sharp picture in the first place from your source. But as I bought a cheap card anyway, I'm not really surprised.

Also bear in mind your filesystem: FAT32 only allows a file to be 4Gb in size, about 6 and a half minutes of uncompressed AVI footage at a rough estimate (actual space usage depends on your video dimensions - bigger it is the more space it takes up). NTFS has no such limit so theretically the maximum file size can be as big as the amount of free space on the drive.