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[mosaic]

I just bought a new capture card... actually, a USB capture box, the Leadtek Winfast USB II Deluxe.

Pros:
Only cost $104
No video delay while playing games. None. I said none. None!
Included PVR software makes games look sharp and colorful
Included PVR software captures awesome movie clips
Included PVR software captures great looking stills, EXCEPT...

Con:
Stills taken with included PVR software OFTEN suffer motion blur.

Doesn't matter if I take stills slow or hit the button rapidly. About 1 of 5 times I get the sexiest still I could want. The other 4... ugh.

So I decided to see if it was the hardware or the software, and lo, I tried Dscaler. It doesn't have motion blur problems. In fact, I'm mostly happy with the stills it takes. I've been using the TomsMoComp and Video Deinterlace 2-Frame filters to de-interlace the input. And I've got a gradual comb filter setup. Stills look great....

But I think they could be better. And I know a bunch of you here use and love Dscaler.

So, please, share with me your de-interlace and filter settings so that I might fall absolutely in love with this capture box. It's already giving me the goods with watching and video capturing... I just need to squeeze the best stills I can out of it too.

(FYI, I did try searching the archives and didn't quite find what I'm looking for. If I'm re-treading a past topic, feel free to hit me with "Teh old" and provide me a link.)

 

[Oogami]

Sorry that I never used Dscaler, but I'm just curious about the Winfast USB II product. Hope you don't mind me asking some questions about it.........

Well I've been looking for a best solution to play console video games on my PC monitor and be able to do video/still images capturing too. I want no lag at all, and the graphics quality be just as good as on TV as possible. So is Winfast USB II good enough for that?

I have a TV wonder PCI and games look kinda grainy and jaggies, especially in full screen. So I would like to know if video games suffer these problems or not in full screen for Winfast USB II? How close would you say of the graphic quality of games on this product Vs. games on TV? It would be superb if you can post some screenshots on video game taken from this product.

And about the video capturing, I would like to know how frequently you can take the snapshots? Do you take one and have to wait for several seconds before taking another snapshot? Or like in TV Wonder, you can take bunch of them really fast and rapidly(like one each every 0.5 second, then all the snapshots you took go to a clipboard and you can choose which to save)?

Finally what's the best resolution possible for the video and still images capturing? And do they still look good when in the best resolution?

Sorry for so many questions, I just want to know more about this product since it sounds very good.

Thanks!

 

[mosaic]

Honestly, if you have a desktop PC, I'd go with a PCI or AGP based product... preferrably one that works with Dscaler. (ATI's products don't tend to, Happauge seems to be a good bet though)

I use a laptop exclusively now though, so I had to go with a USB solution. As far as I know, the Leadtek Winfast USB II Deluxe is the ONLY reasonably priced video capture box that doesn't suffer from input lag. Canopus and Pinnacle offer high-end products that cost roughly $500+ and have component inputs. The Leadtek is $110 and tops out with S-Video.

To that end, I have fallen in love with it. The graphical quality in windowed mode looks cleaner than on my TV (S-Video, but not prog scan). The included PVR software does a great job of de-interlacing the image and keeping colors vibrant without bleeding... the overall image is a touch on the soft side, but it's very slight... much less soft than my old ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder, that's for sure. No jaggies or grain, although the image is noticeably softer in full-screen. But still not killer soft. I prefer the 640x480 window anyway. Max resolution seems to be 720x480... anything else seems to just be a re-size of that res.

But the included PVR software doesn't do screen grabs perfectly. Too much motion blur. Dscaler seems to work great though. I still need to tweak the settings--thus the reason I started this thread. Yes, you can take multiple captures in quick succession and save automatically to the HD or to a gallery.

Here is an image I took using Dscaler with the 2-Frame Video De-Interlace filter and gradual noise reduction on.

It's a little dark, but you get the idea. Not bad at all for $110. I know I can tweak the settings to make these captures look even better, which is why I'm hoping a Dscaler guru will take notice and offer some insight.

 

[Templar Wizard]

i bought a very cheap MSI tv in card 30/40euros and i use dscaler s-video in. turn the pixel width up, sharpness filter, adaptive deinterlace. i get superb results with my ps2, no murkyness.

 

[Ponn]

I just bought a Leadtek Winfast 2000XP tuner card from newegg. It was 29.99 with a 20 buck mail in rebate. I searched alot of tv tuner card websites before getting it and they suggested to make sure to get a software decoder card and not hardware to avoid the lag. I'm using this card right now with Dscaler just set at regular settings (tomscomp or something like that) with Svideo and it looks fantastic with no lag. My only complaint is the sound has to be run through my soundcard with mini-stereo adapter and for some reason it sounds like crap. Echoes and reverberates really bad.

 

[mosaic]

My only complaint is the sound has to be run through my soundcard with mini-stereo adapter and for some reason it sounds like crap. Echoes and reverberates really bad.

I was worried that the Winfast USB II would suffer this same problem, but was happy to discover that audio is piped through the USB interface along with the video stream.