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[Gamedude]

I'll be buying a new PC soon, (AMD 3500+, radeon x800 XT & 1024 DDR ram)
when I have my new PC I'll be planning to make some fan-based movies from some of my favourite console games. (Burnout 3 online sequences, all the cut-scenes of MGS 1/MGS2/MGS3 in high quality, ...) for that.. I need a TV card or something like that yes?
I already had a TV card before, a Pinnacle PCTV Rave.. good enough but I want something better with my new computer coming soon.
Because I'll be buying a NEC 3500 DVD RW I can burn these movies on a DVD.. that means the movies can have a capacity of 8 gig for high quality.
I already asked on another board which card I should buy.. someone recommended me the Hauppauge PVR 250 (it's around 150€, 125$ I guess)
There will be people on this board who have experience with recent TV cards etc? Please share your experience with me and let me know which one is the most recommended if you look to the price/quality. (my budget lays around a 100-150€, 80-120 for $ that is... I guess)

 

[vitaflo]

I use a Canopus box (since I have a laptop) to capture just about anything (TV, mini8, DV, VCR, etc...no coax in tho). They also have a PCI card. Most everything they sell has Composite, S-Video and Firewire connections. They're pretty expensive, but it's what we use at work to do our video work. The quality is excellent (which is why you pay for it). They have stuff from consumer devices to production broadcast quality stuff ($$$$).

http://www.canopus.us/US/products/Index/product_index.asp

I hear Hauppauge is good too as your typical TV capture card. I've never used one though, personally, but I don't think it's as good as a Canopus card, even though technically they're different markets. Of course Hauppauge is probably half the cost as well, and will probably be good enough for what you're doing.

 

[MrparisSM]

I use my 9800 All In Wonder and love it! I recently posted a movie I made of DOA:U being played Online. Definitely give this card a look. And you can even have your PC hooked to your HDTV with either Component cables or DVI with it.

 

[brandonnn]

http://www.tiger-town.com/screenshots/ are all coming off a Hauppauge PVR250. The quality seems to vary a bit, and I still have yet to figure out exactly why.

I've had a little trouble adjusting and finding the perfect color balance with it, but I'm also running the signals through a cheapie radio shack powered s-vid splitter, which might account for it.

The Gregory Horror Show pics look brilliant though, if I do say so myself, especially for a < $100 card.

I might have to check out the Canopus'.

 

[bobbyconover]

I've taken a bunch of videos with the card that Brandon has, also. They're pretty good, though I never did figure out why they have those little horizontal lines running through them, or how to fix that.

You can check them out here: http://www.libblerabble.com/videos/

 

[The Faceless Master]

the Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP Pro is really good, and is even endorsed by people like Moonsong (that RewindTV member who caps Justice League/Teen Titans among other stuff)

 

[vitaflo]

I might have to check out the Canopus'.

They're good, but their main use is for DV. They add in compsite inputs to support analog, and while it does a good job, it's still composite. If you're using S-Video however on you gaming rig the video looks really nice. Unfortuanley I only have the default RCA connectors for my gaming consoles so most of my vids aren't quite as crisp as I'd like.

From the looks of your screenshots, the Hauppauge card does a commendable job. It's on par with my Canopus, though I think my image saturation is a tad better. What are you using for input into your card? If it's just composite inputs, I'd say it's a pretty damn good buy.

 

[Blimblim]

the Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP Pro is really good, and is even endorsed by people like Moonsong (that RewindTV member who caps Justice League/Teen Titans among other stuff)

I agree. Any card with a BT848 / BT878 chip does a very nice job considering you can find one for 60 euros here. That's what I use for my videos on xboxyde and I'd say they look quite good with S-Video input.
Most of the quality of the final video will come from the deinterlacing and of course the codec / bitrate you will use. Personally I capture with Virtual VCR using a lossless codec (FFV1 or HUFYUV), use avisynth + tomsmocomp or sangnom for the deinterlacing, then virtualdub for the final encoding (XVID 1.02 1 pass using 5.0 quantizer). That's the best quality I managed to get with usually a bitrate between 1000 and 1500 for a 640x480 video.

 

[demi]

I use the Hauppauge WinTV PCI card. It was about $50, and it works rather decently.

Here's some snaps taken in DScaler:

 

[Blimblim]

I use the Hauppauge WinTV PCI card. It was about $50, and it works rather decently.

Here's some snaps taken in DScaler:

You really should think about using a S-Video cable
A snapshot of what avisynth (using tomsmocomp) feeds to virtualdub before encoding :

Flatout is not the best game for this since it already looks fuzzy.

 

[Hooker]

I was planning to buy me a capture card as well. That "Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP Pro" is here in 3 flavours, the pro (€30), the pro-deluxe (€44) and the pro-expert (€50).



Is there a big difference between these cards or should I just take the cheapest one!?

 

[Fowler]

The Canopus boxes are really excellent -- I have one at home and we also use it at work for pro-level video work.

 

[Gamedude]

I took a look on that URL of Canopus.. pretty expensive producs indeed.
the cheapest product on that site is the SSC 100 of the scan convertors (= http://www.canopus.us/US/products/SSC100/pm_SSC100.asp) I can't do anything with that one right? It's not FROM tv TO pc but FROM pc TO tv?

than I probably need a "Digital Video Recorder"? , the cheapest one of those is the ADVC 50 for 220$, the ADVC 55 costs 10$ more

which one do you guys have? is the ADVC more than decent enough?


@ bobbyconover's video link: damn those horizontal lines are horrible , can someone with this Hauppauge card confirm this?

 

[Gamedude]

And what about Pinnacle's PCTV Stereo/Pro? it only costs 75€

 

[maskrider]

For capturing HQ video, I use Hauppauge's WinTV PVR USB 2 external hardware MPEG-2 encoder (with video settings calibrated).

Previously, I used my PCTV card (both Philips SAA7130 based and Conexant CX23881 based) for capturing lower resolution videos (320x240 as uncompressed AVI), but the DirectShow capturing interface are not quite good at 640x480 and above (software is InterVideo WinDVD Recorder).

The part for capturing video in full resolution with DScaler is not mature enough yet, skipping frames constantly.