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FYI,

The latest issue of Maximum PC magazine has a comparison of the USB2 capture
devices from Hauppauge, Plextor, ADS, and others. The Hauppauge gets their
highest ranking.

Smarty


"Morvin Stayner" <> wrote in message
news:Xns961AC39999B5Bmorvinmailcom@216.196.97.131. ..
> "poet" <> wrote in
> news:d11ju3$loj$:
>
>> if you want to convert your VHS tape/ LD / DV camcoder to VCD or DVD
>> try Snazzi Video Maker USB 2.0(external version)
>> coz it using (hardware encoding) as to say
>> if u transferred your VHS tape to pc it automatically convert your
>> format to your choices either to mpeg1(vcd)/mpeg2(dvd) or mpeg4(dvix)
>> and use the software provided to edit to ur style...simole and user
>> friendly "pilgrim" <> wrote in message
>> news:...
>>>I have have been looking at ATI TV Wonder VE PCI tv capture cards, and
>>>have
>>> found a new one for US$46 and a used one ("like new in the original
>>> box") for US$31.
>>>
>>> I want to capture VHS tapes to my HD and then burn the acquired files
>>> onto DVDs.
>>>
>>> Are the inputs to the ATI TV Wonder VE able to connect to the VHS VCR
>>> player output? Will I need any special adapters or cables?
>>>
>>> Is the output format of the ATI TV Wonder VE OK? I think it's MPEG2,
>>> but I'm having trouble finding out just what the specs are.
>>>
>>> In short, is this capture card OK? Is it too cheap? I can't afford
>>> to spend very much, and I'm trying to get by on the cheap, but too
>>> cheap will be a total waste of money that I don't have.
>>>
>>> All helpful comments will be appreciated; thanks in advance
>>>
>>> pilgrim
>>
>>
>
> A lot more expensive than US$46, but a lot better than any of the capture
> cards I previously used.
>
> http://www.plextor.com/english/produ...oduct_dvc.html
>
> Morvin
>
>

> a third of them would "green screen" in the middle. Changing to different
> players helped some but I finally put a SIMA cleaner-upper in the chain.
>


Ah ha! So that is the problem!! I was trying to put some videos of a
school football program on to DVD but the camcorder that was used by the
kids was really uncooperative. So I decide to just "play" the video into
the capture card.

Anywhere from 1 to 15 minutes into the video the capture screen would just
turn green and that was it for that capture.

Is there anyway to fix the problem or tell the card that Hollywood has no
copyrights on my own videos?

Tom Wiley

The capture cards are very intolerant of non-standard synch signals. These
include video coming from a VCR, which typically have "jitter" and missing
synch pulses, as well as incorrectly formed synch signals. The capture cards
sold in the U.S. also, for the most card, honor several copy protection
schemes, most notably Macrovision (both types) and CGMS/A. They will confuse
a non-protected video which has poorly formed synch and treat it as if it
were copy-protected.

The SIMA devices solve both problems, since they regenerate a new and stable
time-base using their time base corrector (TBC) circuitry, and also can
remove some copy protection as well.

Smarty


"Tom Wiley" <> wrote in message
news...
>
>> a third of them would "green screen" in the middle. Changing to
>> different
>> players helped some but I finally put a SIMA cleaner-upper in the chain.
>>
>
>
> Ah ha! So that is the problem!! I was trying to put some videos of a
> school football program on to DVD but the camcorder that was used by the
> kids was really uncooperative. So I decide to just "play" the video into
> the capture card.
>
> Anywhere from 1 to 15 minutes into the video the capture screen would just
> turn green and that was it for that capture.
>
> Is there anyway to fix the problem or tell the card that Hollywood has no
> copyrights on my own videos?
>
> Tom Wiley

"Smarty" <> wrote in
news:2NidncCRto-5u6XfRVn-:

> FYI,
>
> The latest issue of Maximum PC magazine has a comparison of the USB2
> capture devices from Hauppauge, Plextor, ADS, and others. The
> Hauppauge gets their highest ranking.
>
> Smarty
>
>

Fair enough, but did they compare it to Plextor's PX-AV100U, which utilizes
the CPU for encoding/decoding or the PX-TV402U, which is a hardware
encoder/decoder and takes a major load off the CPU?

Morvin

Morvin,

No, they did not. For whatever reason, they only rated 5 devices and the
Plextor was not among them. I mis-spoke in my earlier message when I said
that the Plextor was among the models rated. The 5 units which they did rate
were the Hauppauge, ADS, Adaptec, Pinnacle, and Dazzle. The more expensive
Plextor with the hardware encoder seems to get pretty good ratings, but one
reviewer makes the comment that it needs to be tweaked in order to get it to
the same level as the Hauppauge. Newegg's reviews by owners gave it 3 out of
5 stars, Not sure if this is a fair evaluation or not. It would be really
good to see a direct comparison of the Plextor with the Hauppauge. The
Plextor certainly has the Divx encoding capabilities and apparently does an
excellent job for this purpose.

The Plextor seems to be more versatile, but I question whether its'
DVD-compliant encoding is as good as the Hauppauge. Maybe somebody here has
had an opportunity to compare them and knows the answer. My comparisons of
the Hauppauge units, which use the Conexant chip set, is that their mpeg2
hardware encoder does as well as the custom hardware in my set-top Panasonic
and Pioneer DVD recorders, and makes especially good mpeg2 video in real
time at the medium to high bit rate encoding speeds from 3 to roughly 8
Mbits/sec. The only way I have found to make better looking mpeg2 files is
to convert analog video to digital (AVI) using a Sony DMC-DA2 Media
Converter ($350 and now discontinued) and then render with a good software
encoder like the CinemaCraft. This requires hours of time on my fastest
Dell, and the results are not vastly superior to the directly captured
mpeg2s with either my Hauppauges or my set-top recorders.

Smarty

"Morvin Stayner" <> wrote in message
news:Xns961BA7C57BA42morvinmailcom@216.196.97.131. ..
> "Smarty" <> wrote in
> news:2NidncCRto-5u6XfRVn-:
>
>> FYI,
>>
>> The latest issue of Maximum PC magazine has a comparison of the USB2
>> capture devices from Hauppauge, Plextor, ADS, and others. The
>> Hauppauge gets their highest ranking.
>>
>> Smarty
>>
>>
>
> Fair enough, but did they compare it to Plextor's PX-AV100U, which
> utilizes
> the CPU for encoding/decoding or the PX-TV402U, which is a hardware
> encoder/decoder and takes a major load off the CPU?
>
> Morvin