Some video capture tips from semi-clueful n00b

Journal Trolling4Dollars's Journal: Some video capture tips from semi-clueful n00b 3

Journal by Trolling4Dollars on Friday November 07, 2003 @12:30PM

I know the pros are going to skewer me for some of this stuff, but hey... it's what I've learned so far.

This entry was spurred on by a question from Azghoul in this thread.

What follows is just some prety basic info on where I am today with my media capture project. I've been working on freeing myself from dependence on physical media and only retaining data on my servers at home. This, of course, means I followed the usual path of CDs to WAV in the early 90s, then MP3 in the mid 90s and more recently Ogg Vorbis in the early 00s. As it is, I've got that part (as I'm sure many folks do) down pat. I will say, that I'm not a file sharing person because as much as I dislike the RIAA and the music industry, I feel that as long as laws are such as they are, it's not worth the risk. I will also admit that I've downloaded music from file sharers at times to try and find something new. But there is very little out there that is of any interest. That is my second reason for buying everything that I've ripped.

Movies are an entirely different proposition. What I've done there is a little different from what I've done with music. I tend to buy DVDs these days and then rip them to archive on my server so I can watch them on any of the computers (including the one connected to my TV) in the house. It works out pretty well, but you have to consider that I got my "infrastructure" in place when I moved in. (Cat 5 to every room that needs a computer)

My first foray into video capture was in 1997 with the Hauppauge (pronounced Hop-hog for those who are curious) WinTV PCI (bt848 chipset) card. I remembered that it was just a cool toy to play with back then. It was neat, but the files I got from it were huge and needed to be compressed after capture instead of on the fly. (There are pros and cons to both approaches) In general I was more interested in the card for web cam type stuff with my camcorder than video capture. But eventually, I started capturing some of my old VHS music video tapes and cleaning them up a bit before compressing to MPEG with a DOS based compressor. I hadn't quite started to play with Linux yet.

After that, I was attracted to the ATI TV cards based on the Rage 3D chips. Still using Windows, I didn't realize that their PVR features (circa 1998) used a proprietary codec until I went on a trip and took some TV shows with me on my laptop. They were AVI files, but they wouldn't display video. Eventually, I found codecs from ATIs web site that I could install on my laptop. It was kind of an annoyance and made me research my next purchases a little better.

I moved onto a few other models of capture card (Pinnacle being about the worst I ever tried) with varying degrees of success and failure until I hit upon the ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder. (Where do the PR folks come up with these crappy names?) I was very impressed with the non-capture features in both Windows and Linux. As I am an avid fan of Quake and Unreal, these cards worked extremely well. After playing around for a while with the GATOS project, I even got the video capture and TV out working in the X window system. :) But this card had it's problems too... It was a host based MPEG capture card. You could capture in uncompressed AVI or various MPEG1 and MPEG2 formats. The problem was that this was realtime software based compression and even on my PIII 800 it would drop frames if I went above 320x240. This was acceptable for my PVR needs, but not for archival purposes. Another more glaring issue was that the audio would get out of sync with the video after about 20-30 minutes. This was due to the fact that the sound and video streams are being recorded from two different sources: the sound card and the video capture board. It's difficult for a P III 800 to do everything else it needs to do during capture AND keep the audio in sync. Sooo... back to the drawing board.

Earlier this year, I decided to try Hauppauge again (I didn't really care for their products after my first card because they are pretty amateurish. Of course so is ATI.) because they had a DSP based MPEG capture card. I bought the PVR-250. Again, I started off playing with this one under Windows since I wasn't sure about the Linux support for it. I was very impressed with the capture abilities. It went into my P III 800 and I could capture at any resolution up to "High Definition" without any dropped frames. All the processing to MPEG and capture is done completely on the card and in realtime straght to disk. (The con here is that you CAN'T capture uncompressed video. So if you want some really high quality source video, this isn't for you. You're better off with a bt848 based board if you need uncompressed video.) The card also features it's own audio input which completely solved the audio sync problem. The software that comes with the PVR-250 is cheezy to say the least, but it works about 90% of the time. They really need to make a separate app for more serious users, but this is a consumer board so that probably won't happen. When Windows 9x is being fairly stable, this system works fairly well as a PVR, although I am very angry at the DirecTV folks for not making a PCI version of their satellite tuner. Yeah yeah... I know I could buy their PVR/Reciever, but then it's more of a pain to get it hooked up to my network and store the recordings on my server.

I had a very brief encounter with an Adaptec PCI capture board and was very disappointed. You could only use it with their REALLY dumbed down software. (The Hauppauge also won't work with other software capture programs that want raw video BTW) But the Apadtec software was kind of like playing with Teletubbies compared to Hauppauge's Legos.

Over time here's kind of what I learned:
1. You want a card that has it's own audio input to avoid sync problems. Or a LOT of CPU power. I would still recommend the built in audio input.
2. Depending on what your needs are, there are pros and cons to hardware and software based MPEG capture boards.
3.If you need high quality uncompressed video, go with a board that can capture to AVI with no compression. If you just need quick decent quality MPEG, go with a hardware based MPEG board.
4. If you have the CPU horsepower, you can go with software based MPEG capture, but I don't recommend it at all.
5. For simple PVR functionality, go with a Tivo or the like. If you want something more complex, try the Hauppauge PVR series. (I think they might be phasing them out, not sure). If you're after a bargain... forget it. PVR is still expensive whether it's a set top box or a PC based system with any decent quality.

As far as Linux goes, there's still a little bit of work to be done. I've played around with a few editors and capture programs. They are OK, but cumbersome. I haven't seen anything with a really decent interface on Windows or Linux though. The best thing going for prosumer level stuff is Premiere for a good interface, or Sony Vegas or Movie Blast for relatively low cost and non-proprietary codecs. Or at least files that can be viewed on multiple platforms. I tend to prefer MPEG2 at the moment because I know it works on Linux, Macintosh and Windows. DiVX does too and has smaller files but seems a little steeped in controversy. I keep hoping the the Ogg Theora project will move along at a nice pace. :)

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.