Trouble finding the right capture card

N

north1

n00b
Joined
Apr 4, 2004
Messages
48
I'm building a new system (will use XP pro) and need to replace my old ATI AIW-9000 (no AGP slots on new motherboards) and am having trouble finding a capture/tuner card that will do what I want.
I especially need to be able to:

[1] Capture uncompressed/huffyuv video through composite connections to a VCR using Virtualdub so that I can encode it myself using CCE.
[2] Have flexibility in setting quality/bitrate of the card's hardware encoder, esp want to be able to set custom bitrate.

I'm intrigued by the Avermedia M780 (aka AverTV Combo). It gets great reviews but none of them mention the above concerns. Will this card do what I want? I know it has the proper connectors, but can the hardware encoder be bypassed?

Are there other options? From what I've read, the Hauppauge cards like the HVR1600 force you to use the hardware encoder. The ATI TV wonder cards seem to have a lot of serious complaints about their CMC software.
 
But the Hauppauge cards apparently won't allow you to capture uncompressed video with Virtualdub. I need that - see above.

A post here explains: "Hauppauge non-USB PVR cards are hardware mpeg2, they not usable with Virtualdub (they have no analog audio output and their digital audio is not accessible to Virtualdub)."
 
Update: I contacted AVermedia support. They say the card's encoder cannot be bypassed and that the bitrate cannot be set by the user, so that eliminates the M780.

Others have recommended the Sapphire Theatrix 650 Pro which seems to be identical to the ATI Theater 650. That would be great because it's $45 cheaper. The product literature and reviews don't talk about capturing uncompressed and setting bitrates though. Has anyone used one of these cards for that kind of capturing? Could you set a custom bitrate when using the card's hardware encoder?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top