Video Capture S-Video - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 11:22:35 am
content: I have a box load of old hi8 tapes here i would like to encode on the pc so i can dispose of them... so i need a svideo capture device for the pc.I have in the past tried the small USB devices you see on ebay and other places but to be honest i did not have much luck, mostly due to crap drivers that did just not work properly. So now i am not so keen to buy another for fear it also will be crap. Have seen these USB thumb style capture dongles run from £7 to £95!Can anyone recommend one that is known to work well?

author: apelly
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 11:51:37 am
content: Linux or Windows?I have had good luck with USB for standard definition on Linux by checking the chipset is supported by video 4 linux.Multiple capture devices on the same USB2.0 root hub will break under load.

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 11:53:43 am
content: windowsyea i am sure it will be USB but just need a recommendation for which one

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 12:02:00 pm
content: Look for a PCI TV card with SVHS input and use that. Most use a SAA7000 chipset variant and this works well with VFL or even with VLC. Does a reasonable job as well. USB ones tend to vary from sucky to absolute junk.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 12:57:02 pm
content: I have a Leadtek Winfast 2000 XP Expert tv tuner. Works great, the chipset (Conexant CX2388x) has some nice features that make captures quite good. Old Newegg page for it:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814122180You can find some on eBay but most don't have the custom/proprietary cable that converts the mini-DIN connector to svideo/composite/rca audio etc so you have to be careful if you plan on getting one. People lose those cables easily.Also, there are several versions without the "Expert" word in the name, those are based on another chipset Bt878a that's older and less quality and those don't have 64 bit drivers. Avoid those.Or search ebay for tv tuners made with the same chipset, those will still support 64 bit operating systems. For example Hauppauge WinTV 881 , 34xx series.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 01:05:42 pm
content: i recommend against using the software that comes bundled with the card.It's usually quite bad.Ive not done any video capturing for 5 years but back then virtualdub was really good for taking data from the capture card and encoding at good quality.Your limited by the speed of your PC, it's not always possible to capture directly to the codec you want to end up with. Some codecs work much better doing multiple passes through the video, something which is impossible to do in realtime.Back then i use to capture to Huffman codec (lossless) and then re-encode to xvid or something with good quality/compression later on.The VIVO (video in video out) on my old nvidia 7800GT was really good, so if you have an old nvidia card with VIVO it might be worth a try. However you may need to install and old OS to get VIVO to work due to the drivers needed

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 02:52:29 pm
content: Quote from: mariush on March 09, 2014, 12:57:02 pmDon't have one to try anymore but back in the early days of 64 bit, I had one of those running just fine. Don't see why it won't work on a modern kernel given the code for it is still there.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 04:15:34 pm
content: I have a Pinnacle dazzle which is a sort of dongle on a lead it has s video as well as separate video and audio input. It works very well I tried a few of the cheaper one but found that half way through the thing would crash or after having spent hours putting video onto the computer when it came to editing the whole file was corrupt that was with windows XP have not tried it yet with Linux.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 05:07:42 pm
content: if you are lazy get Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_WinTV-PVR-USB2internally it has Cypress EZ-USB chip connected to CX23416 hardware mpeg2 encoder connected to analog TV tunerit will spit hardware encoded MPEG2 stream over usb to your computer = you can use it on VERY old computers. You just start the program and receive ready made files from the box.this is how you do it:Code:cat /dev/video > myvideo.mpgthats itOlder PCI Tuner cards are also excellent, but you will need to play with drivers and software encoders.Chinese $5-15 usb dongles contain counterfeit QVGA-VGA grabber chips, they drop frames, lose sync, and produce wrong colors

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 05:19:32 pm
content: If you're archiving material, you'll probably want to save the raw digitized data, do some post processing (denoise, deinterlace, etc.), and then compress it. Compressing it from the beginning would actually be counterproductive.

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 05:30:29 pm
content: thanks everyonewill check out all the options, i just want something i know will work.I must have about 30 tapes worth so i dont want to be faffing around with it.software i will probably use virtualdub as i know that pretty well

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2014, 05:41:21 pm
content: Quote from: dexters_lab on March 09, 2014, 11:22:35 amAfter going through a bunch of annoying hardware, software and operator (i.e. me) issues I finally did send our remaining important VHS tapes to a professional service.Not really cheap, but I was fed up with the junk and wasting time trying to adjust the signal and getting a reasonable digital copy.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2014, 06:25:24 am
content: Quote from: Rasz on March 09, 2014, 05:07:42 pmYeah, I build a video editing PC for someone and got one of those.It wasn't the cheapest option at the time but worked great for simple/easy/fast capture direct to file.I didn't think they could handle dealing with codecs and re-encoding things.

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 11, 2014, 07:50:27 am
content: thanks everyone, i am going to try one of the dazzle video creator dongles, they seem to be well used for gaming capture.I'll pickup one on ebay 2nd hand and will report back

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 12, 2014, 10:29:49 am
content: Osprey / Viewcast have a range of cards and devices for pro and semi-pro use.A lot of configuration tools to modify the capture environment.I've used with Windows Media - but they have other drivers and OS support as well.