Problems Capturing Analog Video

[gideon_friedman]

I have an ST LAB TV7130 TV AV capture card, which I am using to capture analog video (composite or S-Video).
The image shown on my PC is rather soft (not as sharp as the original source data). Capture is working fine even in Hi-MPEG mode (full PAL screen at 25 FPS), but ther final result is just as fuzzy (I compared the original on my TV with a burned DVD).
The degradation is not disasterous, but noticeable, and should not be there I think. Originally, when I tried the S-video input, I got a sharper image, but with noise lines. However, after upgrading my NVidia drivers (I intended only to upgrade the VGA card drivers, but this happened on its own), the S-Video looks exactly like the composite - not very sharp (plus I would not expect a very noticeable difference between them).
Any ideas on how to improve the image quality?
Does anyone know whether the new "terminator" TV cards are better? Do they encode MPEG4 at the highest quality PAL?

Thanks,

Gideon.

[reboot]

Does the captured video look the same as the onscreen preview?
Have you applied any filtering, either pre or post processing?
What are you viewing it in?

[gideon_friedman]

The preview (even without capture) is already "soft" - not as
sharp as when I hook my source directly to a TV. The captured video looks identical to the preview.
I am not aware of any filtering, except under :
DeInterlace (default - Blend 3 pixels, there is also the option of "none" as well as blend 2 pixels, bob odd only and median. I did not see any difference in the result - at least on the computer) and Noise (default - Vertical 3 pixels, there are two more options of "temporal 2 pixels" and None)
(I just discovered that this is probably (??) just a display issue, when I click off "overlay mode" these options get greyed. The help says some graphics cards do not support "overlay mode" which can help see clearer video).

The program I am using is the one that came with the card and is called TV AV capture.
Should I be using something else? Presumably the card is doing HW MPEG encoding which I want to take advantage of.

Thanks for your help.

Gideon.

[reboot]

There are definitely better programs for capture.
I think there's a few that will work with that card.
Try DScaler, FlyTV2000, VirtualVCR, Stoik Video capture, and there's about 30 others (some free).
It's got the Phillips 7130 chip, which isn't a bad chip, it's just a bit difficult to get 3rd party software for.

Edit: Get the 3 files on this page:

http://www.lifeview.com.tw/html/downloads/video_card/flytv_prime_3x_series.htm

[gideon_friedman]

Thanks!

I tried Dscaler.
I got very nice video on the screen ! So, at least I know it is not a HW issue. However this program only records 288 lines and not the full image. Also it does AVI only, while I would prefer to get the output in MPEG II (to save hours of conversion later).

I downloaded the program in the lifeview link. It seems very similar to the program that came with the card, and I had trouble installing it. The bottom line is it does not work.

Virtual dub also stopped working after I changed the input to s-video and I cannot change it back as the program hangs before it allows me to change the settings....

I wonder why I cannot get the good picture with the TV capture program. It must be something with the basic resolution used which is not the full 768x576.

If you are familiar with the TVR program from lifeview I suspect the settings are similar to what I have, so perhaps one can assist me through there.

Thanks,

Gideon.

[reboot]

Try registering and posting at www.tvcards.com in their forums.
They will have much more help for your capture card.
Sorry I can't help more