G450 etv. Can anyone recommend it?

[uktechno]

Thanks so much for your replies.
I forgot to mention that when i get to the usa i will be buying a new system, but i was intending on taking the card with me to the usa. I was intending on getting as much stuff in the uk from uk video film, and as much uk camcorder stuff onto disk (Yamaha cd burner) as possible, and transferring to us video tape at the other end. (a firewire isn't possible as i have an ANALOG camcorder).
I have been today to buy and 'try out' the card for 7 days.
I bought it and noticed the box had pal/secam ticked, so i asked if it could be used in a usa system and he said no, so i have temporarily abandoned the idea.
How do i transfer this uk stuff???
My brain is fried but thanks for helping

[smok3]

IF you remember my first post I noted that with the eTV you can use AVI_IO with the PICVideo or Morgan MJPeg softcodecs.

yes, thats what iam using for medium lenght stuff (iam still with my good old dedicated scsi drive taken from some server, tis only 9 gigs iam afraid), for some longer stuff mpeg is nice in terms of capturing, especialy if there is no editing needed.

The problem with the eTV's MPEG captures & editing only occur when using PCVCR's segmented captures. Captures done in VideoStudio or MediaStudio do not suffer this problem

i wasnt aware of that, might give ulead a 2nd chance.

...Interlacing problems typically occur if you have your editor set to use field A and not the field B...

If you're referring to interlace artifacts on a non-interlaced VGA screen during an edit preview, this is normal and they disappear when the video is exported using fields (presuming you use the correct field order).

uhmm, you mean like first field should be set to field b? so the field order is ba? (yes, i meant the display problems on progresive display)

The main exception is when you're applying a moving path to an image or overlay in the editor. The fix is to simply change the involved clips and images timeline setting to FRAME, but to export using fields.

huh? i didnt get that even after reading 3 times

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tnx for your really great info, i learned a lot just from this post.

p.s. oh, i never used this card to export anything captured in here back to 'online' machines.
p.s.2. do you know of a way to capture ltc/vitc timecode somehow with this card? if i have an offline project with like 30 clips i can enter the timecode manualy clip by clip from burntin timecode, but for longer projects that would get kinda boring.

[Brian Ellis]

Uktechno

PLEASE read everything again before jumping to conclusions. You CAN go the "firewire" (IEEE-1394) way with analogue input and its the simplest, least hassle way, requiring the least performance from the computer (you still need adequate drives, though). All you need is a card and a bridge. The card is any IEEE-1394 card, which costs very little. There are several bridges on the market, including the one I recommended above, which comes even with a PAL/NTSC switch (not for conversion though)..

With that set up, you connect your camcorder analogue output to the bridge, using the supplied cable. You connect the firewire cable between the bridge and the computer, start up the camcorder in play mode and capture the video on your computer. It's as simple as that - and it works with a good quality (depending on the quality of your input)

Now, you have a number of other problems. What do you do to save your video? If you want anything like acceptable quality, you will wish to save it as DV or whatever AVI format you use in the end. You can put just under 3 minutes of DV on a single CD and possibly 1 minute of MJPEG. Is this really an option, short of chartering a cargo ship full of CDs to take them to the USA ? So you will need to convert to VCD or SVCD (typically 1 hr max and 30 min max with reasonable quality, respectively). But these will be compressed into MPEG-1 or -2 files respectively (still in PAL format). If you then try to convert them to NTSC, assuming you have a decent converter, and record them to NTSC VHS, the quality will be quite atrocious, because each stage will introduce more losses. You will not be happy with what you see.

IMHO, you have two viable options. Both involve taking your tapes and possibly the equipment to play them to the States. The easiest way would be to give your tapes to a professional house and ask them to make NTSC VHS tapes (or, better, DVDs) from them. The other is to buy a good PAL to NTSC real-time converter and re-record your tapes directly (no computer), deck-to-deck through the converter.

And don't forget that VHS tapes are, in any case, obsolescent technology. You would be far better to go for DVD recording. I bet that you won't see a single VHS deck for sale in the shops in a couple of years. or thereabouts.

IMHO, unless you want to spend a considerable amount of money upgrading your present system or, better, buying a new one, for the time you have left in the UK and then spendingquite some time learning how to use it and more time still actually doing the work, forget it, for the moment. To make a half-decent 1.5 hour DVD from 4 hours of my own source material takes me about 30 hours, using equipment that is far more sophisticated than you have. Even just copying an existing VHS tape to DVD, without editing) needs 1 hour/hour for capturing, 4 hours/hour for converting (and I have a 1.7 MHz P4 with 512 Mb of RAM, a 120 Gb RAID array), 1.5 hour/hour for creating the image file and burning the DVD and another 0.5 hour/hour for diverse odds and sods: total 7 hours for a 1 hour tape. With your existing system, I'd hazard a guess that, even if it were possible, which I doubt, it would take you at least twice this time.

I'm sorry, but you really do need to come down to earth. What you want to do is possible but only with a hefty investment in both money and time - and don't underestimate either

[Hulk]

Okay, I've had the 450eTV running on XP Pro since the new drivers came out in December (if I remember correctly).

Absolutely 100% stable on my P4 1.9 running MS Pro 6.5 and MANY other apps. I mean like maybe 1 crash in the last 8 months because I was doing something stupid. I often watch TV, edit video, compress video, surf the net, etc... all at once with no problems.

TV Out as I said it great. It just works, fill the entire screen, no black border and the quality if very good.

TV tuner is very good as well.

I capture analog every now and then using avi_io, generally using the PICVideo codec. Once you figure out the field order is reversed in the card and change it in the codec, everything is great.

At first I was upset that there would be no driver updates for this card, but since I have NO problems with it who cares? More time to get things done.

I have to agree with the other posters though, I wouldn't mess with this card with at least 1.0GHz processing power.

[uktechno]

thanks !