Ordered a new capture card

[Flying dutchman]

Keithm:

I speculate that it could be a technical issue why it isn't on sale in the UK; in Holland (and the rest of Europe), the audio carrier wave is at 5.5 MHz above the video carrier wave, in the UK it is at 6.5 MHz. "PAL" only specifies the video part which is identical on both sides of the English channel. But I'm only speculating here, the Terratec tuner software allows several flavours of PAL.

[Flying dutchman]

Hoi Landrover, have you tried if the Terratec software allows for large (> 2gb) AVI files? And does it work with VFW capturing software such as VirtualDub or Avi_io on your XP machine?

[keithm]

att: flying dutchman

att flying dutchman: did you ever try the 'freevcr' software I keep going on about: it seems to offer a lot more then AV_IO and it's free! As for the cinergy; I've emailed Terratec for info about a uk release...

[landrover]

Hoi Vliegende Hollander,

Haven't got to 2 GB yet, but I expect no problems with passing the barrier. After all, wasn't that a disadvantage of VfW driver structure?
Yes, I can use AVI_IO! When starting up AVI_IO I can choose between the Matrox driver and the Cinergy WDM driver. I expect it to work with Vdub, but I've never used Vdub to capture.

landrover

[PaulM]

Re: UK-compatible versions I got this reply from Terratec:

"The chipsets used on the Cinergy products do not support PAL-I at the current time, needed for UK use, and that is the reason. We are planning to bring out a new product(s) later this year which will be UK-compatible. I cannot confirm the exact timeframe for this but probably in the April-June area."

Cheers,
Paul

[keithm]

Oh well: at leats it will have been well tested by then

[landrover]

Yes, it will be thouroughly tested by then, and I have more good news. I managed to capture over an hour of video and audio with the Huffman codec to one file! No frame drops, audio in perfect sync and no 2 or 4 GB AVI limits. The properties sheet of the file says it all: length 01:06:52
resolution 352x288 @ 25fps
filesize 8.972.488 kB (8.55 GB)

I guess that after 3 years of faithfull service I can say "good bye and so long" to Markus Zingg´s thusfar unsurpassed AVI_IO. I won´t be needing segmented capturing anymore.

landrover

[Flying dutchman]

Hi Landrover,

no 2gb limit - that's the greatest news ever! Thanks for testing!

I've got some more: There's a comparative test of TV boards in today's (2/2003) issue of the German CT Magazine. The Terratec came out very good good except for the VCD crash.

More important: The crash that happens when recording with WinDVR in VCD format wasn't known at all to the Terratec developers and <quote> "Haben Terratec's Entwickler in hektische Aktivität versetzt" </quote> (page 13 of Ct).

The crash doesn't occur in the Cinergy-400 version of WinDVR which is available for download on their homepage and which works on the -600 version as well but hasn't got audio tuner support. A patch for our version should be available NOW. These folks write support with a big S. (See ftp.terratec.de for the patch and some beta software)

One more issue needs clarification - Macrovision?

[landrover]

Wait, wait, Dutchman!

I HAVE the new version of WinDVR, after I called TerraTec´s dutch service-number. This is the version that crashes on me after capturing the VCD file. It shouldn´t differ in versions for 400 or 600 cards, because they feature the same TV tuner. Driver packages carry exactly the same number, too.
I´ll have a look on TerraTec´s site for the updates.

...It´s going to be a Cinergetic time...

landrover

[landrover]

update:

I had to uninstall the WinDVR version mentioned above, because I downloaded the patch and it didn´t "apply to this version of WinDVR". So I guess Cinergy 400 and 600 are different anyway.

Then reinstalled the version I got on the Cinergy CD (still had to use Win98 comp. mode) and applied the patch. This time it worked. I can capture VCD now without crashing the program, BUT: WinDVR refuses to play back it´s own VCD capture.
I do think VCD quality is better now, maybe good enough for the kid´s cartoons. You just have to use another app. to play it....


landrover

[Flying dutchman]

I also applied the patch successfully. Worked first time - it records VCD without problems now and they playback fine in WINDVD 4.
Great! I can now record VCD format "on the fly" and, as you tried out, even use my beloved HuffYuv without a 4-GB limit; I'm going to try that out myself today.

When I record realtime mpeg-2 using the "PAL DVD" template (720x576), I notice a little luminance "pumping" in the background which isn't there in the 352x576 resolution templates. Sharpness is crisp, though. I suspect the quality of the compression depends on the CPU power available (I only have a Celery-900!). I only wish I had a P4-3000 at hand to verify that. C't tested the card on three different hardware platforms but they unfortunately didn't test if the output quality was identical on all three.

[landrover]

I have to tell you, MSP 6, and Magix Video deLuxe 2 had problems with importing the large Huff encoded AVI. Video dL crashed immediately when accessing the file and MSP crashed afer I loaded the file into the source monitor, selected 3 seconds of footage and tried to preview that on the timeline.
VirtualDub and Mediaplayer 9 had no problems with the file.
to be continued...

landrover

[keithm]

I've always had problems with huffyuv and use picvideo now: much smaller file size with little quality loss

[Ghydda]

Just ordered one...

Just ordered one Cinergy 600 - I'm picking it up tomorrow. I'm predicting it's gonna be a great weekend!!!

I'll report back my findings later. Sure looks forward to waving the 2/4 giga-limit goodbye!


Cheers
Ghydda

[landrover]

Wish you lots of fun!

landrover