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**Marshmallowman** · 17 September 2003, 23:38

I think it can,

I have a flyvideo 3000 which uses the exact same chip, and the wdm driver is based on the same philips ref driver...I have actually used the cinergy driver on my 3000 once and it did capture at 720x576 PAL.

With picvideo it will do it easily, with huffy you have plenty of hdd speed, an xp1700 might feel the strain when coupled with a via board.

With your RAID0 capture driver you should be okay for using HUFFY, the only caveat is you *may* have some issues with VIA.

I would stick with the picvideo to keep your PCI bandwidth usage down.

However some codecs are better for transcodeing to mpeg2 than others...which is which is someone else will know.

**mits** · 18 September 2003, 22:23

Marshmallowman,
what OS and app have you used for your capture?

**Marshmallowman** · 19 September 2003, 00:32

I am using winxp at the momoent but Ihave done the same thing with 2k.

I use the wdm driver that provided by flyvideo, which would be almost the same that comes with the cinerygy.

Lately i have been using the ATI MMC 8.5 program for capturring, but that will only work if you own a ATI video card, also the flyvideo capture soifteware is quite reasonable. I would think the cinergy software would be work well with your card.

But when I need this best capture performance I use virtual VCR as it is quite flexible with choosing codec's, and seems to have quite a low CPU overhead.

I would like to use virtualdub but it has been having issues with the philips wdm codec, but I think the latest version is working better.

I am about due to try AVI-IO again, which is supposed to be very good but has not worked with any of the drivers I have tried so far.

**Indiana** · 19 September 2003, 08:56

There was a quite extensive thread about the Cinergy in this forum some time ago:

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39019&highlight=Cinergy

**Jkun** · 19 September 2003, 10:36

After reading through that monster thread, would anyone still want a Cinergy?

Seems it can't even capture without randomly aborting capture for no apparent reason. Definitely not stable drivers/software yet.

J-kun

**Indiana** · 19 September 2003, 11:06

The Cinergy works well here.

Just do not use the application that comes with it for capturing - it's quite the same as with the Hauppauge-cards (good cards, drivers are OK, but shitty capture software software) - except that with the Hauppauge cards, the included software sucks donkey balls even for watching TV/teletext.
Terratecs software is quite good for viewing TV/teletext, just not that great for capturing.
The (lowlevel) driver is in fact mostly provided by Philips, so all cards with this chip will use more or less the same driver.

For capturing I'd recommend something like iuVCR or VirtualVCR instead of the included software for most capture-cards out there and you should be fine.

**Indiana** · 19 September 2003, 11:13

Before I forget it: I do always capture in 720x576 with MJPEG, HuffYUV or DivX 5 and have no real problems.

This is with a Cinergy400 (which is equivalent to the Cinergy600, just without radio functionality)

P.S.: The WinVCR software also included with the Cinergy cards does seem to work quite well here. It's just that I wasn't too keen on doing direct MPEG2-grabs - at least before I got my DVD burner....

**mits** · 20 September 2003, 00:06

Thank you all guys,

Indiana, i remembered that there was a thread about cinergy and (before i post this question) i used the search function of the forum with keywords either "terratec" or "cinergy" but unfortunately it returned no results. Today i searched again with keyword "cinergy" and strangely it returned a full page of threads.
Strange things, what can i say? (In the past i had noticed a similar behaviour of the search function)

Thanks again, more news to come when the card is in the pc.

**landrover** · 22 September 2003, 10:24

I have a Cinergy 600 and filled about one third of that monster thread with my experiences. I am VERY content with the card.
It will certainly capture at full resolution, but, like stated above the accompanying software has the tendency to suddenly stop capturing for no apparent reason. Which is a pain if you want to capture TV-shows! I have to add that there is one codec with which the software is perfectly reliable and that is HuffYUV.
So I use the Huffman codec on the Terratec software for capturing tapes at full resolution and Showshifter for recording TV-shows.

**Flying dutchman** · 25 September 2003, 10:22

It is indeed the capture software that is lousy, the card itself (and the drivers) are OK.

Capturing with HuffYuv _mostly_ works OK, especially if you let it capture on a large and empty NTFS drive. I haven't had time to seriously test other capture programs yet.

I remember that one reader posted a small application in this forum that lets you enter custom TV frequencies into the registry which should make just about every capture program happy :-)

PS I just read your friend's motherboard is VIA based, that could be a complication...

**mits** · 25 September 2003, 23:29

FD and Indiana, thanks.

Well the card arrived and has been installed in the computer.
First tests showed that:
Source being a svhs camcorder with svideo connection and capturing @ 720*576,
1. YUY2 uncompressed cap is sometimes ok using iuvcr
2. YUY2 and whatever codec (ie huffy, or picvideo) DOES NOT WORK, video is blocky (using either iuvcr, or virtualvcr, or even the bundled software)
3. Capturing with windvr directly to mpg2 is fine (probably the best of all) but useless since the footage needs to be edited after the cap.
4. AVI_IO DOES NOT work at all.
(More to come in the future)

What apps do you use for capturing and what is your driver version?

Thanks.

**Indiana** · 26 September 2003, 10:24

Originally posted by mits

2. YUY2 and whatever codec (ie huffy, or picvideo) DOES NOT WORK, video is blocky (using either iuvcr, or virtualvcr, or even the bundled software)

This is definitely not normal - noone I know with the Cinergy has this. There are some known problems, mostly with the capture app as described above and in the linked long thread - but none of the users up to now reported a blocky capture...

This is about the quality you should be getting (just a framegrab I just took this was with the Cinergy app, resolution set to 720x576, YUY2, Codec was PicVideo MJPEG):

Definitely not blocky - also note that the quality of the TV signal is not too well in our house (some interferecing/moiré), so with decent signal you could be getting better results.

Maybe it's some incompatibility wiht the overlay of your gfx-card. Try capturing in RGB for once.

**landrover** · 27 September 2003, 06:10

Capture with AVI_IO is only possible in quarter size or lower resolutions. Besides that you won't need AVI-IO for the Cinergy, because you won't have to do segmented capturing anymore, that is, if you're working on an NTFS based system.

**Jkun** · 27 September 2003, 11:16

So the Terratec sw just quits capturing all the time for no apparent reason, and AVI-IO won't allow full D1 res with this card?

What do you use then to reliably capture long non-MPEG2 files with?

J-kun

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Info is needed about Cinergy 600

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