Good quality video capture card needed

[qubit]

I need to buy a video capture card for a PC (PCI or PCI-E) to capture video off a Virgin Media STB, since it has no export function at all. All the programs have been recorded in standard definition to save hard disc space, so only SD capability is required, although HD would obviously be a bonus for the future.

This is required to preserve cherished nature programs for my mum that she likes to watch several times over and keep, but which are currently taking up a lot of hard disc space. On top of that, as things stand, she is guaranteed to lose access to them eventually due to a variety of reasons such HDD failure or STB replacement, hence preservation is required.

I require the card to be able to capture the full 50 fields/second interlaced video and with decent video clarity. The price doesn't matter too much, so I don't mind looking at more expensive solutions, as long as I can achieve this.

I have looked at various computer retailers such as scan.com, ebuyer.com and even amazon.com and from what I can see, all these cards either capture at only 25 fields/second or incredibly, it's not stated in the specs, even on the manufacturer's website. Hence, I would really appreciate some help in finding a suitable product.

The card will connect to the HDMI or SCART ports on the Virgin box.

I live in the UK.

 

[qubit]

Anyone?

 

[st2000]

hm, as i think about it:
SVP(if you/your mother will use PC)
some motion plus or same technology on TV
cause i dont realy know/got any examples of 50 frames in movie history(expt some researches), so the original framerate is about 24(23.976)

 

[RCoon]

I'm not aware of any 1080@50i capture cards that record. Most of them are 1080@60p passthru or 1080@30p for recording. (Most television is 23.97FPS anyway).

Only ones I personally know of are the BlackMagic range.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...sign_BDLKULSDEXPRESS_UltraStudio_Express.html

"Blackburst in SD, 720p50, 720p59.94, 1080i50 and 1080i59.94 formats or Tri-Sync in any HD format"

OR

The iEi HC 302E

 

[st2000]

470$ and 802$..
funny

 

[qubit]

Thanks guys, but I think you may misunderstand what I mean by the video spec a little bit, which I'm not surprised since interlacing makes it all a bit confusing.

The way it works is that the standard PAL 625 line standard refreshes the screen 50 times per second, with each refresh being called a field with only 312.5 lines of resolution. Now, since it's interlaced, the two fields combined make for a frame, hence the framerate is half at 25 frames per second. The resolution of the frame is then the full 625 lines.

If the signal wasn't interlaced then a field = a frame and there would be no confusion and only one term (frame) would have been required.

Incidentally, the current UK HD standard gives a 1080 picture, but it's still interlaced the same way in order to save on bandwidth. I think it was a very bad idea, because it causes issues with things like freezeframes, line twitter (flickering effect) and video conversion, among other things. My Freeview DVR can actually convert it to a non-interlaced picture, but if I look carefully, I can see a slight loss of clarity, so I don't use this feature.

Therefore, to maintain smooth motion, avoiding judder/strobing, a capture card must capture 50 fields per second. Of course, what frustrates this is that most TV content is shot at 25 frames per second whether they use film or digital video. Nevertheless, there will be instances where the full 50 fields per second is shown in the program, especially with slowmos, so I don't want that impaired.

Thanks for that blackmagic link RCoon, but unfortunately that doesn't look like a solution either. While I have no objection to an external device, it has several issues. This interfaces via Thunderbolt which no one has, secondly, the price is really high and finally, there is still the same ambiguity over the spec, as the website shows "SD 625/25 PAL, 525/29.97 NTSC". Again, are they referring to 25 fields or frames? This is almost never clarified and the couple of cards I have bought in the past combined the two interlaced fields into a non-interlaced signal of 25 frames per second, demonstrating all that lovely judder with no option of changing it. The implication is that this unit is like the others, because if you look at the HD spec, it shows as "1080i50", like you posted. It seems a stupid limitation to put in as far as I can see.

 

[st2000]

i dont know the exact problem cause if i were you, i'd searched for videorecorder with 576i standard support(576i means 50 fields and 25 fps)
if you cant find 576i recorder, i advice to look for 720p recorder and some adapter from 576i to 720p
if there will be very bad options i'll find smthg like hdmi->wiiU, wii U->hdmi adapters(or ps2 adapters)
ps2 and wiiU adapters convert your 576i to 720p or even to 1080p(of course with some loss)
in Russia we got al in "p" so i dont understand this theme

 

[SaltyFish]

This again?

My previous reply to you two years ago still applies.

 

[qubit]

Yes Salty, this again. I'd looked at this sometime before, but never came to a conclusion so it's becoming urgent now.

Anyway, I did a little more digging and found a couple of contenders to compare. I've bought both of them off Amazon and will return one of them. I'll be returning both of them if either there's copy protection on the output of the Virgin box, or if both products aren't very good.

They are the AVerMedia HD Lite Live Gamer for £70

and the StarTech PEXHDCAP capture card for £99.

What surprises me most though are the lack of replies for a query like this, a typical enthusiast question. I only got a few replies on tpu, but I got fuck all on another forum, even with a reminder post. Incredibly, it's one specifically dedicated to video and home theatre. At least tpu came out on top, hehe. Appreciate your help matey.

 

[qubit]

Ok, here's the next instalment for all my adoring fans waiting on tenterhooks for my latest update in my video capture saga.

I've now had a go with both capture cards and can report the following.

First off, the HDMI port is encrypted the whole time with HDCP, so you can't even see a menu. £28.20 for one HDMI splitter later from eBay and I solved that little showstopper - it cracks HDCP and doesn't re-encrypted the stream on its two outputs and works perfectly. The seller shipped it very quickly too and it arrived in perfect condition. Recommended.

The StarTech has rather limited and simple functionality, but it does what it says on the tin and makes perfect recordings in both SD and HD, so is good enough for my requirements. It captures the full 50 frames per second too, so video is smooth, with no judder. Unfortunately, the video playback software in the form of VLC and Windows Media Player showed intermittent severe stutters at random points while playing recordings. Note however, that playing the same bit over again can play smoothly, so the judder isn't in the actual recording, but there's an issue with its playback. I haven't tried more playback software yet or looked at this problem more deeply. Note that I was running the monitor at 60Hz when I was testing the card. Anyone know the answer to this problem?

And then we come to the Avermedia card. Oh dear.

I'd bought Avermedia products around a decade ago and had a poor experience with them, so I bought this with some trepidation. Turns out I wasn't disappointed.

About the only good thing going for this product is the box presentation which has a semi-premium feel, but other than that it's rubbish.

Box includes card, HDMI cable and quick start manual, but annoyingly, no driver disc. The tiddly manual says to install the software, but makes no mention of the disc or even where to download the drivers, which is very poor indeed. It's not even written in the manual, but in small print at the back of the box, at the bottom. I'm technically competent so this wasn't very hard for me to do other than an inconvenience, but for a novice, they could be stumped. This isn't how to treat your customers and shows a certain contempt for them from Avermedia in my view.

The website is actually quite slow to load pages and the download speed is capped at 6Mb/s to save them bandwidth, which means it takes much longer for you and isn't pleasant to use.

The card is recognized by Windows 7 as "PCI Device" when it's actually a PCI-E device. Installing the combined driver/application results in a "can't find device" error. Even the firmware update program can't find it. After some troubleshooting, it turns out that the card is actually faulty, so, annoyingly, I can't test its performance after all this faffing around. However, going by previous history and what I've seen here, I wouldn't be surprised if performance isn't very good, with buggy software. Note that the box was shrinkwrapped and the product looked new, so I hope faulty products like this are rare and I just got unlucky.

I may order another one, but it's not all that likely I'll bother with the hassle since the StarTech does what I need right now and we need to get those programs off the Virgin DVR sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I'm returning the Avermedia for a refund.

 

[DinaAngel]

Ok, here's the next instalment for all my adoring fans waiting on tenterhooks for my latest update in my video capture saga.

I've now had a go with both capture cards and can report the following.

First off, the HDMI port is encrypted the whole time with HDCP, so you can't even see a menu. £28.20 for one HDMI splitter later from eBay and I solved that little showstopper - it cracks HDCP and doesn't re-encrypted the stream on its two outputs and works perfectly. The seller shipped it very quickly too and it arrived in perfect condition. Recommended.

The StarTech has rather limited and simple functionality, but it does what it says on the tin and makes perfect recordings in both SD and HD, so is good enough for my requirements. It captures the full 50 frames per second too, so video is smooth, with no judder. Unfortunately, the video playback software in the form of VLC and Windows Media Player showed intermittent severe stutters at random points while playing recordings. Note however, that playing the same bit over again can play smoothly, so the judder isn't in the actual recording, but there's an issue with its playback. I haven't tried more playback software yet or looked at this problem more deeply. Note that I was running the monitor at 60Hz when I was testing the card. Anyone know the answer to this problem?

And then we come to the Avermedia card. Oh dear.

I'd bought Avermedia products around a decade ago and had a poor experience with them, so I bought this with some trepidation. Turns out I wasn't disappointed.

About the only good thing going for this product is the box presentation which has a semi-premium feel, but other than that it's rubbish.

Box includes card, HDMI cable and quick start manual, but annoyingly, no driver disc. The tiddly manual says to install the software, but makes no mention of the disc or even where to download the drivers, which is very poor indeed. It's not even written in the manual, but in small print at the back of the box, at the bottom. I'm technically competent so this wasn't very hard for me to do other than an inconvenience, but for a novice, they could be stumped. This isn't how to treat your customers and shows a certain contempt for them from Avermedia in my view.

The website is actually quite slow to load pages and the download speed is capped at 6Mb/s to save them bandwidth, which means it takes much longer for you and isn't pleasant to use.

The card is recognized by Windows 7 as "PCI Device" when it's actually a PCI-E device. Installing the combined driver/application results in a "can't find device" error. Even the firmware update program can't find it. After some troubleshooting, it turns out that the card is actually faulty, so, annoyingly, I can't test its performance after all this faffing around. However, going by previous history and what I've seen here, I wouldn't be surprised if performance isn't very good, with buggy software. Note that the box was shrinkwrapped and the product looked new, so I hope faulty products like this are rare and I just got unlucky.

I may order another one, but it's not all that likely I'll bother with the hassle since the StarTech does what I need right now and we need to get those programs off the Virgin DVR sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I'm returning the Avermedia for a refund.

I would recommend Blackmagic Intensity pro


Blackmagic Intensity Pro


Pinnacle Studio MovieBoard Ultimate S12

Pinnacle Studio MovieBoard Standard S12