Best Capture Settings

[RonnaP]

Hi, this is all new to me so please be kind ok
I'm using a Hauppauge 150 and the recording I'm doing in GB-PVR are just not the greatest quality.
Is there somewhere that can tell me the best settings for what I want to do?
Also, is it possible to capture in avi format? Maybe transcode to xvid?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[onestar]

Hi, this is all new to me so please be kind ok
I'm using a Hauppauge 150 and the recording I'm doing in GB-PVR are just not the greatest quality.
Is there somewhere that can tell me the best settings for what I want to do?
Also, is it possible to capture in avi format? Maybe transcode to xvid?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Why do you say this, is it something really obvious ? You can edit the quality settings when recording. Medium (Default) settings seem okay to me, but in the capture source, edit source settings, in the profile quality settings you can change the medium quality settings, or select high when setting up a recording. This is assuming there is nothing else that is wrong.

[RonnaP]

Well I started out with WinTV 2000 and I was capturing at DVD Extra long play mode and when recording in GB-PVR at medium quality there is quite a bit quality diffference.
Sorry if I offended

[onestar]

Well I started out with WinTV 2000 and I was capturing at DVD Extra long play mode and when recording in GB-PVR at medium quality there is quite a bit quality diffference.
Sorry if I offended

Never meant to imply offence. Meant it like whether there is something glaringly poor, like bad contrasts or poor colours or something, that might have another cause.

I can't comment, since I never used win2000 to record anything so can't compare you obviously can see a difference. I would expect that extra long play uses a lower bitrate than medium, so I have no idea.

[RonnaP]

Well I guess I need to play around and see whats best
Thanks for replying

Oh what bitrate do you use for most of your recordings (since you say they are pretty good)

[onestar]

Well I started with setting everything to high, but then really didn't notice that much difference with medium set to

PAL 720x576
Variable
Low 3500 Kbits/sec
Peak 7200 Kbits/sec
224
48Khz

Is that the default ? I thought I had moved it higher (4500 and 8500) than that. One recent recording seemed to average around the 5.5K mark.

The only other thing I can think of is if you are using composite/svideo is it the same source (in the software) as wintv ?

[RonnaP]

I'm not using SVideo or composite - its the same as with WinTv
Those are the default settings for medium - I will just play around with it.

Do you know if it makes a difference if your using your pc while it records??

[onestar]

I'm not using SVideo or composite - its the same as with WinTv
Those are the default settings for medium - I will just play around with it.

Do you know if it makes a difference if your using your pc while it records??

I guess it changed back when I reinstalled doh!

I've not seen a difference when recording from the 150 and the 350 while playing back on the 350. (One of the first tests I did ).

Perhaps you could try the hauppauge tweak tool, to adjust card defaults settings (like saturation, brightness, sharpness). I think you will find that Sub simply uses the standard MS filters to record, and doesn't do anything different than other software. Or try posting some screen shots highlighting what you find to be poor about the picture quality, maybe someone might be able to home in on the issue?

[stefan]

Are you sure it's the recording that goes bad? Because there shouldn't be any difference between a recording made in gbpvr vs win2000. It could however be the playback that differs, if gbpvr uses another video decoder than win2000 does. Try playing back a recording (preferably one that you think is bad quality) made in gbpvr in win2000 and see if it looks better there. In such case it's definitely the decoder used that is your problem. The solution would be to change the decoder used by gbpvr :-)