HVR-1800, Analog Hauppaugew WinTV 885 Video Capture vs Tuner/Demod?

[notso99]

I purchased an HVR-1800 with no FM from ebay to copy family video from Beta VCR to digital. I got hooked on nextPVR and forgot about my video project. Now I have the old beta vcrs working (another story) but nPVR does not capture the audio. I searched these forums and found discussions about analog audio and AC3 decoders so installed AC3Filter for AC3 audio decoder. (sidebar, should e-AC3 be set to AC3Filter also for analog?)

Then I saw settings>devices with "Analog Hauppaugew WinTV 885 Video Capture" where the ATSC and QAM say ... Tuner/Demod. Is my lack of audio from analog because my cheapo HVR-1800 with no FM does not have all the hardware for audio? Beta vcr works ok with tv. (sidebar: ATSC from antennae works great and nPVR is awesome.)

If my HVR-1800 has no analog audio then is it possible to use line-in for nPVR?

Your thoughts appreciated.

Regards,
Phil

[mikeh49]

You need to install the Hauppauge Soft-PVR components; I can't tell from your description if you have done that. See the getting started sticky for mpre info. The straightforward way is to install WinTV 7 which should have come with your card.

You will connect the VCR to the HVR1800 by either S-video and audio cables, or, if your VCR does not have S-video and audio out, then a coax to the NTSC/analog in connector of the HVR1800. Then you set the HVR1800 analog tuner in Settings>Devices to S-video input for S-video, or fixed channel 3 or 4 (whatever the VCR is set to for the composite video/audio out) for coax/composite in.

Others will probably chime in with more detail, this is what I know without having actually done this.

[notso99]

I had brain freeze in original message. I do not get the AUDIO from the vcr, the video is good. So sorry for my goof.

Hauppauge software is installed.

[Zeb]

Hi. Under Settings -> Decoders, what do you have selected for MPEG1 Audio? Either Microsoft or AC3Filter decoders should work. (Only digital channels use the AC3 audio format.)

I have some experience transferring videotapes to digital form, although not using NextPVR. First of all, if you think you might want to edit your home videos using video-editing software, then they should ideally be captured in uncompressed form (typically AVI). A TV tuner such as the HVR-1800 therefore isn't ideal because it encodes output as MPEG-2, which is highly compressed. If you edit MPEG-2 videos, you will end up with "artifacts" that diminish the picture quality. This can be minimized by using a high bitrate and producing very short edited videos.

But if video-editing isn't part of your plan, then there's nothing wrong with MPEG-2 files, which are of course much smaller than AVI files. I'm using a Vista machine that came with an HVR-1800 preinstalled (and of course Media Center). It also came with Cyberlink PowerDirector video-editing software, with which I was able to capture directly from the TV card in MPEG-2 format. Note that the .ts files produced by NextPVR cannot be burned directly to DVD, if that is your objective; although there are threads on the forum that discuss making DVDs from .ts files.

[Reddwarf]

I'm not familiar with that card, but does it connect component or composite video from the VCR? If it has only component you probably have to connect audio to line-in separately, but it sounds unlikely to me. Have you tried to play the captured video/non-audio files in another player, like VLC?

[mvallevand]

SD Analog cards aren't AC3. They are MPEG2 audio mono or stereo.

I disagree with Zeb a bit since avi isn't a format it is container so the quality and size are related to the encoding format. Raw video is good if you have the disk space. On the otherhand xvid avi's are popular because the ratio of quality to size for mpeg encoding can make really small files.

Martin