[//Nathan]

Does anyone here know how to capture video?

I have a VCR and internal (PCI) capture card, but right now, all I have to connect them is three composite cables (red and white for sound and yellow for audio). I also have a "2 composite to headphone" audio cable.

I can get video pretty well in Media Player Classic and that's about it. VirtualDub 1.5 and the Microsoft capture utility that came on the capture card's CD aren't worth a damn - VirtualDub gives me a strange error, and the basic capture util just jerks me around, occasionally opening an always-on-top black square its own size in the upper left corner. Media Player Classic features capture stuff, so I've been concentrating my efforts there for the time being, as it's the only thing letting me see video. No audio anywhere!

So I hooked up the audio from the VCR directly to my sound card's line-in jack. Now when I start the VCR, regardless of what is open, I hear audio. I suspect there is a direct connection between line-in and speaker-out. So now when I press Play on the VCR, I get sound immediately, and can get video with Media Player Classic.

I have a LOT of codecs - I use the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack. Divx, Xvid, 3ivx, huffyuv, ffdshow, H.263, MJPEG, Uncompressed - I am seeing a LOT of options for video encoding. My capture card is supposed to have onboard MPEG-2 compression. ffdshow is the only one I found to even mention MPEG-2, but it's not working for me. I can't capture audio yet with either Media Player Classic or Winamp (which says it can record from line-in - I can open line-in, and I have an Mp3 (LAME) out plugin). The only luck I have had with capturing silent video is with a Microsoft MPEG-4 v2 (or v3, they both work) codec. Uncompressed does not work but eats hard drive space like nobody's business. The Newegg entry for my capture card said, or I read somewhere, that its own MPEG-2 encoder eats 1-2GB per hour - that's acceptable to me. I figure I have 16GB for an 8 hour tape. But I'm supposed to be able to choose between four quality settings, and I don't see where to do that.

Here's the catch - my capture card's documentation (which is very minimal) says it's for Media Center Edition, and all I'm running is XP Pro. Isn't MCE available as a kit, rather than a whole new Windows license (like Plus! was for Windows 98)? I could have sworn I saw MCE for $20 (no remote or anything, just the disc) but that was a year or more ago. In any case, I don't think I need MCE - surely if I can see the video with Media Player Classic and hear the audio via line-in, I can record it - it's just a matter of picking the settings correctly.

[//Nathan]

Oh, my capture card has them all. Two cable-type ports, one for FM and one for "TV In". Svideo, then RCA.

With all three RCA ports, I could not get any audio whatsoever. The only way I can get audio is by running a RCA-audio-to-headphone cable from the VCR directly to my sound card's line-in. When I put a tape in, I hear sound immediately - with nothing running. It just comes out the speakers. I am not sure the computer is capturing the sound - Winamp displays an EQ when I open "linein://" for Open URL, but I feel like Media Player Classic is playing only video. I think I need to find a way to point it to the sound card, but I do not see how. So there's no problem playing, but I cannot record sound. I can record silent video. I would really prefer to record multiplexed MPEG-2; I don't particularly want to go through syncing and multiplexing an audio stream and a video stream.

I haven't tried 1.6.1.4; I saw that on Download.com for Win64, and they had 1.5.... .10 I think, for Win32. I'll check their site though and get myself the latest one.

Damn... I could have sworn I saw a Media Center Upgrade kit for $20 somewhere. Retail box, not online or whatever. I think it was at Best Buy. But this was before Media Center 2005. I am tempted to buy a license to Media Center 2005 because the OEM is cheap enough. My laptop is in California with a hard drive going out... if I buy a 2.5" hard drive, that will probably qualify me for an OEM license - but getting down to fine print, does that mean legally I would have to use MCE on the laptop? The laptop has an OEM license for XP Home, which is just fine. I've got XP Pro on the desktop, which is why I was hoping I might upgrade somehow. But I'm not planning on buying Vista until its first Service Pack comes out, so I have no problem sticking with XP for another two years or so.

A Media Center PC, by my definition, is a PC you can control from your couch via remote. Hewlett-Packard defines them, however, as that plus a capture card/TV tuner and DVD burner - a complete entertainment center. I have a homebuilt gaming rig (sort of - I went with a 256MB GeForce 6600, could have at least gone GT or 6800 - 7xxx wasn't out yet) and so far I've got the capture/tuner card. I have a DVD burner, and if I add a remote/infared sensor and MCE, I figure I'll have a homebuilt media center - which fits as my PC is our entertainment center already. We watch (downloaded) TV shows, movies on it, listen to music, and when we get a place with cable, it'll be our TV and VCR (DVR I guess) as well.

[//Nathan]

Is coaxial that old kind of plug, where with the old ones you had to screw it on, but the newer ones just pushed on? That's what my TV-In is (as well as FM-In). So yes, I have that, but no coax cable.

The "Capturing MPEG with any capture card" guide looks helpful, but has one significant flaw - CyberLink's PowerVCR is completely unavailable. CyberLink no longer sell it. Download.com doesn't have a demo, but Overstock said (albeit in an ad) that they had it - of course, because it was in an ad, it was a lie, just to attract visitors - they don't have it. As a last resort I searched for a Torrent for it (hey, if it's really abandonware...) but nobody's got that either, at least not that Google picked up.

I'll read through the VideoHelp guides and look up that VCR+Sync tomorrow; now I've got to get to work.

[//Nathan]

Oh, I believe the download is English, once you get to the file. Apparently ZDNet doesn't actually have it, you have to "click here" or whatever the German equivalent was, to go to the Cyberlink site. Cyberlink didn't have it in their Store (which I did check); the download is from their Patches area. 30-day trial, limits to 10 minutes of recording time. Bollocks... but at least I'll be able to learn it, and if it works as well as that guide says (saved a pdf of it), maybe I can still buy a license.

...And I thought I'd be getting a German version. It would be fun to have a German program... I can't speak or write German, but I can read some of it... Either it's close enough to English that I can get the gist of what's being said, or I listened to too much Rammstein when they were popular. Either way, it'd be neat.

Thanks for the cables clarification, I was wondering what was called what. I kept getting coaxial confused with component, which I was also getting confused with RCA - I know RCA is a brand, but I thought there was another name for the cables (generic) which I thought was either coaxial or component - but I guess component is that other one that TVs are just now supporting - I think it's video only and has separate cables for red, green, and blue - something like that.