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sunday256

User Group
Members
Join date
7-Jun-2006
Last activity
22-Oct-2023
Posts
363

Post History

Post
#265220
Topic
Star Wars Insider DVD?
Time
I have one in front of me, it's got the folling on it:

Dragon (related):
How to create a monster (pdf)
Sage Advice (Q&A from issue #274-280)
Random Dungeon Generator
PC Portraits

Dungeon Adventures (related):
Dungeon Adventures Issue #1 (pdf)
Tinderbox Adventure (pdf)
Gorgoland's Gauntlant Adventure (pdf)

Top Deck (related):
Magic Commercials (1-4)
Duelist Price List

Star Wars Gamer (related):
The Making of Starfighter (video)
Starship blueprints (Millenium Falcon, Tie Fighter, Y-Wing and X-wing)
Star Wars Demolition (video)


Post
#265217
Topic
Good capture card?
Time
So I received the TV2000 XP Expert card today and it's not bad at all. My current PC does a great job of capturing 720x480. I have an Athalon XP 1900+ with 1 gig of ram and a raptor drive. The hitch is, if I capture totally uncompressed AVI, nothing's wrong. But if I add they huffyuv codec, it captures...without frame drops BUT when I go to play it back in Vegas or Media Player it slows to a crawl during playback. I can compress it to something else and it's fine but intial playback is pretty much in slow motion. I'm guessing it's just too much for my PC for whatever reason.

Any ideas why the huffyuv codec would slow playback without dropping frames?
Post
#264188
Topic
Good capture card?
Time
Just got a response back from Leadtek..

Seems both the RM and the Expert TV2000 XP cards are 720x480 and have uncompressed avi. There's also a loss in quality by using the composite connector on the Expert. The question now becomes do you guys think the 10bit card with a connector exceeds the quality of capture from an 8bit card with composite built into the card? Any guesses?
Post
#263974
Topic
Good capture card?
Time
Before I take the plunge and spend $230+ on the PDI, I'm going to give the WinFast 2000xp a shot. The problem is I have no idea which model to get. I've emailed Leadtek but haven't gotten a response as of yet.

From what I can tell there are 3 models and two additional OEM versions.

There's the Expert, Deluxe and the RM.

The major difference with the Expert is that it has a 10bit decoder, offers FM tuning, additional software but lacks a composite input (it has a composite adapter instead). I've read that this model does capture at 720x480 NTSC granted it doesn't state so on their site.

But I have no idea if the RM or Deluxe versions capture at 720x480. They have an inferior 8bit decoder, but they do have composite inputs built into the card.

Should I just get the Expert irrergardless of the fact I'll have to use an adapter for the composite in?
Post
#263963
Topic
Info Wanted: Question about 1980 uncut Empire
Time
Originally posted by: auximenies
Originally posted by: rancher
Originally posted by: Marvolo
Irvin Kershner( sp) said himself that they dropped the wampa scenes and didn't film them because the suits would not work right and the effects were to expensive and complicated. The only wampa scene ever filmed was the scene involving Luke getting attacked and draged to the cave and proceeding cave scene. So it is impossible that you saw the other scenes, because they were never filmed.


<snip>
I'm not too interested in what anybody that worked on the film says on these matters now as they either can't or don't care to remember accurately or have some other reason. Just produce the footage if you haven't destroyed it.

What sort of a response is that? You ask others if they can do some research for you (or help you with your research), some guy tells you the results of his research, and you blow him off? First hand accounts from those that worked on the film are in fact pieces of the puzzle and count as evidence. That's fine if you don't think there is enough depth in Marvolo's research, but don't ask for something and then brush it aside. Plus, it's quite ironic that you say that some folks who worked on the film can't remember things accurately since it is the accuracy of your memory that has been called into question.

Look, we're all for the discovery of "new" or "lost" footage, so don't act as if everyone is against you. It's just that we've seen this before where people seem to remember things that didn't happen, so that's why the explanations of created memories are being offered.


I'm in agreement with you. I saw SW in 1977 and you can all include me in remembering scenes that never happened. I could have sworn I saw stuff in the original movies that never truly made it. What I came to find after all these years, is that I'm just remembering bits and pieces of cut footage that had been included in various sources, such as TOPPS Trading cards, souvenier magazines, trailers, etc. Now, I too, didn't own a lot of SW stuff back in the day with the exception of action figures, but I had enough TOPPS trading cards and magazines in my possession to build up false memories. It's quite possible this is has happened to a lot of people. As they say, a picture can be worth a 1,000 words.

Post
#263699
Topic
Good capture card?
Time
Zion, does the PDI card work with a 64Bit CPU and Vista? And do you ever have problems syncing audio?

If I can get away with a much cheaper capture card (which I'd prefer), would anyone have a recommendation besides the Turtle Beach Video Advantage? I'm looking for a card that captures analog VHS using uncompressed AVI and preferably will work in Vista once I upgrade. I'm going with Zion's recommendation of staying away from a DV capture device. So it needs to be a PCI card that does not have a hardware MPEG encoder.

Post
#258014
Topic
&quot;Black Friday&quot; SW DVD Sales...Wow, Did Some of You...
Time
I still haven't bought them and don't plan on it either. Not even for $1.99 a piece. I'll wait til next year and get the new set that come out. Hopefully they'll have the originals on them. If not, it won't kill me. I watch the SE 99.9% of the time anyway so no biggie. But I can see how you guys would be pissed at the price reductions.
Post
#252499
Topic
Good capture card?
Time
How do you guys feel about the Turtle Beach card?

Turtle Beach PCI card

lt's got a 10-bit uncompressed video capture. I'm assuming I could install HuffYUV and use Vegas to capture it uncompressed then edit as needed? Or is there a comparible card to this that's cheaper. Once again, this is only for VHS. I dont have a camcorder so there's no need for anything for an input other than composite.
Post
#252308
Topic
Good capture card?
Time
I have quesiton about this post of yours Zion...

"DV capture devices are really easy and efficient at what they do, but they do have their limitations. A MAJOR limitation is that you can only capture with the DV codec. It is a true digital capturing system, which means that capturing from analog sources like VHS and laserdisc is not ideal. It will capture only with it's proprietary DV codec, not giving you the option of capturing uncompressed video or with something like HuffYUV instead. The DV capture will look decent, but you will lose a lot of color information right off the bat. And the reds in DV always seem to bleed as well.

Don't buy something like that if you're going to capture primarily from VHS/LD. Buy something like the card Moth3r suggested, or another PCI capture card that doesn't have a proprietary MPEG capture chip. For the X0 Project, we used the PDI Deluxe Card and captured with HuffYUV. That's about as good as it gets for analog capture. Even though that card runs about $200 online, you can find similar cards for as low as $30. For maximum quality, make sure you buy one that has the video inputs directly on the card, instead of having a single output with a multi-input adapter."


I've got a bunch of VHS music videos that will never see the light of day on DVD unfortunately, and I just want to get better captures than what I have now. Everything was captured at 320x240 (due to the limitations of the capturing USB device). And I'd like to capture these again at 720x480 for transferring to DVD. Do you have any suggestions for a caputure card/USB device that uses an RCA input? My VCR deck does not have an S-Video output unfortunately. So basically I want to get the best transfer possible out the above. Money isn't an object, but I know due to the fact this is on VHS it's only going to look so good anyway.