Question / Help Initiating a Win TV PVR Card

[Okeetd]

Hello - I am an OBS newbie experimenting to find the most reasonable quality VHS capture to archive old home movies. The best quality capture I have come up with is to use an old Hauppauge Win TV PVR 250 PCI card that I had (this has an onboard hardware mpeg 2 encoder). Using an older version of Corel Video Studio the quality of the video capture is actually very good and acceptable if all else fails. I would like to use OBS Studio though so that I can zoom in precapture and eliminate the video noise at the bottom of the screen. I also want to experiment with using OBS for other capture settings to improve the capture more. OBS recognizes the capture card as a video capture device source but I don't get any video in the preview after I have added the source. Do I need to initialize the card somehow so that OBS knows to grab the svideo signal from the card. I am an OBS newbie and not great at coding. If there is a series of code I need to run to initiate the Svideo source on the Win PVR card, I would appreciate the specifics of what I need to run and how. Thanks in advance for the advice.

 

[Narcogen]

There is no special coding required to initialize a video capture device.

Add a video source, if the device is supported, OBS will see it and display it as an option. If not, make sure you've installed the required drivers. If it is available as an option but displays no video, this usually means you need to manually select the resolution and frame rate; you'll need to select the same as the output from your VHS, which is most likely NTSC 29.97 (USA) or PAL 25 for Europe.

 

[Okeetd]

Thank you Narcogen. When I select custom for the Resolution/FPS Type setting, I am only able to input a resolution. the FPS options are highest or match output fbs. I tried a few combinations of resolutions including 720x480i with no luck. Do you have any thoughts on what resolution number I need to use? Any other thoughts? Thank you

 

[Narcogen]

You need to use the same resolution and framerate as produced by the device you're attempting to capture. Match output should work, if the card supports the framerate the device is producing.

 

[Okeetd]

Hello - I apologize but I am still struggling with getting video using OBS on an installed WinTV PVR card. I have attempted to change the frame rate as Narcogen suggests with no success. I have also tried changing other settings. My set up is a VHS with S-video out connected to my win10 computer using a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 card. My goal is to use OBS but I can't configure it properly to capture Video. The same physical connections work just fine using a different legacy capture program so I feel I am really close. Just need some advice on the proper settings in OBS. Attached is a screen grab of my settings options when selecting the card in OBS.

 

[Narcogen]

You've got two red settings there. FPS and Video Format. You need to choose from those the settings that your capture device is outputting, which should be the same as what your VHS machine is outputting.

That said, if you have legacy software that works I would use that.

 

[Okeetd]

Thanks Narcogen - I do want to keep trying as the legacy SW has VHS distortion that OBS lets me zoom / crop out. When I pick resolution/FPS type and select custom, do you have an idea of what numbers I should input for resolution and in what format I should put it in that field? That is where I think I am hung up most. Thanks again for your patience in helping me through it.

 

[Narcogen]

NTSC video would be 480i/23.97.

You can crop things out of the video in an editor after recording.