Re: Osprey 210: Good?


"V Green" <vanceg@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Meander Thenet" <meander@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"V Green" <vanceg@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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Ugh. Sorry about the double post. Good ol' OEX,
never know what it's gonna do next...



"Meander Thenet" <meander@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns99D02B5FEA838meanderthenetnet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The problem is your analog source. It will/can be only
so good, which is to say, never very good (when compared
to a digital source).

I understand what you're saying about the source material but I'm only
trying to faithfully reproduce the source.

Those Brooktree 8-bit chips are awful. Introduced artifact of many sorts
are totally unacceptable.

Yep. Ran an Intel ISVR3 for awhile so I know about that.


The 10-bit Conexant 23883 is somewhat better but it also introduces
artifact. There's color shifting that takes place--oscillating visible
color shifts. Like, if the background is an American flag, the Conexant
23883 causes the white fields to "strobe" pink/white. It's visible in
the preview without capture and it's visible when captured and it's, of
course, visible when converted. There's other artifacting injected by
the CX2388X chips.

The Canopus Analog->DV converter doesn't introduce artifact. Captured DV
looks just like the original source. I love that.

If I was in your business, I'd use a DV camera to record straight to a
hard drive. Much better resolution (525 lines) with DV as opposed to
those 330 or 400 line analog cameras. As long as I wasn't going to
convert the compressed DV to something else, it would be a perfect
rendition of what the camera sees.

I wish, but unfortunately not possible. Camera heads are NTSC designed to
be
underwater to 300'.

http://www.deepsea.com/


However, my problem is that DV captures are compressed. I would capture
an uncompressed AVI if I could find a capture device that would
faithfully render the original video source signal. Unfortunately, the
Brooktree and Conexant chips don't do that.


you could not see much, if
any, difference in the final clip WHEN PLAYED UNDER
REAL-WORLD CONDITIONS.

Yes. I see your point. It looks fine when played back using the first
generation codec--but--I plan to decompress and recompress. That's
different. HuffYUV offers practically "lossless" compression but all the
beautiful math involved is degraded by the artifacting injected by
Conexant and Brooktree chips.

My problem is that I haven't found an analog capture chip that will
process the video data without corruption of some sort.

I'm not trying to improve the original source. I'm just trying to
perfectly reproduce the original analog source. The Canopus DV converter
does that to an extraordinarily high degree of precision. I'm really
happy with the way it interpretes and processes the source. However, the
problem is that I can't capture to other codecs. It compresses to DV in
the Canopus device.

The Winnov card that makes you happy also has a hardware compressor
doesn't it? I think so from your description. So, it's of no use to me.
I can't capture raw video with it.

Sure you can. You don't have to use the hardware
compression. See page 2:

http://www.winnov.com/pdf/winnov_videum_1XXX_datasheet.pdf


I'd be happy with Conexant chips if they didn't introduce so much garbage
but that garbage is multipled when compression by MPEG4 algorithms get
done with it.

So ... what I really need to hear is experience by someone who has an
Osprey card. It's my only hope, so far, of finding a card with a video
chip not made by Conexant (or Brooktree).

From the Viewcast forum:
-----------------------------
I have osprey 230 installed on linux (Fedora 3)

Sometimes linux load with bt878 driver (intial installation)
and sometime it loads snd_bt87x driver for the card.
Neither of them is correct driver. Video Capturing may
work but audio generates unbearable noise.
You can't rmmod these incorrect driver because some
programs are using them (something in gnome gui)

Solution:
Before gnome desktop gui loaded, remove the wrong
drivers (first snd_bt87x then bttv using rmmod) then load
right one using "modprobe btaudio". These can be put
into level 3 rc scripts to automate.
-----------------------------------

From the 210 manual:

-----------------------------------

Features
The driver supports all Video for Windows capture
driver capabilities that are available to the Bt878 / Ct878A
hardware device. It is compatible with software video
compressors, sound boards, video editing applications,
and videoconferencing applications.

-----------------------------

DRAG-OLA.

Sounds awfully like they're running a 878 or variant.


I'd like to try a Philips/NEC chipped card but I can't seem to find one
that doesn't have all that TV tuner garbage built in. I just want an
analog capture card without the problems that a TV tuner adds to the mix.

My Winnov is using the Philips SAA7113H:

http://www.chipcatalog.com/Philips/SAA7113H.htm

+ two Xilinx Spartan FPGA's to handle the compression.

I see from their website that they are now using only one FPGA
in their 2 gen cards, so I don't know if that's changed.

I thought my 4400 card was here at home, but it must be down
at my shop. It's newer than my 1000, so might have different
chipset. I'll take a look and let you know.

Have you looked at any of the USB2 capture devices?
I am aware that they are probably even cheesier, but I just
don't know ---


Any Osprey owners out there? Maybe Osprey cards have something besides
Conexant or BrookTree chips?

//rus\\





IMHO, one of the best reference design capture card
chipset is the one using the Philips SAA 7114H as the
decoder-A/D converter and the Broadcom BCM 7040
(Kfir-II) MPEG Encoder chip. The design was dropped
by most card makers when Tivo bought up most of the
production of the BCM 7040 chips for their Series 2
boxes.

There appear to be still some being made by V-One
Multimedia in their Snazzi* III series of cards:

http://www.snazzi.com/dvdcreator.asp

http://www.snazzishop.com/

Luck;
Ken


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