fanbanlo

I'm a Vista + TV Wonder 550 PCI user.

Is Catalyst Media Center easy to: Capture analog video and burn DVD?


I recently tried to convert a VCR tape to DVD. However, I ran into problems after problems...

Vista Media Center nor Vista DVD Maker nor Window Movie Maker would capture analog video from Composite nor S-Video.

Cyberlink Producer capture doesn't work with 550.

Finally, Snapstream BeyondTV did the job, after some rather advanced settings in the web interface.

but then there are more problems...

Tried burning video with Snapstream BeyondTV. It tells me the video won't fit on DVD 30+ minutes later!

Then I tried Cyberlink PowerProducer with Smart Fit option, but the DVD ends up having NO AUDIO! WTF?

Opening the captured mpg with Windows Media Player reviles that Vista (with ffmpeg) can't play the mpg with the mpeg2 audio but BeyondTV apparently has no problem. I had to install some codec pack and enables the MPEG PS/TS splitter (Haali Media Splitter), in order to have the mpg plays with audio in Window Media Player. But the splitter will screw up the video thumbnail preview, so I had to uninstall it afterwards)

Then I tried Cyberlink PowerProducer again, but in the preview it still can't play the audio!

Finally, I used the stupid Vista DVD Maker and it worked, but it took hours of re-encoding since it doesn't do mpeg2 transcoding like Shrink DVD.

YIKES!!! I need a better solution! Is Catalyst Media Center any better? Will the latest CMC work with 550? Any other solution?

Thanks!