Ok, I have had my PVT for over a year now and I am having a problem but, I think I am on to fixing it. I have my PVT hooked up to my XBOX 360 VGA cables. I am running Y-splitter cables for the signal and I know this is good. I used to record straight to my recorder using Pinnicle Studio Dazzle Recorder but got the PVT for convenence. Now I am using a PNY 8GB Flash Stick to record onto. When I used the "old best setting" 1.5MBs every video was horrable quality under any movement and had heavy interlacing. I started using the "new best setting" 2.5MBs and the quality changed. At the start of the recording the picture is 100% clear and perfect. After about 10 seconds I get some interlacing but picture quality over all is good. The video will go in and out of visually displaying the interlacing comb and go back.

Now either two things hare happening that I can think of:

1) The PVT is junk and is screwed up.

2) The USB Flash Drive I am recording to is not good enough.

Now the PNY USB Flash Drive has a advertised write speed of 4.0MBs which should be fast enough. It got me thinking though of how other USB flash drives performed. I found tons of flash drives that had write speeds of 12MBs or more. Now I am starting to think the flash drive is dropping the quality of the video. What do you all think?

Does anything think that a faster write speed flash drive or a external hard drive would still display the speratic interlacing? I do not want to throw money on a new drive if the PVT is the problem.

Any advice or help is appreciated.

 Chris

I haven't seen any real issues with quality versus speed, but you might want to try an external hard drive instead of the flash drive.

Also try another video source to see what happens (dvd player for example). If you have zero interlace it might be the source.

Would running it thru a de-interlace filter (i.e. virtualdubs deinterlace video filter) help clean it up at all?

I would go drop the $80 on an external hard drive but I have seen others peoples video come out perfect from the same setup other then a different usb flash stick.

I have recorded other sources and recorded to a different pinnacle device and quality is fine.

I have tried virtualdub, sony vegas, adobe after affect, and many other de-interlacers to no avail. I am ready to say screw it to all my of pinnacle products because my studio 12 crashes as well and none of my other software does.

I just bought a usb flash drive with 9MB/s write speed that I will be getting next week. If anyone else can give me some ideas or input before then it would be appreciated.

I will also update when I get new usb flash drive to let everyone else know the results.

It's also possible that the output from you game box is 'overdriving' the PVT or otherwise giving it a sloppy signal

The fact that all other sources record file suggests that it's something related to the output . I think you're recording the actual video signal and it's that that is messed up.. sort of like recording a tape playing back with bad tracking that jumps all the time onto another vcr.. you'd record exactly that jumping and bad tracking..

You might want to see if you record onto a VCR if it looks bad when played back..

If you have access to one, try feeding the video thru a 'video stabalizer' box..  

 

The new flash drive helps a little but not a lot. Roughly 1/2 of the move is interlaced and the other is crystal clear. I have come to the conclusion that the PVT itself is the problem because I can record using my Dazzle USB-to-computer just fine. I wish there was hacked firmware out for this thing that allowed me to create my own settings. Or that Avid fixed this damn device. Not worth the $100 I spent.

best quality uses interlaced frames on capture to a USB device. this information is in the manual. better and good qualities do not use interlaced frames.