I've just installed both my VoodooTV FM card and the latest download of Visual Reality onto my Windows 98 system.

The purpose of this is similar to what ProphetZarquon had in mind.  I would like to play my VHS tapes and record them digitally into any preferrable movie type to store onto my PC, then hopefully convert them to be a playable VCD.

I had to purchase an S-Video to SCART cable, as there is no composite support on my VCR (it's old).

Upon plugging them in, launching VR and switching to S-Video while the tape is playing, I still have a blue screen.  What else needs to be set up?

If ther is an AV channel on the TV app. for the VoodooTV FM, make sure that the TV controller software is set up on the AV channel ans saved on there before capturing... ;)

...it's just a hack, but it works for some TV cards! :P

Anyone got any other ideas? ???

I don't see such a channel in the selection list.

On the 3dfx desktop GUI remote, there are two buttons to switch to the S-Video or Composite ports, as well as the TV tuner.

But switching to S-Video gives nothing.

Ah well, it was just an idea... ::)

...anyone else got any clues? ???

Success!  ;D

It seems that the S-Video to SCART cable was indeed S-Video TO SCART, in that the signal was only going the wrong way, and the opposite way of what I needed.  ::)

So I purchased a switch box that has a SCART socket on one end, with a Composite, S-Video, Audio Left & Right sockets on the other.

I plugged the SCART adapter into the back of the VCR, then plugged all four cables into the other ends, with the  Composite and S-Video connections going into the back of the VoodooTV FM, and the Audio Left & Right connectors joining up to a single 3.5mm jack, which plugs into the LINE IN on my sound card. SORTED!  :D

Now I am tinkering with the digital editing and wondering what is best to encode my movies into, so they are of the best quality to play, yet they can fit onto a CD-R as a VCD, or failing that the best quality available and burn them onto a DVD.

If anyone has tried this before, what encoding do you recommend as the best quality:size ratio?

VisualReality will only encode movies in MPEG-1 format and that averages around 12Mb per minute, which means roughly, a 2 hour film would take up 1.44Gb!  :o  I'd hate to think what AVI format takes.  :-[

How would it be possible to keep good quality, yet fit a 2 hour film onto a CD-R (700Mb)?  What encoding is used for that?  ???

You might want to look at the free XVid Codec, I've heard is has the best MPEG-4 quality existing as of now.
I've only converted very few (much shorter) Clips, but it is pretty nice to use :)

Otherwise, the commercial DivX Codec is widely used, just stay away from proprietary Codecs (MicroSoft .wmv)

Well I gave XVid a whirl, although I'm not entirely impressed of its speed compared to DivX.  I find my encoding rate is a lot faster, and the playback of the actual movie is also faster too.

I did try Intel Indeo amongst a few others but they were terrible!  ::)

Seeing as my VoodooTV does not have MPEG-2 support, I switched out my Voodoo3 AGP and VoodooTV, and replaced them with my Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP.

I must note that using Visual Reality in Windows XP for all cards tested here, was successful.

However, using VR in Windows XP would not let me capture video from the 3500TV.  Just some generic issue displayed saying 'Cannot capture video' when trying to record.

So I tried using DScaler for the 3500TV as I have for the TV FM, but that was hopeless.  For some reason, DScaler did not like the 3500TV.

I switched back to Windows 98 and used Visual Reality there to record in MPEG-2 format instead, which worked a treat!  ;D