Capture card just for raw uncompressed capture

[swiego]

First, I want to apologize for earlier posts, I guess it took me a few tries and some experimenting with a couple of actual devices to figure out what I want.

I am looking for a capture device that focuses on analog-to-digital raw capture, no encoding needed nor required. DV isn't a requirement, nor is MPEG. Don't need a tuner, or an easy software wizard for burning DVDs. What I do want: best possible A-to-D quality, s-video input, and any features from TBC to processing that might improve quality. Good capture software is nice but if it comes with nothing but is workable with virtualdub (or some such) that's fine. Price, ideally, < $500 but I will entertain anything.

It's possible that the best raw capture quality doesn't cost a great deal of money... willing to entertain that. I do get the impression that the capture quality does vary from one capture card/device to another.

[redwudz]

You would likely want to capture to the HuffyUV codec. Pretty much lossless and may be the best quality for AVI in most cases. The ATI cards do well with this. Look to: http://www.digitalfaq.com/

It does need a fast CPU and plenty of hard drive space.

The next best (IMO) would be DV with a hardware encoder like a ADVC unit. Much easier to work with and locked AV sync. Uses about 13Gb per hour HD space.

If you are capping from VHS tapes, then a TBC or at least a VCR with built-in TBC capabilities is a good idea.

[hrlslcbr]

I recommend an ATI card too. I have a theatrix (Theatre 550 pro chip) and my captures look great (to uncompressed avi or with lossless compression like huffyuv, as redwudz said).