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  1. Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Germany
    Search Comp PM
    Hello.

    I think there are two different kinds of video grabbers: those packed into a usb- thumb and the others assembled onto a pci- card.

    But: Which one is better in general?

    The details: I want to capture video from an analogue video cam with s-video output. Will the usb-thumbs be able to capture the video signal with the whole quality of the s-video or will there be an additional loss? The cam is a Sony DXC 950P 3CCD.

    thanks for any recommendation.

    danica
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  2. Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Europe
    Search PM
    I use a Pinnacle PCI card for the same purpose descibed and can capture to MJPEG from satalite with VirtualDub with a processor load of 40-50% (AMD XP Athlon 2000+). Never have dropped frames.
    A PCI card uses a parallel bus interface while USB is serial (all data over a few wires). I have no experience with USB but in general PCI is prefered above USB. You only need a free PCI slot on your mainboard for it and this could be a problem with new computers.
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  3. Hi, Danica, and welcome to videohelp!

    For getting your video camera input transferred to a computer, either a PCI or USB (or even a DV/Firewire) type device could do the job at the quality level you desire (very high), so it really depends on your budget, your needs, both immediate and future, and what you plan to do with the resulting video capture.

    Being your camera outputs composite video only, not DV, you can't just connect the camera to a DV ("firewire") card in the computer, so we do have to use some sort of composite to DV (AVI) device and your best bets might include:

    Canopus ADVC external DV converter: This will convert your composite (S-Video) input to DV and stream it to your computer, but you'll also need a DV card in your computer (if you haven't got one) to receive the data. This is a somewhat expensive option, but the quality is hard to beat.

    Plextor or Pinnacle external USB converter: Similar to Canopus, but less expensive and also may include an external tuner, so more features for the price. These will stream your video to AVI format (DV) and they'll do it over a USB 2.0 connection, meaning that you won't need a Firewire port on your PC to connect this to, you can plug it in to your USB port (assuming it's a fast USB 2.0 port; streaming over USB 1.1 gives very poor quality).

    Various internal PCI cards (Haupauge, Plextor, many others): These are multifunction cards that'll accept composite video input and convert to MPEG2 on the fly (for fast DVD creation), but if you want to do much editing of your video then capturing in MPEG2 may not be your best bet, you can lose quality that way. I believe the ATI internal cards can also capture in AVI format (DV) so if you're gonna do much editing, this is the way to go.

    But capturing in DV (AVI) takes about 13gb of disk space per hour of video capture (versus about 2gb per hour of MPEG2) so you need to plan your disc space accordingly.

    Bottom line: Neither a PCI or USB/DV device will automatically give you better or worse results, it depends on the manufacturer of the device, if you do a lot of editing, and a bunch of other stuff. But a PCI device may be more limited in the long term than a USB or Firewire device, simply because you need to have an available PCI slot in whatever computer you install it in and a USB/Firewire device is much more easily moved from computer to computer as you upgrade or change your configurations. So a lot depends on your needs and projected use.

    Hope that helps get you started; let us know more about what your plans are and we can help a lot more!
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