Capture analog with camcorder or ATI card?

[Onceler2]

I have a lot of analog footage that needs to be captured. I could run it through my old Canon Elura 80 that has a convertor chip and it would then be in DV format.
I also have an ATI TV wonder 650 that can capture. Afrustrating thing about this card is that it captures in a non standard aspect ratio or something the uncompressed video is not 720x480 it is more like 750X520 or something like that. I do not know how to crop it without lossing some of the picture but those black bars must go. Any advise?
Thankyou

[olyteddy]

I'd use the DV pass through.

[lordsmurf]

I have an ATI TV Wonder 650 (USB), and it captures any standard mode fine, be it 720x480, 704x480 or 352x480. My issue with it is dropped frames.

Definitely not a classic Radeon AGP card.

[MOVIEGEEK]

I second DV, you can edit it without loss in quality.

[Onceler2]

My DV camcorder captures through composite should I look for a DV card that does S Video or is there not a whole lot of difference?
I will be trying to salvage some very old VHS tapes,I have an Elitevideo bvp-4 video processor, a JVC D-VHS with TBC(6MB frame memory) and digital stabilizer which both can be turned on at the same time unlike my old JVC S-VHS where you could turn on one or the other not both. I will also be getting footage from a Hi8. Am I all set to start?

[lordsmurf]

Sounds like it.

[danno78]

Avoid composite input and take S-Video connection from JVC deck and Hi8 camcorder. I don`t know about Canon pass through performance using composite input but the Sony camcorders pass through performance is bad at composite. The comb filter is old and weak.
With Ati Theatre 650 you can get a better image. With the latest VirtualDub and wdm drivers the only issue at my PC is dropped frames when Enable Audio Playback is set. Without Audio Playback is fine. To see if I have audio I tick Volume meters. You can raise volum level up to 255.

ATI composite



ATI SVideo



Sony TRV 33E composite



Sony TRV 33E SVideo

[lordsmurf]

Ouch.