Is there a proved working USB capture device with 3rd party software?

[ndep]

What I want to accomplish is to use an external catpure device to connect the analog/digital DV to the USB port on my laptop to do live webcast, specifically with Windows Media Encoder to do mms.

I did some homework here, it seems there are no definite solution to that. So I took a gamble: bought a Pinnacle 500-USB, which has both 1394 input and analog S-Video and composite input. While unfortunately now it is only capturing video using Pinnacle Studio.... very sad.

Is there other driver that could work with this device, like Hauppage PVR USB( local dealers couldn't find this device ), to enable 3rd party software capturing? Or other device that meets my requirements?

[tdsmultimedia]

I have tried lots of products and I usually only get a video capture...
the audio doesn't come through...
you can go directly into the audio input of the laptop and use the usb capture device for the video only...

your best bet is to get a firewire device like the canopus adv box... it works ...
if you find a USB capture device that will work with ustream or livestream let me know....

[tdsmultimedia]

good luck....

I have tried lots of products with the exact same result....

Have you tried a seperate audio usb capture device? m box or something?

[lordsmurf]

ATI 600 is great.
But WME is crap. That's the weak link.

[Hoser Rob]

... WME is crap. That's the weak link.

I'm certainly no expert on usb capture but I suspect that's right.

Unlike many linux users I don't hate windows/microsoft (though win8 may just do that). But I don't understand why Microsoft media software is so wretchedly bad.

[jman98]

... WME is crap. That's the weak link.

I'm certainly no expert on usb capture but I suspect that's right.

Unlike many linux users I don't hate windows/microsoft (though win8 may just do that). But I don't understand why Microsoft media software is so wretchedly bad.

Well, for what it's worth I make my living supporting Linux servers for my company and I've been known to bash Microsoft for a lot of things I feel like they deserve being bashed for. But I have to say that there's nothing wrong with WMV or WMA in terms of quality. I'm not a big fan of the DRM that both can use, but I'd point to both as one of the few things that Microsoft actually got right. Unfortunately WME is a bit painful to use and if I remember correctly even now it doesn't technically exist any more. They've renamed it to something else. Microsoft seems to partly want people to actually use Windows Media, but another part of the company would rather use it to squeeze money out of the few who are willing to pay to use it rather than really and truly make it easily accessible for the masses. And to make things worse and show you how stupid Microsoft is, I have with my own eyes seen an up to date WMP refuse to play WMV lacking in DRM that VLC could handle without problems. Stupid crap like this is why a lot of people bash Microsoft. What's the point of encoding to WMV if a standard Windows PC with WMP can't even play it?

[lordsmurf]

Linus is like Mac, or even Windows 7-8 -- terrible at capturing.
There's a few workflows, but Windows XP is still best.
You can hack Vista if your good, and have the right hardware.
All 3 systems are in my office, some I'm platform agnostic.

I don't like it either, but it is what it is.