Analog Capture Card Adivce

[Lula1]

Hi,

I would like to have suggestions as for a good analog capture card.

Main goal is to capture from VHS and VHS-C tapes.

End product will be a DVD (NTSC- resolution 720 x 480 ), which I will author, and burn on a Pioneer A04 DVD burner.

I prefer to capture as uncompressed AVI and afterwards I will do the encoding to MPEG2 using TMPGEnc.

Thank's for advices and suggestions.

[Tommyknocker]

Let's start with VCR. Does it have fire wire or S-video? If it has fore wire, you are in great shape. Just get a fire wire card and capture only with that. If your player has a S-vido out, use that if you do not have fire wire. If you only have composite video and can afford a few hundred dollars, look at the Canopus ADVC-100, The DAC-100, or the ADS Pyro A/V link. You will need a fire wire card for these three as well, but they are worth it, in my opinion.

[Lula1]

Hi Tommyknocker,

Unfortunately my VCR only has composite video.
I have a Pinnacle DV (for digital capturing).
I have read about the Canopus ADVC-100 and Datavideo DAC-100.
But I am looking for a simpler (and cheaper) solution like some analog capture cards (maybe from prolink or pinnacle).
I would like to hear opinions and experiences about those simple solutions.

[Richard_G]

Initially you asked for advice about a good analogue capture card then you say you want a cheap and simple one. Make up your mind, you can't have both! The cheapest solution is to buy a TV card, most have composite and S-Video inputs and don't cost a lot.

[GKar]

If you want to skip the lengthy AVI to MPEG2 conversion process (I got real tired of it) you may want to try a hardware MPEG2 capture card. I use the Dazzle DVC II (Digital Video Creator) and it does VHS pretty good. I go from a 2 hour capture to a finished DVD burn in about 2 1/2 hours (Tmpgenc Author, Nero 5.5, Bitrate Calc, Sometimes I capture oversized MPEG2's and then use DVDShrink which adds upwards of 20 minutes to the process) instead of the 6-8 hours before (TmpGenc (AVI to MPEG2), TmpGenc Author, Nero 5.5, Bitrate Calc). .There are better cards out there maybe, but I got this one used for under $100 on Ebay and it is working good. The software sucks that it comes with, so go to: http://www.spawns.dk/svcd/ and try TWNH 1958 for capture (file splitting, timed captures, etc...) and TmpGenc Author. Just passing on what works for me, there are better solutions I'm sure. :P

[FulciLives]

I have an AverTV Stereo which I purchased from CompUSA for $49.99

The also make the AverTV Studio which is the same as the Stereo model but adds an FM Stereo Radio Receiver.

I think it is an excellent card for AVI capture.

Pleae note that it does seem to be a bit soft when you record at Half D1 (352x480) but looks great at Full D1 (720x480)

If you want 352x480 final (which is a good resolution for most VHS captures) then simply capture at 720x480 but then resize to 352x480 when doing your MPEG-2 encoding. This gives a very sharp 352x480 image ... moreso than capturing direct at 352x480

Anyways I've very happy with mine. I sometimes use HuffyUV but usually I use PICVideo MJPEG (on the 19 quality setting) and then convert to MPEG-2 using CINEMA CRAFT ENCODER (aka CCE).

I capture with VirtualVCR which I think works best although some also like to use iuVCR.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[indolikaa]

LordSmurf convinced me an ATI card was worth a try, so I shelled out $150 for the ATI AIW 9000 Pro.

Just like the Dodge Hemi commercial. Sweet!

No complaints regarding quality compared to my firewire DV.AVI process I had been using. Maybe there's a little picture quality difference, but the results are outstanding for realtime conversion. And the ATI AVI process seems fine to me. Very functional card, overall.

Doesn't like Macrovision, though. Then again, there's ways around that, aren't there? :P

I must agree with LordSmurf. The out-of-the-box ATI settings are kinda, well, how about we just be blunt and call them shit. But after following his advice and changing some settings, all is well. And no sync or dropped frames with a TBird 1200 on an ATA100 drive. Sweet!

.indolikaa.