Which capture card???

[sonob]

I've done some research to see which capture card would work best, but I'm still not sure. I am looking for a capture card $200.00 or less, that gives me the capability editing the captured video in Adobe Premiere. It seems a lot of the capture cards require you to use there software to edit, which is usually crap. I also want to make sure the capture card is of good quality. If I need to spend more than $200.00, I would be willing.

Thanks to anyone that can help!!

[Roundabout]

Do you want an internal PCI card, or an external device? Having an external device takes a load off your CPU resources, and does all the processing before sending the encoded video to your PC.

For less than $200.00, you can get the Datavison DAC-100 (~$185.00) or the ADS Pyro A/V Link (~$199.00, but on sale now at Circuit City for $110.00). Both will encode your video to DV before sending it to the PC.
I don't know for sure about the Datavision unit, but the ADS will definitely work with Premiere, as well as many other programs. It comes with Ulead Video Studio 7 and all the cables are included in the box (Firewire 4 pin, Firewire 6 pin, Component video, S Video).

If you're interested in an internal card, look at the ATI all-in-wonder cards, ask Lordsmurf (on this forum) about them, he has a website dedicated to them. They are excellent cards in the midprice range.

Any other questions, please ask and I'll try to answer, or someone else here will try to help you.

[proxyx99]

Options are plenty. Check this link to get familiar with what other options may be:
http://store.yahoo.com/ambery/

Not a suggestion though. This is to expand your vision if I may.

[sonob]

Thanks for all your help!!

Yes, I was more interested in an external unit, it seemed to be a better buy.

Do you own an Ambery unit? Have you had good luck with it?

[proxyx99]

No, but I stumbled upon this site while looking for PC TV Tuner.
Looks interesting. Considering the advances in thechnology and a fact that most use chips developped by big corps I would have no reservation to buy and try it. I'm planning to do it today. It's just a matter which one. Featues are plentyful. I wonder which will suit my needs better.
Since units are external thera are no issues with software. Really tempting.

[scream151]

... ADS Pyro A/V Link (~$199.00, but on sale now at Circuit City for $110.00). Both will encode your video to DV before sending it to the PC.

I'm still trying to learn here to, so bare with me please...

That supports DV input (Firewire) but I don't see any mention about about a hardware MPEG-2 encoder. Do you know if it has that? Otherwise its just a multiformat cable agregater with some PC software, right?

[Roundabout]

It has DV input and analog input (from VCR, Camcorder, Tuner, etc.) then outputs DV format data (AVI) for easy editing on your PC. No compression to MPEG-2 then having to edit - you edit first then compress to MPEG-1 or 2.

Most of the people on this forum will tell you this is the best way to go, whether with the ADS unit, the Canopus ADVC100, or the Datavision DAC100. They are all DV Firewire analog to digital converters.
It is not just a cable aggregator. Far from it, it has real time hardware encoding to DV with audio lock capabilities. This eliminates the problems most people have with the audio not being in sync with the video, a major problem with the outboard hardware real time MPEG-2 encoders.

It actually uses about 13 Gigabytes of hard drive space for each hour of DV video, so you can see it is much less compressed than normal MPEG video. That means you can edit and do whatever with the video before encoding it to MPEG and putting it on a disc. This gives you better quality.
If you aren't concerned about quality, you can use one of the real time MPEG encoders on the market, of which there are many.

One other thing, with the Ulead Video Studio 7 software that comes with the ADS unit, you can do real time encoding to MPEG if you wish, your PC will encode the incoming DV as is arrives. You need a decent processor to do it, but it will do the real time encodes if you have some reason to do it that way. The option is there, if you need it.

Hope this answers most of your questions. If you need to ask more, ask away. No problem. You should know and decide what's best for you in your situation and for your needs.

[scream151]

Thanks for the additional detail, Roundabout.

I still have not got a firm grasp on this stuff.

I'm not sure why I would want to capture to AVI. I could do that now with a peice of software and camcorder. Edit? What does the consumer market edit? Are we correcting contrast, hue, color? I do that on digital stills on occasion, I can't imagine the overhead for doing that at 720x480x30/sec. I've seen some venders say they can do editing on the card, is that what they mean, the editing (contrast, color, hue, etc.. correction) is off-loaded to an MPEG-2 processor?

My goal is to digitize then duplicate my entire video library of the kids. Additionally, I'd like to take the better parts and create dvd sets with chapters and such for all the grandparents.

What little I know about this is that it should be MPEG-2 for best possible resolution by the time its burned to the DVD.

Thanks.

[Roundabout]

The reason to capture to DV AVI is quality, as I mentioned before. If you have a digital camcorder such as the Sony TRV-22 or similar, it has DV passthrough ability and will convert the signal you put into the analog input to DV and send it out over firewire to your PC. In that case, you don't need the standalone DV converter (you didn't mention before that you had a camcorder like this). Using the standalone box would take some of the stress off using your camcorder for this purpose, but that shouldn't be an issue unless it was left on for really long times.
As far as editing goes, depending on what you are capturing, you would maybe want to edit out commercials, etc. - or in the case of family videos, you might want to edit out parts of your video so you only see the "highlights" or something like that. That's why there are so many different applications for editing, because people spend a lot of time editing their videos before authoring them for burning.
AFIAK, it's not possible to do editing on the card, insofar as we are talking about color saturation, hue, contrast, etc. The cards capture video and convert it to MPEG. Whatever color correction and such that you need to do would need to be done either before sending it to the card (with some TBC's you can adjust these parameters), or after it's on your PC as data.
Again, if you want real-time MPEG encoding, that can be done with a variety of PCI cards out there, or even some external boxes (some will even capture/convert to MPEG-4 if you want, such as the Plextor Convert-X unit, which does MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, your choice. Sells for about $189.00 @ Tiger.com)

[scream151]

I've got the Canon ZR-20, I think its considered a digital model. Its not the best, it seems to have a slow lense, indoors video is kinda' blan, under-exposed. But its much better than the 1988 shoulder mount model I had before.

Its got a firewire port and I have captured AVI out of it. Yes, the size was absolutely huge.

This brings up another question, and that plextor is in that group.... It seems like more MPEG-2 encoders have s-video inputs than firewire inputs. Isn't s-video a lower resolution? I hope to put the best potential video quality that I can muster (720x480) onto dvd, even if my current TV can't really display it, someday all of us will have multiformat digital TVs.

I don't see what's to be gained with s-video? Additionally, I don't even know the true resolution of my camcorder, and I have been googling for that answer for weeks. I haven't found anything, I haven't even find a good camcorder forum.

[Roundabout]

Firewire isn't a resolution, it's a transfer protocol. What you want as far as Analog capture goes, is either S-Video or Component video.

Composite video (yellow wire only) = lowest quality
S-video (din type connector) = higher quality
Component Video (YPbPr)= even higher quality

Read here for more about this issue:
http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/VideoConnectors/VideoConnectors.asp

What format is the video you want to transfer on? Is it on VHS tapes, 8mm tapes, DV tapes, or what? This makes a difference as to which solution you would want to use. I'm just guessing at what you're trying to accomplish.
You won't find firewire inputs on MPEG-2 encoders because the data coming in on firewire is already digital, and there isn't much call for a unit that encodes DV to MPEG because you can do this on your PC after just a simple file transfer via firewire from your digital camcorder. The MPEG encoders are for converting Analog information to digital so you can get it into your PC and work with it.
The firewire input on the DV Boxes is a simple pass-through for convienience only, it doesn't do anything to the signal at all. It's just a hub connection. The box is mainly for hooking up analog sources for converting to DV.

[scream151]

Ahhh....

The camcorder uses those small "DV" cassettes.

[Roundabout]

Then all you need to do it transfer whatever video you have on DV tape to the computer via firewire, then do whatever editing you need to do (if any) then convert it to MPEG-2 and burn to SVCD or DVD. Use a program like TMPGEnc (or Main Concept, or CCE) to make it MPEG-2 and then author it to DVD with a program like TMPG DVD Author. Then burn the result with Nero. That's all there is to it.
You didn't mention that your video was on DV tape, I assumed that you had analog video that you needed to convert to digital, since you asked about MPEG encoding devices.
Hope that answers all your questions. Have to go for now, but if you need more info, ask and maybe someone on here later tonight will answer you.

[GKar]

I for one grew tired of AVI to MPEG2 conversions (Geforce4 + VirtualDub + HuffyUV+ TmpGenc + TmpGenc Author) and went with the Dazzle DVC II hardware MPEG (1-2) capture card. The quality was (in my opinion) good enough to justify not spending hours converting AVI's to MPEG2's. The software it comes with sucks, Moviestar (for capture) and DVDit! (for DVD file structure). Use TWNH 1958 for capture (check spawns site http://www.spawns.dk/svcd/ requires Moviestar) and TmpGenc Author for authoring and Nero 5.5 for burning. This has proven for 100's of DVD's to be a winner for me. Of course this is only one Narn's opinion!

[Roundabout]

Since you already have the tape in DV format, you might want something like this: http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV_703/specifications/usb703specs.asp?pid=USBAV703
It will convert your DV (through the firewire input on the front of the box) to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 in real time and send it to your PC over USB2 connection. It also has the analog inputs so you can convert any other tapes you have (from VCR's, etc) to MPEG too. Since it's not an add-in card, there is no conflict with system resources to worry about, the box does all the work before it gets to your PC.
If you don't want to do any editing, all you have to do is author and burn your DVD.