Which is better in capturing?

[ranvil010]

Should I buy a capture card that has USB2, PCI, or Firewire.? Which would give me that best results in picture quality or does it matter?

[spectroelectro]

The two best moderately priced PCI capture cards are a used older ATI All In Wonder, a 7200 or 7500 or an 8500, and a used Pinnacle DV 500. Both will do a superb job for you. An older ATI AIW 7200 or 7500 will run you around $50 to $70. It produces superb output, but you must upgrade (free) online at ATI's website to at least the late 2003 versions of the ATI Multimedia Center software and you must download the latest 2005 drivers. The Pinnacle DV 500 lets you capture MPEG-2 in real time at high quality. You can often find a used card for sale on ebay with Adobe Premier 6.5 for around $150 or so. Again, it will give you excellent results.

Both of these cards will let you capture in either Type 2 DV AVI or MPEG-2 in real time. One big advantage of a PCI card is that you can fiddle with the chroma and luma and black level, and, on the ATI, use some realtime noise reduciton called VideoSoap, during capture.

Your alternative is a firewire capture device like the ADVC-100 or the Datavideo DAC 100. These devices lock the audio to the video with a hard clock so you never have any audio/video sync issues, and they work reliably. However, you can't fiddle with any settings -- capture is done in hardware and all that happens is that you get a straight data transfer into your computer at 3.5 megabytes per sec. You can't do real-time MPEG-2 capture with either of these firewire devices without breaking audio/video sync.

I'd stay away from USB 2.0 video capture devices for now. USB 2.0 is a less well-tested protocol than PCI or firewire since it hasn't been used for video as long as the others have, and consequently USB 2.0 drivers are likely to be more buggy and less well optimized.

[ranvil010]

Your alternative is a firewire capture device like the ADVC-100 or the Datavideo DAC 100

Do these work well with 3rd party software; and if so, can you tell more about the 3rd party software that are compatible?

[edsmith77]

I'd stay away from USB 2.0 video capture devices for now. USB 2.0 is a less well-tested protocol than PCI or firewire since it hasn't been used for video as long as the others have, and consequently USB 2.0 drivers are likely to be more buggy and less well optimized.

There is one USB 2 capture device that works quite well and produces very good quality material. Try the Happauge Win TV USB2.

Ed

[thecoalman]

Do these work well with 3rd party software; and if so, can you tell more about the 3rd party software that are compatible?

They convert video to DV-AVI which is the same format that Digital cams record in so the video is compatible with nearly every product on the market. I think you would be hard pressed to find one that couldn't utilize it. One thing to note about the canopus line is nearly every person that has purchased one has almost no issues with it.

DV-AVI is a very editable format downside is it needs to be converted to DVD compliant mpeg. You can purchase hardware capture/encoders such as the Hauppage line which does this for you in real time but Mpeg is not as suitable editing as AVI and can sometimes be trublesome with certain software applications producing A/V sync iussues specifically.

As far as USB goes make sure it's USB 2 and you have a USB 2 port on your computer or your heading for nothing but headaches. I haven't seen a lot of problems posted about USB 2 devices, the same cannot be said for USB 1.

[pfh]

Ultimately depends on your comp. specs.
How about recording to a stand-alone then use the dvd to bring the video into the computer for further work.? Either way it's better to find a hardware encoding/transfering solution imo. However, s/w encoding solutions have some definite pluses but again, depend on the computer specs.

[thecoalman]

Do these work well with 3rd party software; and if so, can you tell more about the 3rd party software that are compatible?

They convert video to DV-AVI which is the same format that Digital cams record

Which brings to mind one option not mentioned. If your in the market for a new digital cam you can purchase one with passthrough capabilities that will perform the same functions.

[ApolloCreed21]

I have the ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 ($99 new) and so far am very happy with it, especially the quality of the captures.

That said, this is my first and only capture device, so I have nothing to compare it to.

[spectroelectro]

You asked about 3rd party software. Depends what format you capture in.

If you capture in Type 2 DV AVI, any 3rd party NLE editing software will typically recognize and work with Type 2 DV. Examples include Ulead MediaStudio, Adobe Premiere, Vegas Video, etc. Note that these programs tend to be expensive! You're looking at around $300 + to get into a good solid NLE video editing program like Vetgas or Premiere.

If you capture directly to MPEG-2, which you can do with either the Pinaccle DV500 or the ATI AIW or the Hauppauge, you'll want instead to get Wombel MPEG VCR. This is far and away the best program for editing MPEG-2 in native format, and it costs only around $80.

The advantage of working entirely with MPEG-2 is that it's fast, the files are small (around 4 gigs for 2 hours + as compared to 13 gigs per hour with DV format AVI, and 30 gigs per hour with huffyuv format AVI) and if you mainly want to do cut and join edits (i.e., cut out commercials from TV shows) working entirely in MPEG-2 is a good option.

The disadvtange of working exclusively with MPEG-2 format as a capture & edit medium is that you can't get the kind of exact frame-precise edits, or do the copmlex transitions, or get the kind of sophisticated noise reduction processing, you can get with Type 2 DV. If your goal is video resotartion you'll want to capture to a lossless format like huffyuv avi and further process it with virtualdub, AviSynth, etc. If your goal is to complete an elaborate edited production like a commercial or a high-quality wedding album video with titles and transitions & special effects, once again you'll want to capture in DV and use a high-quality video editing program like Premiere or Vegas. If you want to correct subtle problems with timing or audio sync or correct video transition, once again you'll have to have frame-exact editing and this means DV AVI format.

[stillmars321]

I've been getting excellent results with the new Sony DVD Direct unit.
No PC required, captures and encodes to DVD on the fly!

[Redd]

Hardware
Canopus ADVC all the way for analog. Straight firewire for DV.

Software
Scenalyzer all the way.

[edDV]

...

Your alternative is a firewire capture device like the ADVC-100 or the Datavideo DAC 100. These devices lock the audio to the video with a hard clock so you never have any audio/video sync issues, and they work reliably. However, you can't fiddle with any settings -- capture is done in hardware and all that happens is that you get a straight data transfer into your computer at 3.5 megabytes per sec. You can't do real-time MPEG-2 capture with either of these firewire devices without breaking audio/video sync.

Actually with the ADVC-100 or DAC-100 you have the choice of recording direct to DV-AVI and/or realtime software encoding with most any realtime MPeg2 encoder capture software. I like the realtime encode quality of the Mainconcept encoder (either their standalone products or bundled as in ULead Video Studio 8 or Movie Factory). Audio is locked in the DV stream and remains in sync through the MPeg encode.

The ULead VS8 DVD MPeg2 default capture mode uses 7Mb/s VBR with MPeg Audio L2 48kHz, 224Kbps or LPCM. The capture is reliable on my 2.4GHz Celeron (512MB RAM, Via motherboard) that I generally use to capture. CPU averages in the low 70% (65-80%) vs. my ATI AIW 8500DV that averages 45-60% CPU in the similar "DVD High" mode.

A quick review of what is happening, the Canopus ADVC uses its hardware DV codec to decode NTSC (S-Video +audio in) and transcode to a DV stream over IEEE-1394. The DV stream can be received by most capture software (e.g. WinDV, ULead VS8, Mainconcept PVR, Vegas, Premiere, Pinnacle Studio etc.) where the DV stream can be realtime encoded (in software) to MPeg2, WMV, Divx or whatever.

The ATI approach is to use a combination of hardware and software to directly encode S-Video and audio to MPeg2 giving a somewhat lower CPU usage. Note: The ATI tuner is much lower quality than direct S-Video from the cable box.

The Haupauge PVR-250/350 (and DV500) approach is to do the MPeg2 encode in dedicated hardware, but it still uses some CPU activity for preview display of the input.

As for final product quality I think the Canopus ADVC beats the ATI AIW mainly due to the NTSC decoder and analog to digital conversion quality. My reference project is not VHS, but S-Video out from my Comcast HDTV cable tuner. The ADVC-Mainconcept pair seem to work very well for me and produce acceptable quality DVD MPeg2 in realtime mode*. For editing and higher quality encoding, I have the flexibility of capping (saving) to DV-AVI and using Vegas or Premiere for processing in detail.

Additional advantages for the ADVC approach

- I can capture to any of my 4 computers (or my notebook) that have IEEE-1394 to DV, MPeg1, MPeg2, WMV, DivX, etc. using a variety of software.

- I can move the ADVC between machines faster than moving a capture card or HDD.

- The ADVC is portable for notebook use. I can take it on the road. It also works equally well for PAL capture.

- The capture quality of the ADVC is identical to that of my Pro-sumer Sony PD-150 camcorder. The only thing lacking at the input is proc amp*, TBC and 3D NTSC comb filter all of which would be nice in a next generation.

I haven't done detailed comparison tests of the ADVC vs AIW vs PD-250, but for convenience and picture quality, I've settled on the ADVC as my main MPeg2 capture device. The AIW is also used for utility TV captures. If I had a PVR-250 here, I'd be using that as well.


* Note: a huge advantage that the Canopus ADVC has over camcorder pass-through is the way it can process NTSC 7.5 IRE setup. The average DV capture device places NTSC black at digital 32 (7.5 IRE). The ADVC Sw2 setup mode will place black correctly at level 16 (0 IRE)allowing the captured MPeg2 to be directly authored to DVD without first having to reprocess black from 32 to 16. This is a huge time saver.

[edDV]

FYI

I just ran a quick test of a few realtime software MPeg2 encoders.

Source: Motorola DCT-6200 HDTV cable tuner (Comcast - Discovery HD Channel) to S-Video NTSC out.
NTSC Decoder/DV Transcoder: Canopus - ADVC-100
Computer: 2.4GHz Celeron, 512MB, multiple 7200 RPM HDD, XP Home, Via P4PB motherboard w/IEEE-1394 (very average machine)

Realtime Encoders and CPU%

60% ave (55-80%) ULead Video Studio 8 (Mainconcept encoder):
DVD MPeg2 default mode (7Mbps vbr, MPeg Audio L2 48kHz, 224Kbps)

100% ave (pegged 100%- unusable) Pinnacle Studio 8
High Quallity DVD default mode (6Mbps, MPeg Audio L2 48kHz, 224Kbps)

93% ave (93-96%) NeroVision 2
DVD MPeg2 default mode (7Mbps cbr, AC-3 192Kbps audio default)


I'll try NeroVision 3, and Cyberlink Power Producer 3 and others later.

As a Reference, the ATI AIW-8500DV MMC 9.02 runs approx 52% ave CPU (45-60%) for DVD High mode (6Mbps vbr. MPeg L2 224Kbps)

[trhouse]

Just to give you some USB2 feedback. I have used the Adaptec VideOh DVD which is USB2 compatible. No complaints about its captures but this particular USB2 product has unique drivers which limit the software that can be used with it.

Also, if the tape should have gaps such as a splice, it may stop recording and need to be restarted. If the gap does not cause it to stop, it may lose sound sync at the junction but the chances are about 40% of it happening.

Its main advantage was its portability. You can just grab it and take it to a friend's house and load the software and start capturing. Firewire is just not as prevalent as USB2.

I stopped using it when dvd standalone recorders dropped so much in price and size that it became more convenient to use that solution.