Marvel G400-TV, G450 eTV or Pinnacle PCTV USB

[nachomur]

Hi friends !
i need some information about capturing and editing video.
i'm looking to buy one of this cards, but i don't know which is the best for my requirements. i want to download home-made movies from a vhs to my pc, edit them, and then record in a cd. i want to watch this video cd's on my tv in full screen with a good quality.
please, do you have any suggestion ?
thank you very much for your help !
Nacho

[nachomur]

hi friends !
thank you very much for the hundreds of answers to my Topic !
all of there are very usefull !!!!
kind regards,
nachomur

[TIbrO]

Was that sarcasm? I couldn't tell, since you used no emoticons... but let me tell you that I have a Marvel G400-TV right now, and it kicks ass.

Since I haven't used that other one you mentioned, I can't say it is better or worse, or anything about it. I can tell you that the Marvel G400-TV can capture 704x576 @30FPS with the hardware accelerated MJPEG in Windows 98SE and Windows XP. On Windows 2K it is a fifty fifty chance, since it works for me, but some people at the Matrox Users Resource Center always complain about problems, and Matrox themselves said they have given up on trying to get the MJPEG work flawlessly on all platforms. So if you have a slower machine, go for the card that does it all onboard in hardware, but if you have a newer system who's clockspeed isn't measured in Mhz anymore, then by all means, try out those other software capture cards. Another strong point I must mention is that the software that drives the card is excellent, with the DualHead options to let you control the refresh rates and resolutions of both your monitors completely independently of eachother. Excellent for outputting back to tape in fullscreen and playing old games on a bigscreen TV.

However, the Marvel G400-TV is officially discontinued as of August, though... so if you buy this card, the drivers out by August will be the last ones ever released by Matrox. Also, they are no longer supporting the card at the tech support forums or anything. Marvel G450 eTV however, just came out, and has working drivers for all of the operating systems. Both of these Matrox Marvel products are in AGP form, so you will have to replace your current Video Card with the Marvel, which sucks if you have a Hercules 3D Prophet III in there! Anyways, I am done rambling on, I hope I answered your questions and helped you at least a little.

Also, most people do not post their comments on video cards here, they usually post them on the Capture Card part of this site (see left column). You can then search for those cards and read the reviews.

Chris

[nachomur]

christrati, TIbrO, without sarcasm now, thanks a lot for your answer ! in spanish we say 'late but sure' !
sorry for the absence of emoticons, but i don't know how they use.
please, i have one more question: wich is the minimum resolution that i need to have, to capture video with a good TV image quality (VHS or better) ??
thanks a lot again !

kind regards,

nachomur


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: nachomur on 2001-07-16 15:09:01 ]</font>