Hi!

Once again someone comes and ask for advices for capture card

As usual, I began to browse various sites to learn more about capturing, hardware and so... and once again, too much reading confused me!

Here is the situation: last week, I bought a Studio 500 USB card because I wanted to record from cable and I thought the external solution was the best for me as it avoided me to build a crappy setting, knowing my reciever is in the living room and my main computer is in another room.

This usb card was ok as I could plug it in the laptop (http://www.hp.ca/products/static/pavilion-notebooks/dv1315cl/index.php) which seems to be descent enough for capturing, even though not the best configuration. For the records, here are its specs.

Intel® Centrino™ Mobile Technology featuring Intel® Pentium® M Processor 740A
1024MB 333MHz DDR System Memory (2 x 512MB)
80GB 4200 Hard Drive
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900- up to (128mb shared)

However, the result was poor and software cannot do that much difference (I have tryied with studio plus): loosing frame in avi capture (probably due to lack of power from my laptop I guess) and mpeg quality very disappointing (blocks)

So, I've decided to bring back this card and seek for a better one as obviously the mpeg solution is not the best with this card at least, and avi capture seems to be compromized with laptop.

Now, down to business: here is what I would like to do, and several questions associated:

I would like to:
1. Capture from cable (Bell Express vue) => 65% of time
2. Transfert VHS and laserdisc to dvd=> 45% of time
3. In both situations, I want to be able to post editing, which in other words (not sure post editing is the appropriate word) to filter and edit the movie through soft like vdub and others.

The idea is that I want to get the best image quality from capturing. From what I understood, I have to choose between 2 situations: capture in mpeg (in that case the card can do the job, leaving my cpu free, even though I don't plan to do anything else during capturing) or go with avi capturing which would permit further editing as I can (?) acquiring without compression (huffyuv).

My main priority is picture quality: I don't care about remote, nor fancy features like transitions or software bundle, and I don't plan to watch tv on my computer (ie this is not the main purpose: cable onto computer would be only to capture, not watch).

So my questions are:

1. Can I find at a descent price (less than $150 US) an external card that would permit me to capture in avi? Will my laptop has enough resource to do so?

2. If I cannot find an external, I guess i have to go with internal (doh). In that case:

2a. Is it worth it to get a card that do both avi and mpeg capture, knowing I want to edit and compress AFTER capturing?

2b. Would it be better to go with an avi capture only? I heard it was old time cards: is it true?

2c. If I had to go with mpeg, no matter the space capture will take, can I get a result close to dvd (not that good I assume!).

3. Suggestions on cards... It seems the Hauppauge, ATI and MSi got interresting products but don't know which one to pick!

4. I also heard that having video and audio seperate could cause desynch so i guess it would be better the card has both... comments?

Sorry for the long post but as I get caught once with the studio card, i would like to avoid another wrong experience...

Thank you for your inputs!

Aguirre