Pinnacle Studio Deluxe or AIW 8500DV?

[hnate]

I am shopping for a new capture card. I do not care about TV capabilities and I would rather have a standalone card than an all in one like AIW. But if AIW has better capture quality I would go with it. Since Studio Deluxe is pretty new I can find little opinions or reviews on it. So if anyone has experience on Studio Deluxe please post here. They are priced very similar. The Pinnacle card is about $15 cheaper that 8500DV. Which would you prefer. I will be using it to capture form VCR and DV Camcorder. I will be upgrading from Voodo 3500 and probably replace it with a geforce 3 TI200. Specs are below:

PIII 933
256 MB
20G 7200 RPM x 3 RAID 0
ASUS CUSL2-EP
Windows 2000 Pro

Thanks!

[bertmartin]

Whats wrong with an inexpensive firewire card? Are you trying to capture analog too? I got an Adaptec for $76 but other folks just got the Compusa house brand for less and it worked find. I am skeptical of any Pinnacle product. I have Studio 7 and it is full of bugs.

I just reread your post and you want to capture analog from a VCR. Thats a little harder to recommend a solution. I ended up with an external analog to digital converter box (Canopus ADVC-100). This feeds into your firewire card just like your Camcorder via firewire. Your firewire card should have two ports for this. This is a nice clean solution. You can capture with a program called Sceneanalyzer or use whatever free capture program comes with the firewire card. The converter box is $300 so its a little expensive but will save you some hazzle I think. I tried the DC10+ internal analog card but had various problems and it took up an IRQ. That card doesn't like to share IRQs with other devices. You might get away with it, however. Good luck. My DC10+ card is for sale!
:P

[hnate]

Thanks I appreciate your input, that is a good suggestion. I didn't know they had devices like that. At a reasonable price anyways. Actually I've changed my mind again. Most of the stuff I have converted to VCD from VHS has come out on DVD anyways, and I really don't have much else to convert anyways except for some shows on tv every once in a blue moon. I think I'm just gonna get a DV card and use my camcorder to record or see if I can use it as a pass through. My friend has had really good luck doing it like that. But if I ever decide to get a analog capture device I'll definetly get one of these external converters. So how close would you say the quality is of the capture compared to the original?

Thanks again,

Nathan

[videoguys]

Studio Deluxe is an excelletn choice for those need ing an inexpensive solution that delivers DV and analog video editing and authoring.

The Studio 7 software is extremely easy to use, but loaded with cool FX and titling and filters. Pinnacle Express is an equally as easy to use authoring solution.

We've got lots of info about Studio Deluxe on our website http://www.videoguys.com/studiodeluxe.html

Gary
Videoguys.com

[spiderman2k1]

get the dazzle 2 is does great SVCD and has a time so when your not home to capture and can capture DVD also you can get your here this is where i got mine

www.shopharmony.com