Help Finding A High Quality Capture Card

[NMeade]

Hello, nice to meet you.

I have come to this forum to hopefully get some useful help. I am currently thinking about investing into another Video Capture Card for better quality.

Currently, I've been using the VC500 Diamond One Touch Video Capture Card for roughly 1 1/2 years. You can see an example of one of my videos here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y22_ComWFw

I am basically looking for a capture card that is within the price range of $60-$120. A capture card with 480p, can plug into my computer via usb (relatively long), has better quality than the capture card I am using, has a variety of video formats and recording resolutions to choose from (AVI, MP4, 740 x 480, 640 x 480, etc), and I can play while I record. (Having some sort of output cables).

My main goal is for my quality to get better, sharper, clearer, more colorful, and more crisp. The main problem with the capture card I have now is that the specifics of this capture card SAYS that it records in 720 x 480, but in any other setting apart from DVD, it records in something like 352 x 2xx, which is most likely the cause for my non-sharp, unclear quality right now.

Hopefully some of you may know of some capture cards that fit into these specifics, thank you in advance if you can help.

[edDV]

My main goal is for my quality to get better, sharper, clearer, more colorful, and more crisp. The main problem with the capture card I have now is that the specifics of this capture card SAYS that it records in 720 x 480, but in any other setting apart from DVD, it records in something like 352 x 2xx, which is most likely the cause for my non-sharp, unclear quality right now.

Your current card captures analog and hardware encodes to 720x480 or 352x240* MPeg1/2. Why don't you use the DVD setting?

When you request an odd capture size, the scaling is very crude. Newer cards would have identical problems. For best quality, one would capture uncompressed to 720x480, then resize and encode later non-realtime. This would require a lossless software compressor like huffyuv while capturing and a program like Virtualdub + encoder for output. The ATI USB 650 card is capable of uncompressed capture. Search the forums for discussions about this device.



* half the horizontal pixels, half the lines.

[NMeade]

My main goal is for my quality to get better, sharper, clearer, more colorful, and more crisp. The main problem with the capture card I have now is that the specifics of this capture card SAYS that it records in 720 x 480, but in any other setting apart from DVD, it records in something like 352 x 2xx, which is most likely the cause for my non-sharp, unclear quality right now.

Your current card captures analog and hardware encodes to 720x480 or 352x240* MPeg1/2. Why don't you use the DVD setting?

When you request an odd capture size, the scaling is very crude. Newer cards would have identical problems. For best quality, one would capture uncompressed to 720x480, then resize and encode later non-realtime. This would require a lossless software compressor like huffyuv while capturing and a program like Virtualdub + encoder for output. The ATI USB 650 card is capable of uncompressed capture. Search the forums for discussions about this device.



* half the horizontal pixels, half the lines.

Thanks for your response.

Ah, yes, I forgot to include why I do not use the DVD setting. While recording in the DVD setting, the quality may be good, but it is more choppier, the audio gets choppy, and random black lines come up. I can give you a perfect example of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5Oc7dstGaY

Stuff that happens in that video always happens in DVD setting, not in any other setting. Another reason why I do not use it is because it cannot be imported into VirtualDub. Even with using avisynth to import it, there is still an error each time.

Edit: If you are wondering how I was even able to make that video, it's because I used a special version of VirtualDub I found, but it is a very very early version of it, and does not include a lot of the features in the updated VirtualDub.

[edDV]

You are asking too much of that cheap capture device. Game video has lots of motion that can confound a low end encoder that is expecting TV video.

Uncompressed capture is the best way. But MPeg2 capture for upload to YouTube is an option. They will recompress again.

[NMeade]

You are asking too much of that cheap capture device. Game video has lots of motion that can confound a low end encoder that is expecting TV video.

Uncompressed capture is the best way. But MPeg2 capture for upload to YouTube is an option. They will recompress again.

Yeah I know I am asking too much for the capture card I have now, that is basically why I am looking to invest in a new one. I've researched and looked at threads about the ATI TV Wonder HD 650, it looks pretty good, but I'm going to wait and see if anyone else know of others that suit what I am looking for.