What's the best capture card?

[Gameshow Host]

I'm not talking about features, software, performance etc. I just want to know which video capture card gives the highest CAPTURE QUALITY.

I bought my ATI All In Wonder 128 because I was told it was the best one for capturing, but since I bought it several people have told me that my card is old and cheap, and not a professional choice.

What is the professional choice?

[Craig Tucker]

The professionals choice is not going to be a card that costs £100, more like running into the thousands or tens of thousands. If you want peoples opinions on the best capture card, specify a price bracket.

To use a car analogy this is like saying ; I have just bought a new Toyota MR2 sports car, but someone has told me that the Lambourgini Diablo is much faster, better looking, likely to get me laid, etc. While all of this may be true can you afford a new Lambourgini Diablo.

Craig

[Mirror_Image]

Here's an example of one of those pro cards (and not even the best of the best) that craigtucker is talking about:

http://www.canopuscorp.com/products/dvrexrtpro.php3

I'd be inclined to believe that the people who said your card was "old and cheap, and not a professional choice" don't have anything like the card at the above link either, nor do I, nor do 98% of the folks that frequent this board. Out of the small portion that do use true pro equipment, the vast majority don't own it, their employer does. To most of us, window shopping is as close as we get, haha.

[Spicuzza]

Gameshow Host,

I have the All in Wonder 128 Pro. Only about two years ago it was ATI's top of the line product. Most negative comments that I've read regarding that card I believe can be directly linked to the individual computer user and or a weak link in their system configuation.

The biggest problem with the ATI card is the mulitple minor annoyances that will come up using ATI's software. Nothing that is fatal or can't be overcome just simple pain in the ass things.

If you study craigtucker's system specifications it's quite obvious that he has the motherboard, cpu and ram to be able to accomodate the ATI card. If someone installs the All in Wonder 128 Pro in their computer and the "card" itself is the best component in their machine they are going to have nothing but problems.

That's like installing a race car transmission in a four cyclinder car and then wonder afterwards why it still takes 10 minutes to go from 0 to 60.

Regarding your question: "What is the professional choice?" I'm assuming you're referring to perhaps broadcast quality from a TV station. They use $30,000 Betacams to film and don't have the time to digitize the footage. They do linear editing tape to tape, computer graphics are added afterwards.

You have one of the "BEST" video capture cards on the market.

Gary Spicuzza
cic7@juno.com

[Gameshow Host]

Okay, forget I said the word "professional"! I forget that when it comes to hardware, you actually have to pay a lot to get the professional stuff (unlike software!)

I bought my ATI card for just over £100. I don't really want to pay more than £200 for a new capture card. That seems reasonable to me.

craigtucker, why do you have your machine specs as your signature?

I also have another question. When I bought my capture card, I didn't realise there were two types of capture card, digital and analogue. My ATI card is analogue, so when I capture from a digital signal, I lose quality. I don't want to lose any quality, I want my captured files to be identical to what is broadcast, so the next capture card I get will have to be a digital one. How much are digital capture cards? Do they capture both digital and analogue signals? (I'll still need to be able to capture analogue, because I have tapes that I want to capture from).

Thanks.

[Craig Tucker]

Gameshow Host.

I have my machine specs as my signature because if I am asking people on the forum for help with a problem It saves me having to list them on each post.

How many times have you seen someone post a problem, only to get the reply, we need more info to help you, what are your machine specs ?.

[Craig Tucker]

By the way if you can go to £300 ATI have just released the all in wonder 8500DV with 64Mb of DDR ram. It will do analogue capture and transfer (not capture) a digital signal from a DV camcorder via a firewire port. Don't know if its possible to transfer a digital signal directly from a digibox, I suspect not.

Craig

[spiderman2k1]

I would say the Dazzle 2 I also have the All In Wonder radeon card and ahte it for capture until MMC 7.6 I use windows 2000 with before you go buy a new card try to download MMC 7.6 an get MPEG2VCR AIW has a software picture Dazzle 2 has a sharper picture the Dazzle has better sound so just for making SVCD's or DVD from capture from satellite dish dazzle 2 is the way to go there is a timer to get for it at


http://stop.at/TWNH dazzle 2 works best in windows 2000 as does the AIW with MMC 7.6 if you want to back up tape then i would get the AIW dazzle some times has a lip sync problem with tapes dazzle 2 might not work on some AMD PC's

[Bstansbury]

GameshowHost,

We've exchanged several notes and I see that now you are doubting your choice of the ATI AIW 128 card. How long ago did you get it?

I also have another question. When I bought my capture card, I didn't realise there were two types of capture card, digital and analogue. My ATI card is analogue, so when I capture from a digital signal, I lose quality. I don't want to lose any quality, I want my captured files to be identical to what is broadcast, so the next capture card I get will have to be a digital one. How much are digital capture cards? Do they capture both digital and analogue signals? (I'll still need to be able to capture analogue, because I have tapes that I want to capture from).

I think you have a couple of misunderstandings. Your card is an Analog to Digital capture card, as is most capture cards. You said when you capture "Digital signals, you lose quality",... I don't think you capture any digital signals. I'm not aware that the ATI AIW 128 card has any capability to input any kind of Digital signal,... so I don't think you captured any via that card. Also, there are no digital broadcast signals, they are all analog,... either NTSC or PAL. TV signals that come via RF signals + antennas, or via Cable signals, or via Satillite signals to Decoder boxes that receive MPEG signals and output either a TV coax signal, a composite signal (RCA connectors), S-video signal, which is still analog,.. or as with the more expensive Satellite receviers, a Digital signal output to a high end HDTV. Again, your card, and most all others have no digital capability. The only "Digital Signal" that us ametures have access to comes for Digital Camcorders,... and this can be transferred to you PC via a very inexpensive "Firewire" adapter and a good PC with the software to capture the Digital signal.

If you really want to upgrade your capability, get a high quality Digital Camera and a Firewire adapter,... and while your at it,... buy a DVD recorder and forget all the crap that the rest of us are doing and go Digital via firewire to DVD. Then you'll have the best quality.

Bud

[TOMMO]

Firewire and a big drive formated to NTFS is the best solution if using DV.

[Gameshow Host]

Bstansbury>> Let me get this straight... there are no digital broadcast signals? When I watch digital TV, it is transmitted as an analogue signal?

In that case, how is it "digital"? And how can I make a perfect copy of the transmission, if it's not digital? Please explain. I'm confused.

[Screwball_SC]

Allow me to put my two cents in... Digital TV at it's core is Digital, but it needs an analog carrier to get it to your TV, or Cable Box, Satellite, or whatever. Once it hits your cable equipment, the digital signal is extracted and processed, and (like Bstansbury explained) depending on your TV set, most of the time it will be converted back to analog to be sent over coax to your TV and/or VCR.

I dont have much knowledge about the digital converter boxes, or equipment to extract that digital signal, but I would think the captured (analog) end result is pretty good if you're not looking into a "professional" multi-thousand dollar capture card.

Just an opinion.

[Gameshow Host]

I have a digital TV reciever box with s-video out. I just want to "get" the digital signal to my computer, so that I don't lose any quality. Presumably s-video cables can not carry a digital signal and I will need some other lead (or some other port)!

You'd think in this age of digital TV, you could transfer that digital video to your PC without losing any quality!

[The Wayne]

I was looking at the ATI All in Wonder at first and deciced against it because of the poor resoluiton. The card that caught my eye was the Creative Labs Digital VCR card. The capture resolution is 640x480 and the card has hardware MPEG2 encoding and decoding on it. Price is around $85 online. For $300-400 you can get a HDTV capture and tuner card which will be true digital capture.

[dannyrose]

Unless you're burning DVD's or maybe SVCD's, is the extra cost to stay digital really worth it? From what I've seen, you're gonna need a firewire card and a digital source to stay there.

If you go to DIVX or VCD, will you be able to tell the difference between digital and a good quality SVideo or even composite signal?

Just a thought!
-D

[Gameshow Host]

The Wayne>> I have the ATI All In Wonder, and it does not have poor resolution. I can capture full resolution (720x576). It also has hardware MPEG2 encoding and decoding on it. When you checked this card out, are you sure you were looking at the right one? What's a HDTV capture and tuner card? I've never heard of HDTV.


dannyrose>> I am burning DVDs. If I wasn't burning DVDs, then quality wouldn't matter at all cos anything other than DVD doesn't keep the video resolution intact.

What I want is very simple: to "get" the original video, perfectly intact, as it was broadcast, without any degradation of either resolution or colour information. And I want to "keep" that video, at the exact same resolution that it was broadcast at, so that I have not scaled it, and every pixel that was broadcast is preserved on my discs. I thought I could do it with a regular analogue card, but now I realise that to perfectly copy a digital signal, I need a digital card. So I'm gonna have to buy something else.

Firewire card you say? Okay, thanks, I'll look into that.

[disturbed1]

The Wayne>> I have the ATI All In Wonder, and it does not have poor resolution. I can capture full resolution (720x576). It also has hardware MPEG2 encoding and decoding on it.

The ATI is a software encoder. It uses Ligos Go-Motion real time software.

Let me get this straight, you have a digital cable/sat signal converted to anologue by the converter box, that you want to re-convert to digital while you capture, burn it to DVD-R, to be played back on an anologue TV. Doesn't make much since to me. You'll get too much AD/DA conversion noise going that route.

Since you already have the AIW, capture uncompressed, and fine tune your editing skills. Then use a good software encoder like CCE, or TMPG.

The only way to get a pure recording, is digital to digital. As stated in an ealier post, for broadcast you need an HDTV signal, with an HDTV capture card. Do a search

[likwid8]

Sorry to interrupt all this, but I am sort of in the same situation, I have an ATI AIW PCI PRO 128 and it fried on me, now I dunno wether to go with a hauppauge and/or a dazzle? But Im going to be really honest with you, the people that make screeners from movies and telesyncs like for example *TEG-VCD* and *TMMVCD*, well i was wondering what capture card do they use? would you think they use a ati or a $3,000 card? please reply, thnxs

P.S. And sorry if I might have asked a stupid question or not, just was wonderign and wanted to say this for the longest time around, thnxs

[kwag]

If you wan't to see what can be done with a $50.00 BT878 capture board ( WinTV Go and others ), the one with S-Video in, because there are 2 models. One that only has Composite and another with Composite + S-Video.

Download and playback this:

http://ns1.shidima.com/kwag/mixed-cap.mpg

It's an analog capture via S-Video from a portable DVD player, straight into the WinTV Go via S-Video.

The only thing that you have to do is install these drivers:

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net

And you can capture at any framerate you like and at very high resolutions ( up to 756x576 in PAL ).

kwag

[likwid8]

ok thnxs for the tip, the image looks really nice indeed? but umm not make this convo dead or piss anyone off? can u clearly state to me alternative question that i asked which was--> what capture card would you mostly/likely think vcd Groups use to capture screeners? thnxs alot bro, once again im going to look more into that right now

[kwag]

ok thnxs for the tip, the image looks really nice indeed? but umm not make this convo dead or piss anyone off? can u clearly state to me alternative question that i asked which was--> what capture card would you mostly/likely think vcd Groups use to capture screeners? thnxs alot bro, once again im going to look more into that right now

I think your answer was posted a while ago in the Usenet ( newsgroups ).
They either film with a high quality digital camera or take the output directly from the projector in the theater into the camera and then firewire the data to a high end hardware encoder. And I mean very high end commercial encoders ( $40,000+ ). Not your regular $100.00 3DeMON card or $599.00 Pinnacle.

These commercial encoders are the ones only found in Asia, because their VCD market over there is like the DVD market in other parts of the world.

kwag

[likwid8]

thnxs well gee thats alot of money, umm what bout for screening purposes only? they dont need a digital camera? so what would you say? a good capture card or what?

[xiaNaix]

Have a look at the Pinnacle Studio Deluxe. The capture card that comes with the new AVDV version can capture both analog and digital sources (dv via firewire / av via breakout box). Analog sources are captured at full 720x480 resolution and saved as DV AVI! I've been getting PERFECT captures from VHS & Hi8 sources with no dropped frames. The files convert beautifully to SVCD/XSVCD with TMPGEnc. All this is taking place in XP as well, with the NTFS file system, so no 2 gig file limit!

The only downside is that none of the 3rd party capture programs currently support the new card. You have to use Pinnacle's Studio 7 software to capture. Of course, you can use whatever editing program you want since the resulting capture is DV AVI format.

Also, it will capture analog ONLY at 720x480. If you wanted to do a lower res capture, you're screwed. Of course, you're better off capturing at full res and converting it down with the encoder, so this really isn't an issue, for me, anyway.

Note that the older versions of PSD come with the DC10+ card, which captures using the MJPEG codec. Make sure you're getting the new one with the 1394 card and not the DC10+

[Gameshow Host]

xiaNaix>> very helpful information. This card sounds great, and sounds like you have a great setup!

All I need now is to find a digital receiver that has a firewire output port!

You know what'd be really useful for video grabbing - living 20 years in the future when everyone can do all this stuff cheaply and easily and better than anyone can now. I would imagine there will come a time when all TV broadcasts are stored on your PC, so you don't need to "grab" anything, cos you already have it! Ah, that would be nice :) I'm always dreaming of the future.

[TRILIGHT]

I would imagine there will come a time when all TV broadcasts are stored on your PC, so you don't need to "grab" anything, cos you already have it! Ah, that would be nice I'm always dreaming of the future.

You can kiss that future goodbye with all the BS they're trying to pull nowdays! I highly recommend you (and anyone else concerned) to check this information out and voice your concerns...

http://www.msnbc.com/news/734617.asp

http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html