Capturing VHS. Which card?

[Martí]

Hi, all

I'm going to purchase a capture card that lets me record TV and convert my VHS movies to SVCD. What's the best?

I actually own a Pixelview card, that uses the Bt878 chipset, but it allows me to capture no more than 352*288.
VHS movies quality takes a big drop too. The definition in this last case is terrible, so I supose it is due to the commented chipset.

Which card would you recommend me for a good price? Are USB cards better than PCI?

My system is AMD Athlon 1Ghz, 256 Mb RAM and Win2K.

Thanks in advance,

Martí

[Anonymous65]

You can capture up to 640x480 with the chip you have, but only if you turn off overlay mode (preview mode OK). Use Vidcap32 or Vdub to capture at 480x480 SVCD resolution.
I have gone through tons of capture cards, USB, PCI, ISA, and the best card for video capture is a $15 Cybermail card with a BT878 chip and no tuner. (the same as you have). You just need a fast PC to do the initial capture, and convert it to SVCD later.

SK

[Freddie100]

If you want a good card get the Dazzle II. 229 on pricewatch. It hardware captures to mpeg, smpeg and so on. No avi capture but you don't need. Been copying DVD's with DVD quality. Little tricks to do this but no problem. VHS tape capture only limited by the quality of the tape. I capture TV through the VCR, but I have cable and have cable. If I had satellite, it would be DVD quality. It is also for making DVD's but DVD burners are too expensive yet.

[Anonymous65]

I have tried the Dazzle DVC and DVCII. Mpeg capture is good with the DVCII, but Tmpeg would not convert the files to SVCD. Dazzle does not produce fully compliant Mpeg-2 streams. The VCD capture is very blurry and has no sharpness at all. But, the Dazzle is the best tool for recording on the PC and playing back the files from the PC. (the Dazzle has TV out) For VCD or SVCD creation, I would use much cheaper tools.

SK

[Martí]

Thanks for all your posts, guys

But I don't want a hardware encoder (in that case, I probably purchase the NAVIS), and as I said in the first post, my Pixelview with Bt878 captures good looking TV emisions but gets a very crappy picture quality when I transfer a VHS tape (terrible sharpness, contrast and color). That said, what I really need is a card that allows me to capture VHS in a very clean way without having to invest in a expensive DC10 or DC30 model.

Any suggestion?

[Freddie100]

skittelsen I have no problem with using Nero. I demux with Nero, mux with BBmeg and a little sound adj and then burn it as a SVCD using Nero to a DVD quality CD. I am still amazzed at the quality. I tried using all the othe video cards without luck. I do that because if I just burn straight with Nero (it does burn Svcd straight from capture) it will play on mp Pioneer but not my Apex. Doing demux and then mux, it plays on both. I find using the Dazzle II, you have to make your own templates because the supplied ones will give poor quality.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Freddie100 on 2001-08-12 17:45:19 ]</font>

[Anonymous65]

You will not find anything cheaper than the DC10+ (less than $100) that has video in and out in full VHS quality. Cheap video cards with video out, like the more expensive AIW has poor video out (black frame around image). I can't think of anyhting else but the DC10+ for less than $100 than was good video in and out.