ATI Radeon All in Wonder 7500 vs. 8500DV

[theDirtiest]

I am interested in purchasing one or the other. I would just purchase the 7500, but I have a Canon zr20 digital camcorder. The 8500DV supports firewire for easy capturing of video from a DV camcorder. However, my camcorder has the audio/video outputs as well as the firewire connections. Couldn't I just use the audio/video on the 7500 instead of the firewire on the 8500DV? If not, how come? And if so, what are the disadvantages or advantages of doing one way or the other?
Thanks in Advance.

[patrickm]

DV firewire is a transfer, not a capture, so it's essentially lossless. you'll get better quality encoding a DV AVI than capturing as an MPEG. that said, buying a $20 firewire card and a 7500 is probably much cheaper than an 8500dv anyways

the analog capture capabilities of the cards are literally identical

[theDirtiest]

thanks

[stephen2]

I have an ATI All In Wonder Radeon 7500 video card. You should be aware that when you capture video with this card using ATI software in the TV multi media centre, the sound plays back distorted!!! In other words, you need second party software to capture video with this card. ATI is aware of this problem as you will see if you visit their website. As far as I know this problem is not fixable. This card would be fantastic if it could capture video without the sound being distorted because it has so many capture formats. All you would have to do is capture and burn. Consider this before you spend so much money on the card.

[patrickm]

just adjust your Recording Volume in windows to about the first notch on the scale. there's a large input gain from the ATI card, so anything over that records distorted. playback volume and record volume are different. and you have to make the changes while MMC is ON, because it saves its own set of recording levels and temporarily swaps them for the windows defaults while its running.

[shoozleboy]

I use the 7500 with the latest drivers from ATI and have no problems with distorted sound at all.... You may need to adjust your record level settings in the sound control panel in windows....

I use a Soundblaster Live card for audio and the machine I capture with is a p3-600, 512mb ram, 75gig Deskstar HD.