Advice on best bang for buck analog PCI capture card pls!

[constant_change]

I know there's been a few of these in this room, but I'm gonna go for it anyway. I was looking around for a few of these capture cards and for some reason Hauppauge Win TV wasn't getting my attention. I'm looking for the cheapest capture card that can has great performance. My price range is around $100-$150 Canadian (not a lot I know).

These are the capture cards that I'm looking at (btw, my OS is WinXP).
AverTV Stereo
Pinnacle PCTV
ATI TV Wonder

These are the video cards that I'm looking at.
Matrox Marvel G450eTV
Gainward GeForce4 MX440 VIVO

I'm probably not going to go for video cards (even though I have a crappy Voodoo3 3000). I was just wondering if the low end video cards with VIVO options would perform better or worse than the PCI capture cards in terms of capturing video (duh...hehe).

My computer specs:
WinXP
PIII 1Ghz
384 SDRAM
60GB 72000rpm Western Digital HD

Just wondering if my computer would be able to handle video editing programs like Adobe Premiere and After Effects to make some kind of homemade movie.

Thanks for reading this long ass post....

[willy_annand]

Stay away from anything ATI, my experience is you get fuzzy captures.

ASUS has a couple of Video cards with "video-in", their capture quality is great but if you don't have a fast machine, you sometimes get audio sync problems.

I now use the Winnov Videum 1000plus, excellent capture and since audio and video are both done through the card, syncronization is guaranteed.

[Craig Tucker]

Stay away from anything ATI, my experience is you get fuzzy captures.

I get superb quality captures with my AIW 7500. The quality obviously depends on the format you capture in, but using vdub to capture at 720x576 PAL YUY2 with huffy compression. The quality is excellent. Use TMPGEnc to convert to DVD mpeg2 6000Mbps and write to DVD-R, and I can hardly tell the difference from the original cable broadcast.

[bgrieb]

Have you considered getting a GeForce4 Ti4200 with ViVo? They have much more capability than an MX card and have good capture ability as well. If you're looking to spend that kind of money, I'm sure that the Ti4200 could offer a really nice boost to your existing Voodoo3. Check out newegg.com if you're interested. You'll find a whole mess of them between $120 - $150 (US). Be sure to get one that comes with the VIVO cables or you'll have to buy those, too. The MSI card looks pretty good.

BG

[willy_annand]

I get superb quality captures with my AIW 7500. The quality obviously depends on the format you capture in, but using vdub to capture at 720x576 PAL YUY2 with huffy compression.

I am in the NTSC area, maybe that is the difference.
I have tested the TV Wonders, and a couple of the Radeon cards. Their NTSC caps always seemed fuzzier than what ASUS or Winnov produced. Tests were done with the same VHS tape as the source.

[edsmith77]

wally,
I use the ATI Rage Fury Pro and get excellent captures. I am now using the ATI MMC 7.6 with outstanding results even directly to MPEG 1/2. Which by the way can be burned directly or if you prefer tweaked with tmpgenc. I am transferring my old (>15yrs) VHS tapes to digital. So maybe my original quality is not DVD level but the results (mpg1/2) are certainly as good as the tapes are today. Bang for the buck. My vote goes to the Rage Fury Pro (4x agp card).

Ed

[constant_change]

Hey guys....thanks for the opinions. I have been looking at MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 that includes vivo but wasn't sure if it could capture well. PC games don't really catch my attention but I'd also like to get into 3D modelling so Ti4200 with vivo may sound good. But does anyone know how well MSI Ti4200 captures compared to the cheap $100 cards?

Also, I made a few mpeg1 (from various standard compliant VCDs) that I made through tmpegnc, and the quality just makes me look away. XVCDs are better since you can up the video bitrate. I think editing mpeg2 video would look a lot better. XSVCDs are the way to go is my opinion ('cause I'm not going to buy a dvd burner anytime soon). Also, I'd be able to change the header to VCD to trick standalone dvd players to play SVCDs. Well, here's what I'm asking... does mpeg2 have better picture than mpeg1 and is it easier to edit? And do the cheap capture cards that I mention capture mpeg2 directly?

[videojoe]

I have a MSI GF4 Ti4400 VIVO and the capture is excellent... untill there is a bright scene, then the picture becomes completely washed out. It doesn't like bright colors or large white areas on the screen. There is no driver support for whitebalance control. My card uses the philips SAA7108E encoder chip. I sent it to MSI and they tested it, said it was fine. Just a word of warning. Maby I just have a junk card.

None of the really cheap cards do realtime mpeg2 compression, However I have seen the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 go for $100 US after rebate. It does realtime mpeg2 compression, but It will never look as good as a software encode. I have never used this card so I know nothing of its quality.

[Nelson37]

MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 at same settings are nearly identical, However MPEG-2 supports interlacing. Editing mpeg-2, at least VBR files, is damn near impossible, Editing Mpeg-1 is much easier.

Seems as though DVD player support is much better for hi-bitrate, hi-res MPEG-1 than for hi-bitrate, hi-res MPEG-2, at least on CD. I don't use the "X" designations as they don't mean anything and do not give definite information. As the parameter is a moving target, so to is the "support".

[constant_change]

So, what is realtime compression? And what advantage does it give its users?

All I really want to do is get the video onto PC as quickly as I can without degrading the quality that much and have it in a format easy to edit and then I don't mind converting it to the desired format using TmpgEnc.

Can this be achieved by a cheap capture card from Aver or ATI or any other cheap card that's winxp compliant? Then use it to capture mpeg1 and edit it using Adobe Premiere and After Effects and then converting it to svcd using TmpEnc. Will this do what I want with speed and ease?

[crahak]

I have a rage fury pro, and I've seen captures with the AIW 7500, and both were quite fuzzy (NTSC, huffyuv). I'd stay awy from my experience, I had better results with bt8x8 cards...