What kind of USB Cap Devices...

[dubie]

...do you guys out there have AND think does a good job? Please post them! Thanks!

[dubie]

No one uses a USB cap device on this forum?

[oldfart13]

I had the Instant DVD but I gave it to a friend who can't cap with his PII. I now use an ATI All In Wonder 7500 and can cap at way above what the IDVD can do. Try the Adstech.com forums or else the Snazzi III 2.0 since that uses USB 2.0 and is many times faster than the IDVD which uses the older USB 1.0 standard...

[dubie]

thanks for the reply oldfart13...will check it out as I'm nearing the limits from using my DVC80!

[lpn1160]

USB?? Bus is way too slow, get a real capture card!!

[oldfart13]

USB 2.0 rivals Firewire in speed. USB (the old one) is way too slow...

[Jester700]

The old one is fine for hardware encoded MPEG1 at VCD rates, MPEG2 at SVCD rates, and even lower bit rate DVD MPEG2. It's WAY too slow for uncompressd capture; it just depends what you want to do.

[lpn1160]

whats the throughput with USB 2? 20mbps? fast but still not "great" !!

[Jester700]

More in the 400Mb range, like firewire.

[dubie]

usb 2.0, in theory, supports data speeds up to 480Mbps.

lpn1160, I can't get a "real capture card" as I'm using a laptop...

[lpn1160]

well to each his own, but capturing on a laptop HUMMMM?????
I guess if it works, You could try a wintv2000 usb, supports mpeg2 up to 6mbps cost about $150 US

[Jester700]

Actually, it can work pretty well. I can cap pretty good DVD compatible MPEG2 at 5.5Mb with my IDVD over USB. Then author with DVD workshop & burn with a firewire DVD burner. Problem is, the VCD capture on that unit sucks. I can cap good VCD MPEG1 with the DVD Workshop SOFTWARE on my wife's 1.6GHz Laptop, but my 650MHz is too slow.

[oldfart13]

For Mpeg-1 capture using USB, try the Dazzle stuff or the ADS Instant Video CD at this link:

http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV190/intro/usb190intro.asp?pid=USBAV-190

[dubie]

thanks for all the inputs folks...

...reason I'm asking, is, 'cos I'm quite a newbie at this and have only started attempting to cap stuff from my Hi8/TV about a month ago and currently use a Dazzle DVC80 - which really isn't quite good but suited my needs when I was starting out 'cos of its price. It seems however, that no matter how I "tweak" the settings, the resulting audio output always sounds "too digital"...too sharp and too much background "noise"...

...or maybe I'm really asking for too much for trying to cap stuff with a laptop!

[Rich927]

Pinnacle makes a USB capture device called LINX. Comes with Studio 7 software. Does ok if you use the presets.

[rrios01]

I use Dazzle DVC 80, with software VirtualDub, I capture in AVI format compressed and then converted to VCD with TMPGEnc, the result its about 1 hour and 15 minutes of a VCD in one disc with good quality (better than VHS)

[dubie]

rrios01,
no matter what I do, I just can't seem to cap audio with VirtualDub! I've been using VirtualVCR and it's been good to me. But like I said, the audio sounds way too "sharp"...

[dubie]

Pinnacle makes a USB capture device called LINX. Comes with Studio 7 software. Does ok if you use the presets.

Rich927,
I also have the Pinnacle LINX USB capture device...just wondering, can you use another capture software other than the Studio 7 SE it came bundled with? For some reason, when I use either VirtualVCR or iuVCR, they don't seem to be able to detect the audio input...

[dubie]

anyone else uses Pinnacle Linx who can help me out?