Cards for lossless capture

[mg262]

I'm hoping to buy a capture card soon, and I have a question that haven't been answered by several evenings worth of reading the reviews and searching these forums... any help would be very much appreciated.

Most of the reviews rate cards on the ease of setup and the quality of the hardware-compressed video - but I'm only interested in capturing losslessly (HuffYUV). Can anyone tell me which are the best (PAL) cards purely from the point of view of the quality of the uncompressed output? (In terms of colour fidelity, sharpness, etc.) I will mainly be capturing from decent quality VHS.

Thanks!
Mohan

[andkiich]

If your talking about the codecs involved, then the hardware doesn't really enter into it, only so far as if it will be able to do say MPEG2 or AVI.

As long as the software your card can use will allow you to use lossless codecs, you should be fine.

[mg262]

Thanks... that means the only reasons to prefer one card over another would be dropped frames and audio sync. problems?

[SatStorm]

There are differences because of the hardware. The quality you get from the input is a factor hardware related.

Anyway, the best card for this task IMHO is Vidac VMagic
Alternatives: Some people like ati solutions. I don't like them..
Personally, I'm very happy with my Win TV Primio FM card (typical bt808). I can capture and proccess really easy and with excellent results VHS.

Here is the key: Hardware helps. But the good post proccessing of your captures is what really do the difference!
IMHO always. Others may have a different opinion on this.