better capture quality: AVerMedia EZMaker or ASUS with VIVO

[elihay]

Hi
I am going to buy a new computer these days and wonder how to get the capture ability.
Capture proporsal is to create DVD, VCD or DIVX
I don't have a lot of money to spend on a profesional capture card. so as I see it I have two options:
1. Including the capture ability in the display adapter - Asus Geforce FX 5200 V9520 VideoSuite which got VIVO.
2. buy a basic FX5200 card with aditional - AVerMedia DVD EZMaker

what option will give me better capturing quality ?

(BTW: the second option is a little bit cheeper)

I have read that the AVerMedia DVD EZMaker is capble of realtime MPEG2 capturing which is good for DVD. But i am willing to loss this feature if the asus gives better quality.

thanks alot
Elihay

[MK_ULTRA]

I just purchased a avermedia ezdvdmaker pci card and must say I was blown away by the quality of capture. I previously had a Adaptec Videoh! DVD extrenal usb 2.0 box which while delivering a good capture quality, was riddled with issues such as having to reinstal drivers constantly and being limited to no 3rd party software which actually works properly with the box.

I cannot comment on the Asus card but I am soo happy with the aver, I had to use the tweaked Bt848 drivers in xp to fully utilize it's potential though. http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/download.html word of caution, these drivers screwd up my win2k!! But in Xp they are flawless. Before installing them I could only cap at 320x240 with virtualdub, now 720x480 with little or no frame loss. Capturing directly to mpeg2 with a software encoder results in a damn near perfect picture with no frame loss whatsoever. My capped tv show look about as close as you could get to dvd (IMO).

I was a little hesitant buying this card cause I figured, you get what ya pay for, how could a cheap $40-50 card be better than a higher end $150-300 card? While I'm cerainly no expert the capture quality is truely awesome and I'm so glad I purchased this little gem. Mind you I did have a few problems getting the card properly tweaked ect but end result was worth the headaches.

Don't bother with the software that comes with the card either, garbage. Use virtualdub to cap to avi or a software mpeg2 encoder such as the MainConcept MPEG Encoder which allows ya to capture to your specs, any codec, cap direct to dvd, svcd, vcd, avi whatever ya want and I guarantee you'll be impressed with the results!!

[elihay]

thank's
T think I will buy the AVerMedia...

Anyone else have a comperison information about the two items ?

[lordsmurf]

I have three AVeMedia EZ DVD Maker cards right now, all relegated to a junk drawer of spare computer parts because they suck. I mean, I've had a lot of garbage in my day, but these AVer cards take the award for biggest flop, even more than Princo and CMC media.

They suffer from heavy audio sync issues, regardless of capture software. Plus they don't have their own software for capture, they use 3rd party crap like PowerVCR and WinDVR (which has a list of problems with quality and technical issues).

They do work on some system from what I hear, but not many. They are always on sale because they are hard to move from inventory.

Yes, big bias against them. Yes, I'm being very blunt and scathing. In the VHS world, they'd be on par with a $20 2-head Symphonic VCR from Best Buy.

But hey, if you want to buy one cheap, drop me a PM or e-mail.

[pauln119]

I bought the card recently (free after rebate) and I'm very impressed with the quality. But then, I'm not all that picky. The neoDVD software that it came with is pretty bad, but i use WinDVR for capturing TV shows almost daily now to DVD format and I must say it looks fabulous. I personally don't have any audio sync problems, but I have not yet experimented with all the settings. I also used it to capture old Sony analog camcorder footage to DVD format as well and have been very pleased with the results. Perhaps Lordsmurf ran into some limitations of the hardware or software that I haven't seen yet.

[elihay]

Anyone have comments about the ASUS display card with VIVO, that i mentioned ?