MPEG Capture Card Advice for a PIII 850

[wwaag]

Just assembled a new P4. Have an old P3-850 that I will use just for "capture". I already have an ADVC-100 which works great in this computer(i.e., no dropped frames), but was interested in the possibility of a direct MPEG capture--at least for the VHS tape collection that I have. Will be running XP Home with little else on the system other than capture software. Will use mobile HDD for transfer to other machine for encoding/editing and authoring to DVD. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

wwaag

[spectroelectro]

With a slow computer like a P3 850 you need a capture card that takes most of the load off the CPU, yet looks decent. Try the Hauppauge PVR 250 or PVR 350. These are hardware MPEG-2 cards and produce pretty good results with very little CPU overhead. If you get Womble MPEG VCR you can directly edit the commercials (or whatever) out of your MPEG-2 captures and then author 'em to DVD.
The PVR 250 / 350 doesn't look quite as good as a Canopus capture encoded with TMPGenc or Mainconcept or CCE, but it looks pretty good nonetheless. You can pick up a PVR 250 for around $135 or so, so it's not very expensive, and might be the solution you're looking for.
Avoid the crappy Dazzle products. The cost way more and have bugs and glitches up the ying-yang.
The only drawback with the Hauppauge PVR 250 or 350 is that you must download the new drivers immediately, the ones that come with it are slow and buggy, and the capture software sucks major ass. In particular, changing channels is very slow and can be buggy. Other than that, the Hauppauge PVR cards do a darn good job. with almost no CPU overhead, and the audio stays in rock-solid sync with the video even after hours of non-stop MPEG-2 capture.

[wwaag]

spectroelectro

Thanks for the reply. Sounds like I'd be better off just sticking with the ADVC-100 and CCE for encoding (at least $250 or more). I've seen lots of posts regarding AV sync issues, especially after "cuts" only MPEG editing. Thanks again.

wwaag

[Ziffelpig]

I use the AIW 7500(AGP) on a P3 550, and capture to Mpeg 2 using the ATI MMC.
I can capture at Full D-1 resolution(drops frames only if not regularily defragged), but prefer capturing to Half D-1 352x480(no frames dropped).
I can create and use several different presets depending on the source or the type of DVD I want to author.
I've captured 100's of TV shows and converted my VHS tapes to DVD and have never had sync issues with this card.
I would never go back to capturing to Avi just to encoding to Mpeg, what a waste of time.
Try setting up a LAN for your editing and transfers

[wwaag]

ziffelpig

Thanks for the reply. I already have a 100mbps lan in place, although it's pretty slow for large DV file transfers. Faster just to swap disks using a mobile rack. MPEG files might be OK since they're smaller.

Question. What do you use for MPEG editing and then DVD authoring? Thanks in advance.

wwaag

[Ziffelpig]

Question. What do you use for MPEG editing and then DVD authoring? Thanks in advance.

I used Ulead Video studio 6, it came with the AIW card, worked very well so I bought VS-7, no complaints(esp DV). Currently I am using womble mpg2vcr, simply because its faster than VS-7 not better.
For Authoring if I just want something thats not too elaborate and reliable I use Moviefactory2. I use DVD lab for everything else

[SHS]

wwaag
I've captured 100's of TV Episode, Moive, etc, etc and converted to DVD and have never had any sync issues with my WinTV-PVR 250 I should really say two "2" PVR 250 runing in Multi-Source (Dishnetwork) with SageTV.
spectroelectro is rigth Womble MPEG2VCR is the best tool there is when cpme to eiting MPEG.
Canopus is useful if have lot and lots VHS tape more so with bad tape but in my eye I really don't see any diff in PQ that is but with WinTV-PVR 250/350 you have lot option open to you unlike all other ever thing from Super 5 card Multi-Source, Multi-Tuner PVR, Linux etc, etc.