Which Video Capture Card is best for restoration?

[cmltech]

Im building a new pc for my capturing and restoration of old vhs tapes, some are 20+ years old and show it . Anyway I have a JVC 9911U, DataVideo TBC 1000, I ordered the SignVideo PA-100 and SignVideo DR-1000 that will be in on friday. I have a Radeon 9600 AIW on a AMD xp3000 w/2gig ram. I want to build a better pc with an AMD Athlon 64. So what is the best PCI Capture Card that I can buy for this thing. I'm guessing if I go with a top of the line PCI-E video card a separate high end capture card will be better than a All-in-wonder would be. Some of the footage I'm capturing is not that great in quality. And I want to restore the best quality video that I can and burn to DVD after. So which high-end capture card should I buy or is the All-in-wonder still my best choice?

TIA

[lordsmurf]

The AIW will let you do either MPEG or AVI, and ATI MMC has VideoSoap for some active capture filters.

With a goal of restoring, and assuming you don't want to spend $1000 or more, the AIW would be your best choice.

[cmltech]

Thank you lordsmurf, [brown-nosing] I've read through your site and your posts on this site and it is quite amazing to see someone with your amount of knowledge on this stuff and it's great that you are so willing to share this knowledge [/brown-nosing] . Im not sure that ATI makes a PCI-E AIW and I'm not sure if I want one if so. I was thinking high-end PCI-E card with a separate high-end capture card. This is a business expense as I will eventually be charging people to capture their vhs tapes and convert to DVD for them. So I'm willing to shell out the cash if its worth it. I saw that matrox has one for about $1000. But is it worth it they also have one that is $600. Is the extra money worth it. Or do you have a better card in mind.

Thanks again for your input,


CML

[edDV]

Thank you lordsmurf, [brown-nosing] I've read through your site and your posts on this site and it is quite amazing to see someone with your amount of knowledge on this stuff and it's great that you are so willing to share this knowledge [/brown-nosing] . Im not sure that ATI makes a PCI-E AIW and I'm not sure if I want one if so. I was thinking high-end PCI-E card with a separate high-end capture card. This is a business expense as I will eventually be charging people to capture their vhs tapes and convert to DVD for them. So I'm willing to shell out the cash if its worth it. I saw that matrox has one for about $1000. But is it worth it they also have one that is $600. Is the extra money worth it. Or do you have a better card in mind.

Thanks again for your input,


CML

The ATI AIW X series are for PCI Express.

You won't find a magic capture card to make you a pro at VHS restoration. VHS quality is so crappy to start with, you hit deminishing returns quickly.

As far as hardware goes, research the dub house level TBC/Proc-Amps. Work a month or two at a pro dub house. That should be enough to learn the tricks of the trade and allow you to work out a capital list for your banker.


BTW: What is the "high-end PCI-E (graphics) card" for? Do you plan to play games while the tapes are dubbing?

[BJ_M]

you would be far better off with an outboard box for capturing in your case

[lordsmurf]

If you "have to" have the high-end graphics, get the ATI graphics card, then spend the money on a Matrox RT.X100 video card. It'll do pretty much the same thing as the ATI, but has a lot of realtime stuff too, which you may find useful if this is a business venture.

But a ATI AIW AGP card is no slouch. And the video portion is plenty fine, for what you've described so far.

[vhelp]

First, I do not agree that vhs is crappy. But, what I do believe
is that "best/maximum quality" reproduction from this source medium,
will all boil down to this.. the user's:

* knowledge; skills; techniques; master of their devices and software

If you do not match the above (or closely) then you have problems
already

I think it would be more wiser (before you go further into your
investment on video gadgetry) to post a few pics of your problem
tapes. It could turn out that your technique (or game-plan) was
not the best for the task. Don't forget, that not every tape is
equal in strategy.

Do post some pics of such problem tapes, so that some knowledable
users here can throw up some suggestions

-->

-vhelp 3390

[whitejremiah]

I personally run an ATI AIW 9600, it does everything about as good as can be expected for a non professional card........best bet as far as a VHS source would be to capture to lossless then run it through some denoise filters...and maybe depending on exactly how bad or good the vhs tape is...a few other various filters....

[nelson133]

CanopusAVDC100->filtering (avisynth or virtual dub->encoding -> authoring-> burning. Lord Smurf hates these things but I and many others here find the Canopus boxes to be the best and easiest solution for what you want to do. Check out the comments in the capture card section and/or do a forum search on it. Time and experience will be needed, you won't just walk into this the first day and get greay results no matter what method you use.
Nyah Levi

[lordsmurf]

DV conversion on a bad tape makes things worse.

[thecoalman]

I've come to the conclusion that having good hardware before it gets to the card is more important than the card (or device) providing your using a decent one such as a Canopus or AIW. The knowledge to use them properly is equally important.

Right now I'm using a JVC 9911>TBC-1000>Canopus ADVC 110. The results are great and in most cases equal or superior to the original.

[SatStorm]

Equal is the best you can get

Later you can restore / enchance