What capture card should I buy ?

[dendence]

I want to order a capture card tonight. I am sick and tired of this pinnacle studio card I have. I want to take it out of my PC and run it over with my car a.s.a.p.
What do you suggest ? I have a Pentium dual core proccesor 3 ghz., 2 gigs of ram. I want a capture card that is PCI and will capture from my vcr, camcorder. I have firewire ports that I capture DV camcorder with so I just need an analog capture card. I would like to keep it around $ 100. Thanks

[yoda313]

For a $100 or so you can get the Fusion hdtv 3 capture card that does hdtv recording AND analog input recording. I love mine I bought over the holidays.

Or try any hauppauge card if you want great recording. The wintv 150 should be readily available with hardware mpeg encoding.

[lordsmurf]

PCI?

ATI AIW cards are AGP. Those are great choices, if you'd be willing to go AGP. $50-150

For PCI, Hauppauge PVR 250 cards are quite nice, MPEG hardware encoding. $100-150

For AVI only, PCI, not sure what route I'd go.

Nothing new for MPEG/AVI really, on PCI.

Shop around for best prices, in-store ads, and online.

[StoneColdWhat]

If you put in a few more bucks or yet sell your pinnacle studio card, get a ati aiw, those things ROCK! Good thing I didn't buy the PS card, I was going to earlier since it was sooooo cheap.

[BobK]

I started out with Pinnacle (crap) too. Took me about 6 months to move on. I use a standalone now, but for over 2 years I used a Snazzi card and it worked great.

http://www.snazzishop.com/cart_dvdcreator_buy.asp

[FulciLives]

For MPEG capture I second the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 PCI model. The 150 model has a lot of bugs that the 250 model does not have. Avoid the 150 model. If you want something external there is the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 which is an external USB 2.0 device that seems to be of the same quality as the PCI 250 version.

If you want to capture and re-encode so as to apply video filters or do a true multi-pass VBR encode the WinTV-PVR-250, along with the USB 2.0 model, are capable of doing a capture with a video bitrate of 15,000kbps so do that as a CBR and you will get a nice high quality capture that can be re-encoded. Just be sure to lower the built-in filtering so that you are getting minimal filter upon capture since you will be re-encoding. Might also want to "up" the sharpness. Some people think the default setting for "sharpness" is set too low.

A good website for further Hauppauge WinTV PVR research is:

http://www.shspvr.com/

Good Luck

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[dendence]

Thanks for all the input. I will take a look at them all. I found this one for $ 146 at Newegg.ADS Tech API-555 PYRO AV LINK With Adobe Premiere Elements.Its a little more than I want to spend. It connects to the PC via firewire so it would probably capture through my Sony Movie Studio software. Opinions ? Thanks

[FulciLives]

Thanks for all the input. I will take a look at them all. I found this one for $ 146 at Newegg.ADS Tech API-555 PYRO AV LINK With Adobe Premiere Elements.Its a little more than I want to spend. It connects to the PC via firewire so it would probably capture through my Sony Movie Studio software. Opinions ? Thanks

This is the "other school" of thought ... capture using an external device that converts analog A/V to the DV (Digital Video) format then sends it to the computer via FireWire. The Canopus ADVC-100 made this a very popular method as it does the job very well as does the newer Canopus ADVC-110 as well as the DataVideo DAC-100 which is essentially an almost exact clone of the Canopus ADVC-100.

However many people have tried the ADS Pyro A/V Link and some get it to work A-OK while other people are unable to get it to work properly with the number one complaint being a dropped frame issue along with an A/V sync issue which is very ironic as the 3 devices mentioned above (the 2 Canopus products and the DataVideo product) are known to be almost "bullet proof" against dropped frames and A/V sync issues. Another issue is that the ADS Pyro A/V Link has no option for correctly setting the IRE BLACK level whereas the Canopus units and the DataVideo unit do have this option.

In short despite the low price and the added benefit of Adobe Premiere Elements I would personally not touch the ADS Pyro A/V Link with the proverbial 10 foot pole.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Last time I checked the Canopus ADVC-110 could be bought for around $225 whereas the DataVideo DAC-100 could be bought for around $180 - $200 ... the Canopus ADVC-100 is no longer made but it pops up a lot on eBay but even then I've seen auctions end as high as $150 - $200