What's the deal with those cheap capture boxes?

[loninappleton]

My first post here and I am a noob.


I just looked at Tiger Direct and they have $20 capture
boxes. too good to be true no doubt.


Nut I have to come at this from something other than a $200
ATI card.

The goal as a first project is get an ancient vhs documentary
from vhs (the tape is in good shape) from a cheap Emerson
vhs player onto a file to AVI for burning and archiving to
dvd.

So which end of the food chain should I work on: the
cheap end (and with what tools) or the generic end with
a quality product? I'm hoping that there are smaller
manufacturers without all the branding of ATI and
Hauphauge.


So far I have installed one way old Hauphauge WinTV
card that turned out to be dead.

[edDV]

Strange as it seems, a high performance machine can get OK results from a cheap capture card by doing an uncompressed capture or realtime encoding while capturing.

A low performance machine like your PII 400MHz needs a more expensive hardware encoding capture card because your hard disk system and CPU aren't up to the task. Even so, that vintage machine will still handle import of DV format over IEEE-1394 or MPeg2 over USB2 with appropriate add in interface cards and a modern disk drive. Playback probably wouldn't be possible at full resolution.

[loninappleton]

My profile should list all of the components of my
newest build which I did to gain access to multi-
media. I was hoping to use the old rig as a
test but barring that, can plug the capture device
into my 512mb Celeron 2.93 with Geforce 5500 PCI.

I'm doing 2 things right now: reading the
"Bittorrents For Dummies" book by Wiley Press
which gives details on creating your own content
and also getting some experience with transcoding
some files with Nero.

Video capture falls in the cracks because quite
frankly I never watch tv. However I do want to get
this vhs piece onto digital before the old vhs
player goes south.


With this in mind, can I use one of these inexpensive
devices with whatever software to accomplish the
file transfer? What device would you recommend?


I'll start on your faq today.

[ROF]

I bought a cheapy capture box two weeks ago. The thing is smaller but similiarly shaped to most of my USB Flash Drives. It TV, Composite, and S-Video Input. Works great and ultra-portable. Captured TV video looks better than any AIW card I've ever had.

[edDV]

My profile should list all of the components of my
newest build which I did to gain access to multi-
media. I was hoping to use the old rig as a
test but barring that, can plug the capture device
into my 512mb Celeron 2.93 with Geforce 5500 PCI.

I'm doing 2 things right now: reading the
"Bittorrents For Dummies" book by Wiley Press
which gives details on creating your own content
and also getting some experience with transcoding
some files with Nero.

Video capture falls in the cracks because quite
frankly I never watch tv. However I do want to get
this vhs piece onto digital before the old vhs
player goes south.


With this in mind, can I use one of these inexpensive
devices with whatever software to accomplish the
file transfer? What device would you recommend?


I'll start on your faq today.

They should work with the 2.93GHz Celeron. The low end cards usually use generic Conexant chipsets. Included software is usually crap. See if you can find one that bundles ULead Video Studio or ULead DVD MovieFactory.

Best realtime software encoder is the Mainconcept as bundled in the full versions of those two products. If you intend to capture uncompressed, then a variety of MPeg2 encoders can be used in a second pass. Many guides exist to the left.

[loninappleton]

I have to pick your brains some more on this.

I'm not knowing a good way to filter out all the
devices that don't support Win98Se for instance.

Also, there's the cards vs USB boxes. Isn't USB too
slow to do anything in this environment?

With that said, how about a cheap magic box that
connects my vhs player to... what? the box or card
and then the computer via either PCI bus or USB?


I think I will see what's available at the Best Buy.


Right now it looks like filtering for a device and software
that will run in 98SE is the critical variable. I am not
buying any more Windows OS'es.

[edDV]

I have to pick your brains some more on this.

I'm not knowing a good way to filter out all the
devices that don't support Win98Se for instance.

Also, there's the cards vs USB boxes. Isn't USB too
slow to do anything in this environment?

With that said, how about a cheap magic box that
connects my vhs player to... what? the box or card
and then the computer via either PCI bus or USB?


I think I will see what's available at the Best Buy.


Right now it looks like filtering for a device and software
that will run in 98SE is the critical variable. I am not
buying any more Windows OS'es.

I haven't looked at the low low end but the basic rules are:

USB 1.1 -- limited to CIF resolutions ~352x576 to 320x480 (low rent solution)

PCI Conexant based cards -- cheap but need fast computer, technique and research to get good reuslts.

USB2 and IEEE-1394 devices -- more expensive but deliver an encoded result.

[trhouse]

A word of warning about USB capture devices. Some like my Adaptec AVC 2200 have custom drivers so the product is not compatible with most third party capture software. The only programs I can use to capture with are Movie Mill and Sonic MyDVD. Newer versions of the AVC 2200 cannot even use Movie Mill. The AVC 2200 is USB2 compatible so its captures are pretty good.

It was tested on this thread and does surprisingly well against some very good recorders,
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=279460

[edDV]

That is true. USB2 is not standardized for video capture or device control so you are locked to the software that comes with it in most cases. The main exception is the Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 which seems to have good support with custom drivers. Some are writing drivers for the Plextor ConvertX.

There is a committee working on a standard for DV transfer inside a USB2 driver under DirectShow but that is not fully suppored by anyone.

DV transfer over IEEE-1394 is fully supported under DirectShow.