Best capture card for VHS to Hard Drive?

[The Fred]

What can I get south of $100?
Do they come with some software?

[The Fred]

PS: Will this little doohikkey work?
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=171736&Sku=P67-1086

[Krispy Kritter]

Depends on what you plan to do with the files once they are on your HD.

That unit will work if you want the files in divx format.

[dvdfreak123]

Pinnacle Studio MovieBox 9 USB 2.0

Dazzle DVC90

MovieBox Deluxe 9

All of the above can do what you are asking for but quality is always the issue, may suggest to save up for an advc canopus

just my 2cents

[Pixelrage]

Any opinions on Radeon's TV tuner cards? I've been looking into them. I need to get a new capture card (I currently have the Pinnacle card from 2 gen's ago, which shipped with Pinnacle 8. I'm never going with that company again) - I need something that will capture directly from Virtualdub, since Pinnacle cannot.

[dphirschler]

You can't go wrong with the bt878 cards such as the Hauppauge WinTV cards, Pinnacle PCTV Pro, and ATI's TV Wonder. You get a lot of bang for the buck. I got three different cards from $29-35. And there is a wealth of great free drivers and capture programs available online. Look for one with a stereo tuner and s-video and composite inputs.


Darryl

[tonyp12]

Brand: Norwood Micro
Mfg Part #: 080742
SKU: 333088

Only $25

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?pfp=cat3&product_code=333088&Pn=TV_Tu...Remote_Control

TV tuner and capture card.
Can capture with vdub, though I notice that audio have to be in directly to audio-in as
WinTVR3 mute when not in use.

It can handle PAL/NTSC

[Pixelrage]

It appears as though that card only captures to MPEG, not AVI

[The Fred]

Can I get full screen video with these inexpensive capture cards?

[edDV]

Can I get full screen video with these inexpensive capture cards?

A USB2 card is limited by bus sustained bitrate unless you encode in the device in hardware. A PCI card is capable of uncompressed bandwidth to the hard drive so long as the hard drive can keep up. HuffYUV software compression is often used to bring datarate down to what a single drive can take. Then you need to encode the video in software.

Some computers are fast enough to encode in software during capture. Video quality is the tradeoff.

Many prefer an MPeg2 hardware encoding card like the Hauppauge PVR which will generate an MPeg2 file suitable for DVD. The PVR-USB2 will work externally.

http://google-cnet.com.com/Hauppauge_WinTV_PVR_USB2/4014-9332_9-30536645.html

[The Fred]

Can I get full screen video with these inexpensive capture cards?

A USB2 card is limited by bus sustained bitrate unless you encode in the device in hardware. A PCI card is capable of uncompressed bandwidth to the hard drive so long as the hard drive can keep up. HuffYUV software compression is often used to bring datarate down to what a single drive can take. Then you need to encode the video in software.

Some computers are fast enough to encode in software during capture. Video quality is the tradeoff.

Many prefer an MPeg2 hardware encoding card like the Hauppauge PVR which will generate an MPeg2 file suitable for DVD. The PVR-USB2 will work externally.

http://google-cnet.com.com/Hauppauge_WinTV_PVR_USB2/4014-9332_9-30536645.html

I'll be needing alot of disk space too.. yea?
Do those Hauppage cards come with some basic video editing software?
Or is Vdub alright and OK?

I think that mpeg might be better than DivX because I don't know if they'll be able to use DRM with divx movies. I don't think MSFT likes DivX

Can my videos (from the vcr tape) come out at least 800x600?
What about 1024x768?
How much disk space do I need for 30 minutes of video at those resolutions and mpeg format?

[The Fred]

I notice this 250gb drive I'm looking at says
"This Drive Holds
- 106 two-hour DVD-quality movies or
- 375 hours of VHS-quality video or"

So it supposedly holds 212 hours of DVD quality movies or 375 hours of vhs quality video..
But at what resolution?
*shrug*


The drive I'm looking at is only 7200rpm- will that be alright?

Specifications
Capacity (GB) Learn More 250
Interface Serial ATA-150
Spindle Speed (RPM) 7200
Buffer Memory 8MB
Average Latency (msec) 4.16
Average Seek (msec) Learn More <8
Maximum External Transfer Rate (Mbits/sec) 150
Logical Cylinders/Heads/Sectors per Track 16,383/16/63
Bytes Per Sector 512
Recording Method EPRML (16/17)
3D Defense System Yes
Nonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read 1 in 10E14
Dimensions 6.780 in. Max (H) x 5.630 in Max. (W) x 2.23 in. (W)

[The Fred]

Sorry for all of the darned questions here,
but will this be alright
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=882297&CatId=0
It's like the other one I showed you but it doesn't have a built in hardware encoder (I think)

"Your ConvertX, using the bundled Intervideo WinDVD Creator software, can capture video directly into both the MPEG-1 (Video CD) and MPEG-2 (DVD video) formats."

It's alot less expensive than a hardware encoder.. and I have a Pentium D 3.0 / 2gb Corsair DDR 2....

[GMaq]

The Fred,
The Plextor Convert-X PX-402U USB-2 should be around 100bucks US it has MPEG-1,2 and DivX HARDWARE encoding, it is a much better product than the cheaper Plextor unit AV-1000 (not sure of model #) Beware the Intervideo software that comes bundled with it promises much and delivers little!! That's not to say the unit itself isn't good, you just need to use other software and there are a few choices, Nero, VirtualDub,iuVCR, Beyond TV to name a few.

[normcar]

Any good Harddrive will be ok. But you are right to believe that capturing video will eat a lot of disk space. For converting the captured video to another format or to make it smaller, you will need at least 2 harddrives. Converting from one drive to another is a lot faster. Having 2 drives for converting and a 3rd drive with your OS is even better.

Usually you capture at a very high quality level which means larger files. Then you compress to smaller version and/or convert to DVD format. This will eat a lot of disk space because you may have several versions of the movie on disk before you are done.

To back up VHS tapes you will also need a macro protection remover. A Sima device called something like DVD Copy is available from Bestbuy.

[The Fred]

You folks sure are helpful.
I really like the idea of a hardware mpeg2 encoder..
Does it really encode it right there in realtime?

Funny, isn't it, that silly little box with a.. what... 500mhz cpu can convert the video in real time and a stupid PC with a 3000mhz cpu can't do it as well ... ? I guess because of all of the overhead of the o/s and the way everything in a PC gets to where it is going and all.


I didn't know I'd need so much space as all of that- I'd really only be working with 30 minute clips but you make some very good points about having a movie in different formats and overhead space while working with the files and all of that

Right now everything works fairly well on here I've got my OS and program files on the 10k drive and the paging file on a different drive (only 7200) but they're both small drives

[The Fred]

I wish I could disable "virtual memory"
Darned MSFT
How I can have 2gb of memory and not be able to boot without a paging file on the drive I will never know- they do make ramdrives now well not ramdrives as it were but memory hard drives I believe they're some sore of PCI card..

I'm considering buying one to put my "paging file" on..
It would also be great for working with small videos.. I think the maximum is 4gb but it sure is fast.. I wonder how it compares to raid setups..