Recommendations for hi-res analog capturing please

[DavidA]

I'm guessing this is probably a FAQ, but I can't quite find the answer.

I am looking for a capture solution that will let me take VHS tapes and make the best looking MPG possible. I'd like to make VCDs of them but if I could get MPGs of them at higher quality then so much the better.

I recently bought a Pinnacle PCTV off EBay but it's a pretty old model and a) doesn't cap at VCD resolution and b) struggles under XP.

I hear people recommending the ATI Wonder series. Is this the best for analog capturing? I have a GeForce3 so I'd rather avoid an all-in-one solution. I see that I can buy a new ATI Wonder Stereo PCI for about $75 in the UK.

I'd also be interested in hearing about older hardware which would be good for encoding as I enjoy trawling EBay. Is the older MiroDC series any good? Any idea if it would work under XP.

Suggestions gratefully received.

[kinneera]

How much hard drive space do you have? If you are looking to avoid an all-in-one type of card and obtain the highest quality, you'll probably be best served by picking up a card that does AVI captures. A lot of them are fairly cheap now, too.

[DavidA]

Sorry, should've said.

I have an Athlon 1.4Ghz with a 40gig HD.
HD is a 6 month old IDE drive, but I don't know the speed offhand.

[kinneera]

That would be sufficient for AVI capturing depending on how full your hard drive is. Using the huffyuv codec, about 1hr of video at 720x480 will require ~35GB. At 480x480, it will be around 20-24GB.

[DavidA]

Okay, so it sounds like encoding from an AVI will get me the best quality.

Which card do you recommend for capturing to an AVI? ATI Wonder Stereo or something else? Is there some older hardware I could pick up on EBay that you'd recommend?

Thanks in advance.

[spidey]

For a good Huffyuv cap, you could simply get a Hauppage WinTV card. 40.00 usd. I use mine in W2k, and have in Win XP. Check out http://hauppage.com for more compliance details and drivers.

[thunes]

Which modell do you have ? (which one would you recommend)
When capturing with this card, is there any quality loss ?

[lady7]

David A i also have geforce3 64 mb card but no tv out and no capture ability. it's just a great gaming graphics card.
so i also didnt want to get another card with a capture /tv out. didnt make sense so i bought a tv card from hauppauage. the wintv pvr and it works great. it has a hardware mpeg1,2 encoder.

Try it!