It seems that when anyone asks about hardware-based MPEG encoding, the assumption is that you want to capture directly to MPEG1/2, so responses are given in that vein.

I'm looking for an encoder card (NOT capture) and doing a search here isn't turning up very many consumer options (plenty if I want to spend $1K+, which I don't).

Are there any sub-$1,000 MPEG encoder cards that allow you to open a file from the hard drive and encode it to MPEG1/2 in real time? Or are there only capture encoders in that price range?

Thanks in advance...