Hi8 video in, SVCD out, which card/computer?

[joejackson]

As can be seen by my other post about the capture card list, I'm a confused newbie. I've read through the FAQs and most of this site, including a lot of the Forum posts. Still don't know what cards fit my requirements.

All I want to do is to hook up my Sony handicam (composite output, no s-video connector) to a new PC I'm getting ready to buy, and create SVCDs on a CDRW drive to play in my DVD player (which is CDR and SVCD capable).

I'm not concerned with other capabilities of the capture card: ie, I'd rather watch TV and DVD movies on our TV, and I'm not into heavy gaming. (unless you count Freecell...

I'm looking at Pentium 3 1.0 GHz systems for $900 to $1000 or Pentium 4 1.3 GHz systems for about $1200 to $1400. (typically 60 Gb ATA100 drives, 256K RAM, CDRW, Windows Me, display extra.)

Should I spend the extra $300 to $400 for a P4 system, or spend that ammount on a super capture card? And which capture card? Are there cards with the ability to take the composite input and hardware encode that direct to an MPEG 1 or MPEG 2 file? (avoiding slower software encoding later). I thought that only the expensive cards like the Pinnacle DV500+ did that, but others are claiming that the ATI All-in-Wonder and many others also do MPEG hardware based encoding.

What would you do? And why?

I really appreciate any suggestions. Thanks! --Joe

[oldcomputerwiz]

I have a Athlon 900 system w/winTV ($50) capture card. Use virtual dub for captureing and filtering then dump to SVCD. Am very pleased with it. To me, it looks almost like the original hi-8 tape.

Steve

[Iview]

Hi, Joe
I don't think Pinnacle DV500+ captures to MPEG at all, it captures in AVI and transcode to MPEG with a hardware transcoder,I think, may be I'm wrong.
ATI All-in-Wonder .... and the likes are REAL TIME encode, but NOT HARDWARE encode, they are software encode, at the most hardware assist. require lots of CPU power and you will encounter drop frames.
If you don't want the long process of encoding, on the consumer level, there is only one REAL TIME HARDWARE MPEG1/2 encode capture card, which is Dazzle Digital Video Creator II. Min requirement 400Mhz, so if you get the PIII 1Ghz it will more than do the job. Reason for that is the encoding chip will take the load off the CPU for encoding and without a frame dropped. You still need a video card though and a PCI slot with a delegated IRQ. It has S-Video, composite and audio in/out. Some AMD/VIA owners have problem with the card.
If you are not into heavy editing, this card may be for you, cause the editing software is a little buggy, other than that it works great and FAST. Just select the SVCD template fine tune it, and capture. when the clip is done playing, you have a compliant MPEG2 file ready to create a good looking SVCD. VCD is not as great though, template is locked.
You can check:
http://www.dazzle.com
http://stop.at/dazzle2
http://www.vcdhelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCard=Dazzle&Submit=Search&Search=Search

[Greg12]

I recomind a P4 chip and ATI All In Wonder Radien.


You can do real time capture with the ATI.

If you want higher quality, capture and transcode to MPEG.

Ur p4 will make this process fast

[jdatec]

What you want to do I do with a AMDK6-2 366 Mhz laptop and Dazzle DVC1 parallel port model - makes MPEG-1 files and will play them back to the TV as well. Right now I am testing XVCD with the same setup and am making Video CD's that look "okay" but I want better results since input is Hi-8 Sony video.