which capture card?

[martyn]

i have just bought a new pc which has a reasonable spec of 256mb, p4 1.5ghz and 40gb hd. I also have adobe premiere 6 and tmpgenc software.

what i intend to do is capture video and audio from my vcr and put it onto vcd. i know what i also need is a capture card but i was wondering if anybody could recommend some cards to me and also any additional stuff i may require. also any tips on capturing would be much appreciated. thanks

martyn

[martyn]

in addition to above, i am using windows xp home edition

[Anonymous65]

If you can live with some limitations like no overlay in some capture applications, then go with a WinTV card for $50. It comes with good drivers, and you will find a lot of support for the card.

If you want it all, then go with ATI AIW Radeon. Depending on your VGA demands, get the VGA processor and memory you need. Otherwise, just get the cheapest ATI AIW Radeon card. It will allow Overlay in all modes. The only drawback is that ATI no longer supports VFW drivers, so you will have to find ways around it if yuo want to use VFW capture software, like Vdub and AV_IO.

[CauCauCau]

Well, you've got a nice computer, so you've got lots of options.

People have had hard times getting their cards to work well with XP. You'll find lots of requests for XP drivers on various forums. I picked my card expressly for compatibility with XP Professional (and price, it's a cheapo).

I've heard good things about Leadtek WinTV2000 XP. I ended up going with a Provideo P951 (using a generic chipset, the bt878) purely because of the $40 price difference. It's a cheapo, but it serves my purposes. It's the only capture card I've owned so I've not much to compare it to (being relatively new to capturing). I'm not returning it though. I guess that says something.

Lax return policies are your friends in this situation. Most places will let you return a product you're not happy with relatively easily. Try out a card or two and see what you like.

One thing about software though. On any of the cheaper cards, I don't think very many people use the software that comes with their card to capture. I even repliced my drivers with generic ones from http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ which are great drivers for any card with a BrookTree chipset (the cheaper ones). I'm having great success with Cyberlink VCR, Virtual Dub and iuVCR (with Cyberlink VCR being my favorite).

Consider what you want on the card as well. Another reason I picked the card I did was the fact that it had composite and s-video inputs. Some people really like hardware mpeg encoding (though with your processor, you won't need it). Right now, all you want to do is write some VCDs (which are relatively low resolution). You'll have no problem doing this even with the cheapest of cards.

There have been lots of threads about card choice in the last while, so do a forum search and see what you find. My advice: Decide how much you want to spend, what input options you need, check out the compatibility with XP and make a purchase at a place with a easy return policy.