Urgent! Broadcast-Quality capture cards

[Saemin]

Heyas~ ^^
this is kinda urgent... but i'm searching for a real-time mpeg2-capture card (either hardware or software encoding will do) that's around CAN $500 (~US $320).
The *most* important thing is capture quality ... i literally need broadcast quality captures .... or anything that's closest with my price-limit...
any help will be appreciated!! ^^
** quality is Key!! ** mpeg2 (720x480) captures will be done at around 6~8mbps

-> how are the captures of the aiw-radeon series? either 7500 & 8500 ... do they use the same capture engines? or are they different?

Thank you!! : )

[ironwood321]

The ATI range use software based mpeg encoding. Possibly using the dire LSX encoder.

Have you considered capturing as DV and using software encoders? i.e TMPEnc CanopusMPEG Encoder.

Whats you intended application?

[Saemin]

well, i'm working at a start-up tv station, and our current capture cards are getting a lot of wear & tear with 10+ hrs of capturing/day...
capture source is via satelite feeds ....
so... u can see how capture quality is very *important* !!! ^^
don't really need those fancy real-time effects or anything...
just *clean* captures .... preferably hardware-based
the only problem is the budget-limit.... >_<
can't afford those thousand $ - range cards just yet.....
thanks ~ !!

[pacoreguenga]

Saemin, check the following website:

http://www.adstech.com/

and look for the "USB Instant DVD".

You'll be amazed by its low price, good quality and nice features.
It's an external box, featuring Audio and video RCA inputs and outputs, as well as S-video connectors.
It's not genlockable, but you can grab a good TBC at the station in order to get a pretty decent, if not superb, capture quality in mpg 1 or mpg 2.
I'm looking forward to buy one, as I'm impressed at it.

[Roginator]

www.KYESTV.com in Anchorage, Alaska claims to be capturing some of their shows off of satellite in digital form. I have no idea what they use, but you can ask at their website.

They are a relatively small UPN affiliate.

[vhelp]

roginator,

I think you ment this link:
* http://www.kyes.com/

-vhelp

[WizyWyg]

If you want to do brodcast quality, you wont find anything under $3000. Better rethink your position and what you want to do.

You might wanna contact your PUblic access channels to see what they use (some will allow you to use their equipment to edit, capture, etc). Our public access channel uses a $15,000 set-up.

[ironwood321]

I have heard that the ADS USB Instant DVD www.adstech.com is fairly good at a high data rate but it can suffer from AUDIO and VIDEO SYNC problems with longer footage.

I don't believe you can reliably get MPEG at any high bit rate over a USB 1 line. I suspect some other compression like MJPEG or DV is being used as an intermediate format with this product.

There is a NAVIS Pro for UKP £222 www.pentamedia.com which is a PCI card based solution