Which capture hardware/software is best?

[brergo]

I just purchased a Dazzle Digital Video Creator USB and am very concerned about the quality (or lack thereof). It only supports MPEG1 and the largest image size of 352x240. The software however, is very easy to use. I am basically going to be converting 8mm analog camcorder tapes to CD, DVD and VHS and eventually will get a DV camcorder and plan to convert to the same media. I want something relatively easy to use and not super expensive. Looking at some of the higher rated capture cards on this site, I see that Canopus is top rated. However, I am a little confused as to what exactly is included with their capture card. Do I have to purchase additional software or other hardware components to do what I want to? Also noticed some good press on Pinnacle Studio Deluxe? Any other product suggestions? I am running a PIII/933 with 384 mb ram and about 20gig left on my hd. Any info/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Brian

[snowmoon]

Your best quality will come from using an offline encoder line TMPGenc ( shareware ) or CCE ( hackware, retails for $2500 ). For that you will need a capture card ( don't get yourself too worked up any bt878 card with stereo will do ) and some capture software. VDub will get you started ( check how-to guides ). You might want to play around with the software first to see how much diffrent a proper offline encode looks.

Cheers

[brergo]

What exactly does "offline encoding" mean? Also, I would want a capture device/card that can capture analog for now and digital in the future, any suggestions? Will the card also allow me to output to VHS tape?

[snowmoon]

offline = not realtime ( ie capture then encode )

Analog capture and DV capture are two diffrent beasts and you should probably focus on one OR the other to start. Video out is also a diffrent product entirly. Remeber that DVD-R's are getting close to being afordable for the masses.

Focus on the analog capture first, read up some more, check out the samples that are outputted from TMPGeng for VCD and CCE for SVCD.