Cheap capture card for strictly 8mm camcorder transfers

[Nelson9937955]

I don't need any other features other than being able to capture 8mm movies off my camcorder to my PC. Ofcourse I want to keep at least the original quality intact when I transfer to DVD. I have tried the dazzle hardware in the past that only captures at half res and is absolute garbage. I would love to get a Canopus but it is just out of my price range now. Could anyone recommend something 50- 100 dollars that will suit my needs perfectly?

[Nelson9937955]

Topic closed


just got me a AVerMedia AVERDVD EZMAKER , 30 bucks

[Zen of Encoding]

I don't need any other features other than being able to capture 8mm movies off my camcorder to my PC. Ofcourse I want to keep at least the original quality intact when I transfer to DVD. I have tried the dazzle hardware in the past that only captures at half res and is absolute garbage. I would love to get a Canopus but it is just out of my price range now. Could anyone recommend something 50- 100 dollars that will suit my needs perfectly?

Do you have an ebay account?
Buy a cheap used Digital-8 (Sony TRV120) camcorder. These cams
will play 8mm analog tapes and create digital 1394 firewire output
from the analog tape. Then all you need is an inexpensive firewire card
($10 at Fry's) to input the signal from the camcorder. But be careful, not
all the Digital-8 camcorder models have this feature, called "pass-through".

I've seen several of these older Sony Digital-8 cameras go for less than
$50. AND.... the truly brilliant *up-side* to this method is that you also
get a working CAMERA (not the greatest image quality) out of the deal,
instead of just an analog input video capture card. Check out these
examples:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3876894409

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3878655034

[psigna]

AVerMedia AVERDVD EZMAKER

How is that working for you? I have considered purchasing something similar just for the same reason that you did,

[FulciLives]

The AverMedia DVD EZMaker PCI is a very good quality capture card.

However some people, including myself, have had trouble installing it and getting it to work just right.

In my case I have no idea what the problem was and I found it very annoying. It finally installed but wouldn't capture without dropping frames.

I am an advanced user but just couldn't get it to co-operate.

I was tempted to delete my HDD and start with a fresh install ... that might have done the trick ... but I didn't feel like doing that. Maybe in a few months when the computer gets more "messy" I will try that.

So what am I saying?

Very few people have trouble with this card but a very few do so keep that in mind and don't let it keep you from buying it but try to buy local so you can return it if need be.

Also make sure you test it alot at first. My drop frame problem wouldn't show up until almost an hour into a capture.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
This card is best used for AVI capture. If you want to capture direct to MPEG-2 DVD quality then you should get a hardware MPEG capture card like the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250