Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP TV/FM Tuner PCI

[luvvbuzz]

i have just bought myself a capture card, a Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP TV/FM Tuner PCI, i have paid for it and it will be arriving in a couple of days. i would like some people to give me some advice about using it.
here is my system, amd 1600xp, jeway 266b motherboard, geforce 4 440mx graphics card, 512mb ram, 5.1 soundcard, master hdd 40gig 5400rpm, one slave hdd 30gig 7200rpm. running windows me or xp pro (i have a choice of which to use).
do you recommend i capture to the slave drive because of its faster speed? if i do that will i still only be able to capture a 4gig file due to size restrictions in fat32?
does anybody think i should use the origional bundled software with this card to capture with or should i get a different capture software to capture? i will be capturing from vhs mainly and also from tv.
previously i have tried using ads usb video capture which did not work, also i have tried using a radeon 64mb vivi card which i could not get to capture. maybe its just me, maybe i am thick and stupid, i dont know but i have yet to find a device that works for me. any help or suggestions will be appreciated.

[pixel]

XP Pro is the best choice for an OS. (Many people say ME was just a corporate plaything.)

Definitely capture to the slave drive, if you don't you can get all kinds of nasty problems from the 5,400rpm drive such as aud/vid going out of sync.

With XP Pro you should be able to capture to file sizes above 4GB (you said you are using fat32, you might need to reformat to NTFS)

You should probably stick with the bundled software because it is made for that card. You can try other software and see how you like it.

(Just for the record, I do not have that card, but these are rules in general for any video capturing card.)

[sullen]

I use iuVCR with 0 (zero) dropped frames on a 120GB 7200 hard drive. It is the only drive I have. iuVCR is configured to work well with the WDM drivers that work for WinXP and really help in preventing dropped frames. It is also the only program I could get to work that would capture at 720x480. I am currently working on capturing Schindler's list from LD. I did the first of two discs, 1hr 55min, with no dropped frames at 720x480 and 48000 wav audio. I am running a Shuttle with a 1.86 Barton 333mhz frontside and 512 DDR 400. Great little system for the price.

[ukrevrend]

I have now had this capture card for nearly a year now and this is my views.
Use XP only, capture to your 30g 7200 h/d, to get past fat 32, make sure if capturing a 90 min movie, keep the bitratte to about 4000, if it's 120 mins 3000. I tend to capture at 352 x 576 (Pal), if u use ntsc 352x480 mpeg 2, which u can still use to author it to DVD, most authoring software accept these sizes, although recentley, for the 1st time in numerous attempts, i am able to capture in fully compliant DVD standard 720x576, with no dropped frames. AMD 1.133mhz, 256 ddr.
As for the sotware that comes with the card, i recieved Ulead Video Studio v6, which would not allow me to capture at 720x576, too many dropped frames, but the quality was decent. Winfast capture software i found to be very basic. I also tried Cyberlink power vcr v3, good software with a option to adjust brightness, colour, contrast, hue, quality wasn't that great. I have now settled for InterVideo Win DVD Recorder v4.5.11.0, which allows me to capture at 720x576, no dropped frames, u can adjust brightness etc, also allows real time and it claims it can capture striaght to DVD-R, but thats never worked for me.

So all in all I would suggest u get WinDVD Recorder

Bless,

ukRevRend The 'Blessed' One