Building a dedicated video capture pc

[Pa Kettle]

I want to build (or buy) a pc dedicated to video capture. Where is the best place to put my money? RAM, ultra fast hard drive, processor speed, or video capture card? A video card isn't needed (I have a few old ones) so a stand alone capture card is all that is needed.

I've seen people claim to get good results with a Pentium 133 and others say that at least a 2.4 gig is needed.

I don't want to be like the person who thinks a 3 gig processor will speed up his 56K modem downloads, but I want good captures without dropped frames. I'm hoping to get by with $600 to $1K.

Thanks, Pa

[holistic]

analog capture or digital capture (aka transfers)

*** What are your intentions , this will influence type of machine needed.***

Some basics.
MPEG 1/2 conversions are number crunching - the faster the CPU the better - period. Factors to consider : how much time you have to spare, does it botther you to encode overnight.

Memory 512Mb is so cheap go for it : I have 384 and get by . More is just bragging rights.

Harddrive : bigger the better (more you can store of course). Speed will ONLY become an issue if you are doing uncompressed analog captures.

Motherboard : get a quality board .This will halp in future upgrades.
http://motherboards.org/
ASUS, Abit, Gigabyte ,soyo, MSI are some of the best (to name a few)

Explain your intentions and a machine can be spec'ed out for you.

][

[holistic]

I just looked at your computer details.
Depending on your motherboard, it may be in your best intrests, (cheaper) to get a 80Gb or bigger drive and an A/D converter such as the Canopus AVDC-100 (-50) and keep your present setup.
The rest of the details you provided seem sufficent.

][

[Bob W]

I went that way and spent a lot of money just to capture from VHS tapes only to discover that my Panasonic DVD recorder does a much better job of it and in one third the time.

[The village idiot]

Well, a faster processor never hurts. But as Holistic suggested, you could do with what you have if you use a hardware analog to DV converter.

[SatStorm]

I can suggest you a cheap mobo perfect for analogue capture (only)

Any Nforce2 based motherboard. Asus and MSI are good and cheap.
Any cheap Athlon or Duron CPU (yes, Duron is back! Astalavista baby!)
Any win TV Hauppauge PCI card (wintvGo or primio fm are prety good)
On new motherboards, the built in audio is a good solution finally! So, a dedicated PCI sound card ain't neccessary. You save few euros/dollars that way.
2 HDs: One cheap 40GB for OS, Programs and Storing, one good 200GB or 250GB for capturing/proccessing avi files
256MB Ram is enough.

OS: Win2K (you don't need winXP). Buy them cheap second hand from Ebay if you don't own them.
Programs: Virtualdub, wfm2WDM wrapper and some virtualdub filters.

Those new motherboards, also have built in network cards. So the encoding of those avis could be carried to another PC with a better (faster) proccessor of your choice, for faster results.

This is the cheapest and best you can go.

I don't suggest direct mpeg 2 captures, or VGA cards for capturing of any kind. Even if most of the new ones are very good (Ati, Asus, Msi...), first there are somehow expensive, second you can do your job much better using cheaper and well known solutions.... IMHO always.

[overloaded_ide]

I want to build (or buy) a pc dedicated to video capture. Where is the best place to put my money?

My pocket, PM me for a paypal address

Ok now that we got that outa the way, I'll go back and read the rest of the tread :P

[overloaded_ide]

I use my systems for alot of things, so I may be over specked abit more than needed!

My main Box and some current prices, (or close, they drop so fast)
1700XP Cpu (retail boxed) $60
Iwill XP333 System board. (or any good one with good sound onboard) $75-$100
1 gig ram (256mb ddr will work fine, about $50)
ATI AIW Radeon 7500 (good capture and video card) $90-$125 if you can find it. Could go newer.
W2kPro
60gig Boot drive (size of your choice, larger better) $75?
120gig Capture drive (size of your choice, larger better) $120?

Size of capture drive depends how much you plan to do at one time! If your going to create a disk and delete your files, then 80gig or 120gig is fine, if you want to store lots of captures for awhile you defanatley need larger.
Get IDE 7200rpm drives!
I preffer MAxtor though I use WD also.

I never drop a frame with my system. If your not doing other stuff 256ddr is enough. Most my systems are 1700xp, that does anything you need to do. Faster might be better for encoding, and more ram too but not needed for capturing.

Actually the truth is I think capturing is the least taxing on the system!
Get good fast hard drives and a Good ATI card like the 7500, and most likely any old system you can run them in will capture ok.
I mean it ain't like you can put those in a 486

I used to capture to AVI files with a video capture card on a 486dx100 with only 8 megs ram at one time years ago!! Not good enough for todays standards, but hey it worked

Now I am starting all over, after years away, my how things change