External capture box or internal card for VHS to PC?

[Rudyard]

I have played around a little bit and am ready to buy a new PC and am getting a capture device of some sort to transfer the old VHS - PC - DVD.

On my current PC i have had trouble with a/v synch with my internal capture card. Im not sure of the exact brand but in the captrue settings of the program that it comes with simply called tv tuner, it says 'connexant capture'.

I know that my PC probably had a lot to do with a/v problems but either way im not getting that same card.

I have also tried an external USB capture device which is no good for Full size capture.

Then I read about devices such as the dazzle hollywood DV bridge which can connect via fire wire as a VHS - PC bridge. This seemed like what I needed until I went into a computer store and he advised me that the best way to captrure is through a good internal capture card, and my problems were a result of a crappy capture card. He had other external devices but recomended the capture card as the way to go for best results, if my PC was up to it.

Now my new PC will be a dual core PD 3.0ghz 2gb ram (may have to drop to 1) probably with one big hard disk, I have to toss up between 2 or 1 depending on budget but have heard a dedicated drive for capture is best (Could 1 big hd partitioned work as good?). Also a 256 mb graphics card (but they dont do anything for capture do they?)

So anyway the new PC will be up to capturing standard (should be, shouldnt it?) and I just have to pick a capturing device.

Is he right in saying the best option for home capture is an internal card with a decent PC? Or would an external device such as the dazzle be the way to go?

I have seen a leadtech winfast dv2000 card for a good price but dont know if that is a bottom end crap card or a good one. That was selling for $100 aussie dollars.

Thanks for any help.

[redwudz]

For good advice on capture cards, check http://digitalfaq.com/.

I have a fairly fast computer, but I gave up on capture cards a few years ago. They may have good quality output, but it seemed there were always 'issues'.

I moved to a Canopus DV capture device, a ADVC-100. DV is easy to edit, never any dropped frames, and never any audio/video sync problems. The quality is as good as the VHS tapes I copy.

Though I don't use one, a lot of members recommend a TBC (Time Base Corrector) when capping from VHS, no matter what method used. Some JVC VHS decks have a on board version of one which is also popular.

EDIT: I missed the part about your computer questions. I would go for at least 2 hard drives. Keep the boot and the capture drive separate. You can use a small HD of maybe 80GB for boot and as big as you can afford for a capture drive. Partitioning doesn't help as you are still using the same channel and controller. Separate channels are better.

Video cards, unless they are a capture card, have really no bearing on capturing or editing. They are for viewing.

For RAM, 1GB is plenty. Capturing is CPU intensive. RAM use is usually low. More RAM won't help.

[tarrickb]

Well, from my understanding an external capture box does not mean that it will not do a good job. For example the Cannapus ADVC-100 or 110 yield GREAT quality and are highly acclaimed.
However, now that you have a high performing PC, you could grab a cheaper internal PCI card and capture uncompressed AVI (using HuffYUV codec or something simular).

The benefit to some of the external capture boxes is that they offer hardware encoding (like Divx or mpeg2/4) meaning that once saved to your PC, you don't have to spend time re-encoding. But for you capturing VHS tapes I would suggest an uncompressed format, editing the video then encoding to whatever format you want.

Also, answering your Hard Drive question, it is BEST to have a dedicated HD not just an HD partition. Having a partition on the HD dedicated to capturing still means that the HD has to do two things at once (capture on one partition and do whatever it needs to for the system partition).

Hope some of this info helps.

[Rudyard]

Thankyou both it definately helps. Its hard for me to know what to get and hearing as much advice as possible helps.