Choosing caputure device(s) - options please.

[dadrab]

What’s going on, folks?
I’ve been a little hesitant to post here for fear that I might be misunderstood to be an idiot (and maybe I am), but I feel like I’ve done my due diligence with regard to research and I’m breaking down and posting a question.

I’m building a system – ground up. My main objective with this system is to capture VHS and SVHS video for burning onto DVD and watching on a stand-alone player and HDTV. Of course I’m looking for high quality captures and I don’t mind taking my time to do it right. As an example, I’ll tell you all that I’ve been turning records (yeah, the bigass black vinyl round things) into CDs almost since the first CD burners hit the market. My years of experience in that area have led me indirectly to this question.

System technology is rapidly changing. I make it a point to look at the system configurations of most of the regular posters here to see what kind of hardware you’re running. I understand most of what I’m seeing except when it comes to actual capture devices.

Some use stand alone units; others have on-board capture cards, etc.

I need some guidance.

I don’t have thousands of dollars to put into a capture device, but I don’t want to cheap out and put a piece of junk in my box either. I’d like some advice on good, reasonably priced capture cards based on what’s available in today’s market. I’ve tentatively chosen a GIGABYTE GV-NX66T128VP Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16. My main VCR is a JVC HR 9600U.

I’m also a bit puzzled as to whether hardware encoders (to MPEG2) have a defined advantage over quality AVI capture devices whereby the resulting files are then re-encoded to the desired format.

I thank you all in advance for your input.

[zoobie]

I take it you have a pci express slot for your card...
good luck!

[dadrab]

I take it you have a pci express slot for your card...
good luck!

Yes, my MB has two.

[harley2ride]

If you want a one card solution, you don't wan't a geforce 6600. You need at least a Geforce 6800 if you want to use nvidia's purevideo (which will encode video). But you would be much better off to do one of the following.
1. Buy your Geforce 6600, and a hauppage capture card which will allow you to capture to avi or mpeg2.
2. Buy a Radeon AIW card X1600 to X1900 series. They will do it all, and can take advantage of AVIVO, which is Radeons answer to PUREVIDEO.
3. Get any video card at or above TI4200 level, then get either an ADS PYRO AV/LINK or a Canopus ADVC110 (both of which lock the audio and video during capture), and then you have the ability to capture from nearly any source, including strictly capturing audio if you so desire. You only need a better video card if you intend on playing games.
4. Decent video card, and ADS DVD XPRESS USB2.0 device for video capture. (Firewire capture is preferred, but many people have expressed great results using ADS DVD Xpress and similar USB2.0 devices. You just have to make sure that you have usb2.0 ports on your computer.


You want at least a 2.8ghz P4 or the athlon equiv. for video encoding, and at least 512mb of ram, but preferably 1gb of ram. Two seperate hard drives is a must. They need to be at least ATA100 7200rpm hard drives, and if you plan on doing a lot of video, I recommend around an 80gb hd for your software/operating system, and at least a 250gb hd for your video,music, photo storage. If you want to go all out, get a raptor for your main drive, and a 300gb sata for your storage. Add a dedicated firewire card (you can get an ADS Pyro firewire card for about $20.00 on ebay.

Then comes the software. There are numerous free solutions, there are all-in-one solutions which are pretty good, then there is the semi-professional software. The free solutions will do all of the basic stuff nicely. If you want lots of effects, ease of use, and not having to use multiple programs to do your work, look at Ulead Video Studio 8 or 9, or Ulead DVD Movie Factor 5. If you want to go a step above that, you can get Adobe Premiere Elements, or Vegas Movie Studio, which are both toned down semi-professional editing and authoring softwares. If you want to go big, look into picking up Adobe Premiere 6.5 or 7.0, or Vegas 5. They will both do professional level stuff, and they both have a fairly steep learning curve. I've done about 40 - 80 hours of nothing but reading and tutorials with both softwares, and have gotten a mid range comfort level with them.

[dadrab]

Harley2ride,

Thanks very much for your input. Now I've got something to seriously contemplate.