Please Recommend a capture card by tonight!!

[valzuniga]

I have a:
ECS K7S5A Motherboard
I also have two 30 gig 7200 rpm drives.
Athlon XP 1700+

I have heard that the ECS mobo, has some problems with some cards, I'm just loooking for a card that can capture my vhs family tapes and put them into vcd/svcd format at decent (doesnt have to be perfect) quality. I am looking to spend $120, or less.

Please give me your suggestions, and thank you in advance!!
--val

[sommersby]

As long as your not running winxp any good tuner/capture card using the 848 (or something like that chipset will be fine. I used an aver tvfm99 card for over a year and it captured just fine on win me, xp does not support allot of the cheaper capture cards so that is why I said what I did in the beginning, when I went to winxp I went to the ATI aiw radeon but the capture are not any better than I had before, and I have even had the $250 winpvr card and again the same results, so for your purpose, get to the nearest show and put down about $40 and get a good name brand tuner capture card, ATI, avermedia, pinicle, etc.

[vhelp]

valzuniga,

don't get yourself those expensive cards, ie, ATI Radeon, etc. They R all just overkill for your capturing needs!!

a cheap ATI-TV wonder card will do just fine. I use one
at this time. Also, you could try the Wintv GO card.

I'd also recommend the DC10, but I still hvaen'et figured
out how to fix the color issue with this card. Many people
here say that they don't notice anything, but I think they
have ben using too long to notice. So, stay away from it.
It's a good card, but the color issue keeps me away from it.

* $69 - ATI-TV Wonder
* $49 - Wintv GO
* <$59 - DC10 (not recommended due to color issues)
* $39 - PC PVR (personal video recorder) (req.'s min. W98SE or >)

* Remember, with these cards, you'll have to encode the avi's.
and pending on your system speed, etc. you're in for a long encode.
* Don't expect quick turnarounds. You seem to be in a hurry ta get
things going. If this is your first endever, expect many problems
with just about everything and anything, ie, hardwarey, card, irq's
capturing, encoding, burning, etc., etc., etc...
* start reading to your left NOW!!
* Don't just connect your card, and starting posting a zilion questions.
before you've read enough to your left, and understand your card, etc.
etc.

Welp, thats about it for now.

-vhelp

[bbb]

I really like the DC 10+. I also really liked vhelp's DC 10+ captures (they look really nice on my monitors and TVs). Personally, I had no problems with colors other than it capturing a bit too dark; this can be easily adjusted in the capture control panels by moving the brightness up a bit (I also adjust the contrast and up the sharpness).

DC10+ has built in hardware MJPEG compression so it should capture at 640x480 on your 1700XP without dropped frames. It also has easy to use editing software. You have to use Tmpgenc or CCE to encode for quality VCDs/SVCDs.

With other cards (TV Receiver Cards and ATI Capture cards), your CPU has to do the compression work which may result in dropped frames. On an 1700XP, this may not be a problem. The plus side with these cards is that you can capture at VCD, SVCD, (and a variety of other) resolutions. However, many people recommend capturing at higher resolution for better down-resizing detail. You might also want to use Pic MJPEG or Huffy codecs for compression. Realtime MPEG2 encoding will drop plenty of frames even with your 1700XP and a Radeon 8500. You probably have to use MJPEG or Huffy for capture compression and Tmpgenc or CCE for VCD/SVCD encoding. Oh, and you might need to buy AVI_IO for fewer dropped frames.

Whichever card you decide to get (I recommend the DC 10+ if you can get it for cheap <$70), be sure to download the latest drivers for your capture card, video card, sound card, DirectX, use Windows 98SE (too many driver problems with XP and ME is no good), latest motherboard chipset drivers, latest motherboard bios, to minimize problems.

[vhelp]

bbb (others) ,

* First, tanx 4 complements on my "past" encodes by my DC10+
I've sense, taken a look just today (b4 reading your post
here) and STILL see the color issues I mentioned.
* Don't get me wrong. The DC10+ is a great capture MJPEG
card!!! I can cap at 640x480, but that's NOT what I want!
I like capping at 352x480. Since I can't get the DC10+
to cap at 352x480, and fix my color issues, I dropped the
DC10+!! I get good caps with my ATI-TV Wonder, though its
not an hardwared MJPEG. I've done some pretty decent looking
VCDs from this ATW card. I'd love to do one with the DC10+
but I DON'T want to cap at 640x480 anymore! IMO, I just
don't see ANY difference in quality (640 vs. 352)
* B4U stated, ...yes, you can cap at 352x480 with the DC10+
card via avi_io or virtualdub, but it cuts/crops the image
by 40-50%, wayyyyyyyy to much. This is not what you want.
* color issues, ok. I know all about the color adjustments
in virtualdub and tmpg. I use them quite often. So, that's
no problem. But, what I'm talking about is the color shifing
or spacing. It's only slite, but I noticed it right away
when I did several caps of Star Trek E. You'll notice the
peoples faces are on the green side. I thought it was a "hue"
thing and adjusted it, but that didn't do it. bright/contrast
and gamma doesn't do it either. bbb, I think you're too
used to it to know the difference anymore. Really! To see
what I mean, next time Star Trek E comes on (Sunday) do a small
cap of it with the DC10+ and then do a small cap with a diferent
cap card. Then, encode each avi file. You WILL see the
difference!!!
* I got my card for $59 at CC a year ago.
* as for my encodes, also, I've noticed that they could have
ben done even BETTER!!! Today, I could do a much BETTER job
of the caps I did and post them again for comparison to my older
DC10+ captures, but I'm not up to it at this point in time.

Here's a VCD sample I did by my ATI-TV Wonder card.

Welp, thats all for now.

-vhelp

[leebo]

Just my 2cts., but you can get an AIW Radeon for about $170 US right now, and although it's not a hardware Mpeg card, it will allow you to capture directly to mpeg1 and 2 in real time. You won't have to wait around to re-encode.

As for the ECs motherboard, I have one and it's the worst MB's I've ever had. Whatever you do, don't expect to run Win XP on it with out problems.

[valzuniga]

I actually run win Xp wiyhout any problems at all. Installed flawlessly. or else I would have taken it back!!

[leebo]

You're a lucky SOB!

Well, I've built several computers, and have never had so much trouble as I did with this board. And when I asked ECS and my supplier to RMA it, they both told me where to go!

I've got it working OK now (Win XP), but never again will I buy from ECS.

[valzuniga]

Well people, I'd like to thank all of you who offered constructive help on my post. I saw that the Avermedia was recommended, and i had been looking at this card before. I then saw that it was at fry's for only 49 dollars. So i went down and bought it. My mobo like the card, and so did win Xp. it seems as though it's using something called a WDM driver. But i don't mind, as i captured with the HuffyYUV codec under Virtual DuB i got great results, converting into svcd with tmpgenc, also gave me great output to Svcd.
I'm NOT new to the vcd seen. I've been converting and ripping for a while now using the guides (vhelp!).
But anyway, thanks for all your input, it was very helpful. And to all of you bad-mouthing the ECS k7s5a mobo, out of a 60 minute video capture in huffyuv, I dropped ZERO frames!!!