Would Like Advice on a Capture Card

[videoguys]

I'm trying to help you. As was observed earlier in this thread, the DV Storm and RT2500 are more expensive then what the most of the guys here use. That's why you're not seeing a bunch of first hand info.

Since you don't want to go to the user boards for these cards and their doesn't seem to be many hands on users here, your going to have to get your info from someone. or somewhere else. You refer to Charlie White's excellent article at DV Format. He chose the RT2500 as the best card. I think the RT2500 is a great card as well.

When the first generation of the RT2500 first shipped it was a two board set called the RT2000. It had lots of compatability and installation issues. The RT2500 is a single board set based on the same technology with 3rd generation drivers. It is much more stable and easier to install. It has also become much more powerful with improved render speed, more real-time 3D FX and an even better keyframer. The integration with Premiere is very tight and it is certified for Premiere 6 under XP.

Canopus products have always had a well earned reputation for stability. Their slogan is "Just Edit" and they deliver. The draw back with Canopus is that this stability comes with a trade off. Not only is it more expensive but you need a more powerful machine to get the full real-time performance. In addition much of the DV Storms stability legend is based on using their Storm Edit NLE app. This basic app will get the job done for most event videography type stuff, but it is much less powerful and featured then Premiere. While DV Storm currently works great with Premiere 6, Canopus products usually lag the industry by 2-3 months for new certified Premiere drivers whenever Adobe has an upgrade. As an example their are still no official XP drivers for DV Storm.

Since this is a VCD/DVD centric site, I'm going to give you our top 2 recommendations for real-time editing and authoring. The RT2500 w/ DVDit! or the Pinnacle DVD1000 with Impressions Pro.

The key advantage of the DVD1000 is that it is an MPEG2 based system. You capture and edit in MPEG2. The quality is outstanding and you can export from Premiere with DVD ready streams in real-time or faster. You can also go back and re-edit MPEG2 DVD streams withour having to transcode them back to DV.

I'm sorry that your email to our tech support was not responded to. Our customers emails are the priority for tech support guys and they answer those first. If you have more specific questions you can email our sales team or give us a call.

I know my posts and articles are biased to the products we sell. Most folks realize this and weigh it into their decision making process. The one thing I will re-iterate is we stand behind all our prodcuts and our articles. We offer one of the best customer satisfaction guarantees in the industry and we have our own live tech support team to help you if you run into any issues.

I am sincerely trying to help you here and I'm also hoping to gain you as a customer.

Gary
Videoguys.com

[DW]

finally, something with a little thought involved...

ok, videoguys, i will concede that, for a moment, perhaps you actually want to help. The information that you provided did contain some tidbits of helpful knowledge (though, much of it, i noticed, could be found in the dvformat.com article I pointed out to you, or about the maturation of the Matrox line).

As for the the DVD line from Pinnnacle, i'm not really doing DVD creation or anything. Besides, you only get 1 simultaneous realtime effect (and that's with the 2000).

As for Premiere, I hardly ever use it. I hate it. Its probably the most buggy nle software ever made, and its functionality is somewhat limited. I do all my editing in Avid XDV, and would only use Premiere for capturing (becuase i have to). (oh, if anyone knows a good card to use/has full support for Xpress DV, that would be great!!)


Well, you still didn't say anything "bad" or explain any shortcomings of any of the products. At least you know you're biased, though. Maybe now you can try working on that....
Nevertheless, I will give you the benifit of the doubt that you are actually trying to offer some geniune help.

As for me becoming a customer of yours, don't hold yer breath, buddy. (you may want to talk to whoever is in charge about lowering your prices....)

-DW

PS- your tech "support" still hasn't gotten back to me. OK, fine, they help out customers first, but what's it been now? A week? More?

[Rich927]

What I would do is get a good firewire card, good software(Adobe), and a Digital Camcorder that has AV/in/out, SVideo in/out and Firewire. Use the Camcorder to capture AV and SVideo then send to computer thru Firewire. Or, use Camcorder as a bridge(some will let you do that). Save money this way and still get good results. A VCR with SVideo in/out too.
I find that when I record my VCR tapes to my Camcorder using SVideo, I get less generation loss. When I make VCR copies of projects I use the DV copy. I found a 1 in 4 out AV/SVideo Amp at Radio Shack for less than $50.00. Again less generation loss. Videoguys and B&H also have units which will do this. Each Video project I do, I save to DV and save MPG-1 and MPG-2 to CD. I use a Pyro Firewire card and a Matrox RainbowRunner card(it has AV and Svideo). Used to use MGI software. Currently using VideoStudio 6 and Virtualdub and TEMPEgen. Looking at other software. I heard that some of the Pinnacle cards don't capture .avi very well but that could be a user error.