Video Capture Cards

[pacmans95]

please will some one help me, there are so many different capture cards out there, what is the best one to get. I want to put all my vhs tapes, vhs-c tapes and all my mini dv tapes on cd's that will play on regular home dvd player so I can watch them on my TV. I just brought a panasonic pv dc252 digital mini dv camcorder. I want to capture my movies off of the mini dv tapes and put them on cdr's to play on my home dvd player which plays all the formatts and I want the best quality possible. So far I hear the ATI radeon all in wonder, Dazzle and Pinnacle are the best but which models

Thanks
Paul

[FiEND]

I wouldnt get the "ATI radeon all in wonder". Video cards go out of date too fast, while a TV tuner will prob last and last.

I agree there are too many to choose from, and I have limited experience in different cards. depends on how much you wanna spend.

If I ever have to buy again, it will be a hauppage. I have a ATI TV Wonder now and sometimes (most times) I wish it would just burn up and die. The kind that you install 10 times and each time is a different problem

of course software has sooo much to do with it, and ATI just can't get it right.

so if you read anything in here, avoid ATI

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/products.htm

[Anonymous65]

It's pretty easy to make a choice if you know what you want to do with the video. There are basically 3 different types of video capture cards, depending on the type of needs you have.

1> Quick and easy video capture and make a VCD, SVCD or DVD disk of your captures. No editing is needed, a simple capture and burn process. For this, get a hardware based mpeg encoder card, like the Hauppauge PVR-250, Dazzle DVC II, ADS Instant DVD and so on. Here, I believe the PVR-250 is the cheapest and best card available.

2> You have all the time in the world and a large hard drive (and you're cheap). Get a $50 TV tuner card, capture your video in AVI, and then software compress the video to mpeg (and burn to disk). Even if this is the cheapest way to go, it is often the method that gives the best quality. However, you will spend a lot of time this way, both in conversion times and in learning how to use all the software and capture methods.

3> You want broadcast video quality, add video effects and edit your video to a move or music video. In this case, you capture video in DV form, directly from a DV camcoder, or a analog to DV converter. You need a super speedy PC with lots of hard drive space. Basically, money is no object for you, you can spend a few grand on your setup. The ADVC 24 bit uncompressed DV analog to DV converter at $300 is one of the best capture boxes, connected via firewire. You will of cource have to convert your video in software to mpeg and burn it. And with a >2 GHz CPU, the conversion will be fairly fast.

So, select in what group you're in, and then select the hardware to go with your needs.