Best Video Capture Card

[supersoccer2001]

I'm looking at capturing home vidoes stored on 8 mm tape, and also some tv captures. I want to capture in the best quality possible for later conversion to mpeg2 svcds. I have a very fast computer (P4 2.27 gigahertz w/ 512 meg ram) and plenty of harddrive space (400 gig plus). I'm looking for a video capture card that's preferably less than $200. I would appreciate it if you guys could help me out with a recommendation or two.

Thanks a lot.

[musher70]

WOW...400 gigs huh, got any opticals in there???

[Mavrick]

I have the ATI All-In-Wonder 8500DV, and it works great 4 me!

It has RCA and SVideo in/out as well as Firewire 1394. It also rocks for 3D Gaming....

And now you can get them Cheap $150.00 range +/- a few bucks...

[ya_jai]

Hey Marvick, I have a question for you about AIW 8500DV. Have you ever tried to connect any devices like external harddrive or burner (the one that required in-out operation) with AIW firewire ports? I have read somewhere that firewire ports in this card does not support full feature like you can capture on transfer from DV but cannot send video back to.

I just bought this card a week ago and really like it (I bought mainly to transfer file from miniDV). Now I kind of have a second thought becuz if firewire port cannot be used with anything else then it might not worth it.

[Mavrick]

Sorry, I've not tried to hook any other devices to it. I've only hooked a VCR and a Hi8 Camera to it...

[supersoccer2001]

I have the ATI All-In-Wonder 8500DV, and it works great 4 me!

It has RCA and SVideo in/out as well as Firewire 1394. It also rocks for 3D Gaming....

And now you can get them Cheap $150.00 range +/- a few bucks...

Thanks for the reply, I don't need the gaming power, i've already got a video card dedicated for that, i just need the capture capability. I'll check the specs of that card out.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

Oh, i got a good deal on a bunch of (ide) harddrives, hooked them up to a server on my network and to my computer and another computer, works like a charm.

[SHS]

Hauppage WinTV-PVR 250

[The village idiot]

With that much storage space, you should look into the canopusADVC-100. Or if your budget allows, one of the better canopus products.

[supersoccer2001]

I want to confirm that all the tv in cards listed here and on the capture card page will convert the analog signal from my 8mm/vhs/tv to digital. Can someone please confirm that or do i need a special card or box like the canopus advc100 which specifically states it converts analog to digital? Thanks.

Also, is there an advantage for using the canopus advc100 or advc1394 as opposed to any other type of capture card, such as the hauppauge series?

One more question, without the "locked audio when converting analog to digital ensuring perfect audio and video sync" in the canapus advc-50 (or other canapus products) will my audio and video get desynced? or is this a marketing ploy?

[The village idiot]

The sync statement is not all marketing ploy, but not all truth either. Most of the DV capture devices will keep the audio in sync with the video. You can get one of the capture cards, but be warned, you may suffer from hardware incompatibilities! If you find a card that works with your hardware, you will want to use an AVI file format to capture your video. Now if you chose a capture card, you are also more likely to suffer from audio/video sync problems. You may also need to get a Time Base Corrector (TBC) to stabilize old tapes (canopus claims this to be unnecessary for their ADVC series devices).
If you have a firewire connection on your computer, caturing from an analog to DV device may be the easiest choice. It is best to have your capture drives formatted as NTFS (assuming you use windows) as DV format is 13GB an hour roughly. Personally I would (did) choose an external firewire capture device. I corrently use a Dazzle (Razzle) Hollywood DV bridge.

I do not recommend Razzle products!

It will get upgraded sometime if the future, for now I will live with some of it's shortfalls, as it essentially works.

There is 1 definititive statement:

You get what you pay for! The cheaper the device, the more likely you will have problems. If you check the capture cards section, and sort by highest ratings, you will likely see the canopus stuff at the top of the list. If I could have purchased the ADVC-100 in a local store, so as to return it if it didn't work, I would have purchased that. Also look at the products from http://www.datavideo-tek.com

Just my 2 cents. Not trying to push you anyway or the other.

edited to eliminate non sequitor rambling

[ronbo613]

Hello-I have used ATI All In Wonder cards for analog capture for a few years(I currently have an AIW Raedon 7500). If I had to do it today, I would use the ADVC-100. You can use it on other computers, you can change your graphics card if you want, it doesn't use computer resources. I know a couple guys who use them, they have no major complaints. The quality of their analog captures is as good, or better, than mine with the Raedon AIW. I would also agree, in this case, you get what you pay for. An extra $100-150 is worth it, IMO, if you get the best quality out of your captures.

[supersoccer2001]

Can someone explain how the ADVC Canopus 50 card works? Do you put it in a PCI slot, then somehow transfer the output from the card to a firewire port? It says it needs a firewire port to work, i'm confused as to how the card would work with a firewire port.

[The village idiot]

I was reading about this one on their site a few nights ago. It says that the ADVC-50 only takes power from the PCI buss, that's why you can mount it in a 5 1/4 drive bay. You still need a firewire card to connect it to your computer. The ADVC-1394 is just the ADVC-100 mounted onto a firewire card. Your most versitile setup would be with the ADVC-100, but the 50 and a good firewire card would be cheaper.

[Fede Pede]

Hi...
Get the Hauppage WinTV-PVR 250 it's a great Card.

[sanssome]

Just to clarify what Village Idiot said, the ADVC-1394 is not an ADVC-100 on a Firewire board. It doesn't do analog out, only DV. If you want to transfer back to VHS, HI8 camcorder etc, stick with the ADVC-100 and a Firewire card.

If you only need to transfer analog to digital, this is the least expensive Canopus option and saves you having to buy the Firewire card. From what I've read in other posts you can't get away with purchasing a cheapie TI based firewire card, with many trying it and then moving to a Pinnacle Studio DV board which will run twice or three times as much.

Disclaimer: I'm no expert...I just arrived on the scene a few days ago.

[The village idiot]

Guess I hadn't read enough about the ADVC1394, Sorry. I didn't spend too much time looking at it because I have onboard firewire, and therefore didn't really need the ADVC1394.

[supersoccer2001]

Thanks for the help guys, i really appreciate it. Since i don't have a firewire port yet, i'm really looking at the canopus ADVC1394.

[SonKun]

I know this is realy off subject but what kind of mother board do you have that will let you have 400gb. im asking because mine wont do anything above 120gb so.... what kind is it?

[jonhildrum]

Newer Motherboards will allow drives larger than 120GB. However, there are no 400GB drives available at present. Thus, he has several drives. I myself have 360GB on my video machine (4 drives - 3X80G and 1X120GB)

[The village idiot]

If you read all of the messages, he explains the large amount of storage he has.

[supersoccer2001]

I've got a network set up, 80 gigs on one machine, 60 on another, 120 on yet another, and another 80 on another. 100mbit connection on my lan, got plenty of speed to move stuff around, don't notice a difference really between a local and a network drive.

Alright, i settled on getting 2 cards, one is a Hauppauge WinTV w/ FM stereo, bought it today for $40, super marked down! I'm also planning on buying a canopus product later this month for high quality capturing of home videos.

What i'm got a question on now is what is the best TV-capturing software, price doesn't matter. Preferably something for Windows (2000) , although i could set up a linux box to run it on. Got enough speed and memory to run anything. I would be looking for some software that would be able to schedule captures (perhaps with a TV-guide like appearance), edit out commercials, and have an "always on top" option so my screen wouldn't be hid every time i wanted to work on something else and watch TV on my pc at the same time. Please give some recommendations, because the software that came with the card is not acceptable to me. For those options, will i need digital cable?

Thank you for your replies.

[SonKun]

no i know you couldent have it all on one drive but. all my mother board suports is 120gb altogether. so i was wandering if you had like 2 200gb drives or somthing. and you say that new drives support more than 120 so how much do they support anywhay without an adapter pci card?

[supersoccer2001]

It's not all on one computer, i've got somthing like 12 computers in the house, got 400 gigs total, not more than, about 180 gigs i think on a single machine (my server).

Edit: planning on getting more too, they usually get great deals around thanksgiving, got three 60 gig drives for $50 each last year.

[xed]

Village Idiot (who is certainly _not_ an idiot) is absolutely correct when he recommends that you capture to DV. To clarify, DV Type 1 is a digital video format which employs a roughly 5:1 compression (using a discrete cosine transform, but that's neither here nor there). The point is that Type 1 DV has a very high data rate of 3.51 megaBYTES (not BITS, that's BYTES) per second, which makes for superb picture quality (depending of course on your video input hardware). Type 1 DV clocks in at around 25 mbits/sec, and that's significantly higher than even the best DVD player can handle. So DV is a very high quality digital video format.
There are quite a few reasons to buy a video card which will capture to DV (either Type 1 or Type 2, preferably Type 2, but some video capture cards only allow Type 1. Also, some video editing software only works with Type 1 DV).
[1] As better codecs appear and more and more DVD players support DivX (AKA MPEG4), you will be able to get better and better results by encoding a very high bitrate DV video file to the newer compressed video formats. My own experience strongly suggests that Divx (MPEG-4) looks drastically better at the same bitrate using the same video source as compared with MPEG2. So capturing to DV lets you work with newer better compressed video foramts like Divx if you want to in the future.
Right now, like most other folks, I work with MPEG-2, but when every DVD player supports Divx, I will shift to Divx. So (probably) will everyone else. If you start with the highest-uqlaiyt possible source, DV, your encoded videos will look better down the road as better ecnoded video formats appear. (Divx is probaly not he best ecnoded video format possible -- science will probably advance, and things will probably get better down the road for us video encoding enthusiasts. For example, fractal methods of video encoding loom onthe horizon, promising even better video quality with even smaller filesizes than MPEG4/Divx.)
[2] Dazzle products are notoroiusly buggy. They have major compatability problems depending ont he chipset on your motherboard. I've heard that one of the VIA chipsets is totally incompatible with the Dazzle DVC II, and there also seem to be serious incompatibilities with various windows versions (such as W2K).
You _might_ have good luck with a Dazzle product...but if you don't, you're really stuck. Moreover, you will _not_ be able to capture to DV, only to MPEG-2... And since MPEG-2 is probably on its way out as a video format (it will soon be replaced by Divx, I suspect, as more and more DVD players support playback of DIVx-encoded files) you don't want to be stuck with an antique video format like MPEG-2.
[3] The software available with the Dazzle products is pretty poor, by all accounts. Very rudimentary. You can supplement it to some extent with superb freeware like FlaskMPEG and BBMPEG and TMPGenc... But in that case, why go with Dazzle at all? Why not capture to DV and use the freeware?
[4] On the downside, there appear to be several potential drawbacks with using an all-in-one video card like the Radeon 8500 as opposed to a dedicated device like the Pinnacle DV500. One of the issues you face is that the Radeon 8500 is not, according to all accounts, quite as rock-solid and reliable a dedicated device like the Pinaccle DV500. (AVOID the Dazzle DV Bridge! It reportedly has _major_ bugs causing it to shut down unpredictably during capture!)
The Canopus and Pinnacle products are superb (I have friends who use 'em -- I've stood looking over their shoulders) and they cost serious bucks, > $500. However, spending the extra money on a capture card may be worth it avoid all the hassle. It really depends how much hassle you want to deal with. All-in-one video cards like the Radeon 8500 might cost a lot of time and a lot of hassle and a lot of calls to tech support--though, depending on your motherboard and system, perhaps not (it depends on your m'board and OS and the other devices you're using on your system).
The big advantage of the Radeon is price and the fact that you have a large user base of superbly knowledgable experts to help you out if you have problems. The downside is that you don't have a lot of high-quality video editing software, and you _might_ encounter installation hassles.
Canopus and Pinnacle DV capture cards cost serious bucks in part because they include superb software like Premiere 6. That software is worth the extra money. If you want to edit your video, you will really need high-quality video editing software like Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.5 (I use it and can highly recommend it, provided you get the latest version, 6.5) and Premiere 6 (I don't use it, but have watched over folks' shoulders as they ahve used it, and it works great).
So bear in mind that down the road you may well want to get high-quality video editing software. In that case, it really makes more sense to sepnd the extra money _now_ and buy a relatively higher-end capture card like the Canopus or the Pinnacle, since they bundle Premiere 6 with the card itself.
If you buy a Radeon, you will have to spend perhaps another $300 to $500 just to buy the Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.5 or Premiere 6 video editing software sometime in the future.
So you _might_ want to rethink your price point on the capture card, unless you already have Premiere 6 or Ulead MSP 6.5.
I use a DV capture system myself bundled with Ulead MSP Pro and I've very happy with it. I can do just about everything I want to, up to and including producing som pretty serious Hollywood-type productions. Depending on what you want to do, you should think seriously about getting a card capable of DV capture with bundled high-quality video editing software like Ulead or Dobe Premiere.

[OptimusPrime22]

where did you get those deals from?

[supersoccer2001]

OptimusPrime22: Best buy, thanksgiving sale last year. Sold out in literally 5 mins.

xed: VERY infomative post, thank you. I already have Premiere 6, been experimenting with it for a while, and i'm very pleased with it. Could you please compare Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.5 to Premiere 6 if you have had experience with both, i'm not set on either yet. Please list some advantages or disadvantages of one over the other, bear in mind i'm working with editing home movies. I think i'm set on getting a canopus advc device, i'm leaning toward the advc-1365.

Thanks for all the info. Still trying to make a final decision.


Can anyone help with my other question:

What i'm got a question on now is what is the best TV-capturing software, price doesn't matter. Preferably something for Windows (2000) , although i could set up a linux box to run it on. Got enough speed and memory to run anything. I would be looking for some software that would be able to schedule captures (perhaps with a TV-guide like appearance), edit out commercials, and have an "always on top" option so my screen wouldn't be hid every time i wanted to work on something else and watch TV on my pc at the same time. Please give some recommendations, because the software that came with the card is not acceptable to me. For those options, will i need digital cable?

Thanks guys, this board and it's users are fantastic.

[VideoMann]

I've been using the ADVC-100 for several months and with any capture software you can capture from VCR,Cable TV,Digital Tape,Analog Tape everytime without a glitch. Best quality for capturing anything at a very reasonable price.

I've used Premiere, VegasVideo3,PowerDirector,iUVCR, no-matter what capturing software you use it works!, no drop-outs, no out-of-sync audio. DVD capture size.

It is also the most reliable product at any price, and the most flexible. One glitch that I have is audio is chirpy while capturing and I think it is a WinXP bug but the final clip is always perfect.

[Oldgamer]

Any fireware card will do a good job. I bought no-name fireware card with some software and cable include just for $19 (free shipping) and it works perfectly without a glitch. I think, since card supports a standard, it's works fine, no difference.

[supersoccer2001]

ok, good, i'll use Premiere 6.0 for video capturing, but what about TV-caps? I would like something that would be able to schedule captures (perhaps with a TV-guide like appearance), edit out commercials, and have an "always on top" option so my screen wouldn't be hid every time i wanted to work on something else and watch TV on my pc at the same time.

[jonhildrum]

no i know you couldent have it all on one drive but. all my mother board suports is 120gb altogether. so i was wandering if you had like 2 200gb drives or somthing. and you say that new drives support more than 120 so how much do they support anywhay without an adapter pci card?

ANSI ATA Committe incorporated a proposal from Maxtor called ATA/ATPAPI -6 which uses 48 bits instead of 32 bits for addressing a single disk. This is being /has been incoporated into bios for newer motherboards as well as severl add on cards.
The total amount of data that can be accessed using this approach on a single drive would be 144000000 Gigabytes.

The old system used 32 bits but only 28 of these were used for addressing generating a limit of 137 Gigabytes.

Note: The present operating systems would be the limit with the new ATA/ATAPI -6 standard. The operating systems still use 32 bits for addressing thus end up with a limit of 2200 Gigabytes. Some operating systems such as win95 has a much lower limit.