Capture card suggestions for a newbie

[axlish]

Hello, I am thinking about getting a capture card for home movie, vhs and laserdisc conversion to DVD. Can you fellas please suggest to me a good capture card. If it helps click on my PC's stats. Thanks.

[somte]

Canopus ADVC-100 Advanced Digital Video Converter... is a pretty good one. It is quite expensive.

[videojoe]

If you do not plan on buying a new larger hard drive I would look for something which will do realtime mpeg2 conversion. Software encoders will almost always look better though. Depends on how perfect you want the final result to look.

I would suggest buying a larger hard drive and the canopus AVDC-50 or a digital camcorder with analog passthrough as the easiest way to get quality conversion to DVD. You will also need a cheap firewire card to use this method. The DV file created will need about 13GB per hour of video which will need to be converted to MPEG2.

You can also buy a cheap $40us tv capture card and achieve similar results to the digital converters mentioned above. Unfortuantely this method will require a lot more time to tweak your system to get good results. You may also have audio sync issues. Many people get great results using one of these cheap cards. Again you will need to convert to MPEG2 after capture

You will most likely need to encode for long periods of time with your machine, if you can let it run overnight it really isn't a big deal.

[axlish]

with the camcorder method, are you suggesting that I record to the camcorder and then capture it? I have a comcorder that I could do that but for some reason I never thought of that.

[videojoe]

not exactly, many newer digital camcorders have a passthrough feature where you can input an analog signal and the camera will convert it to a DV file and export it (via firewire) to your computer. This can only be done with a digital camcorder. It is doing the same conversion as the Canopus AVDC-50. If you own or were in the market for a digital camcorder it is just something to consider.

You would not want to record it to your camcorder if you have a analog (HI8, VHS-c, VHS) cam. That would only degrade the quality.

[axlish]

No of course it is digital :P
When I read that I was imagining myself trying to hook a vhs camcorder into a PC and being frustrated
I have a miniDV cam
Do you think that would be cool to use that as a vcr and record vhs, and LD's and then convert them to the PC? I just didn't think the quality would be that great.

[videojoe]

If you have an analog in and a DV out you are set. On my cam I do not have to record to tape. The signal goes through to the computer. I have heard on some models you do have to record to tape first then play the tape to the computer. Check your manual to see if it has the passthrough feature. Even if you have to record to miniDV first it will not hurt the picture (unless you are pointing the cam at the TV to record ). just adds a step.

I have messed with 2 different capture cards before I bought my digital cam. The digital cam does a better job converting than either of my cards and I have no audio problems. The resolution of mini DV is almost DVD resolution so it is more than capable of capturing all the information from a VHS tape. You will be amazed. Like I said before, all you need is a 15$ firewire card, just make sure it does not use the TI chipset.