[weldon]

I'm a bit confused after reading through the archives on Video Capture boards. I've been to cdrinfo.com and other boards as well, but I really wanted to get my advice here. I want to record the home movies we have on our Sony Hi-8 camcorder. This unit has composite video and mono audio output.


I'd like to make the best quality encodings possible for later burning to VCD and DVD-R.


While I'm at it, I'll need some video editing software. Is Movie Maker in Windows XP good enough?


I'm running Windows XP Home (final) on a Dell 4100, NVidia GeForce 2, 512MB, 1GHz PIII, 100GB HD. I also have a couple IDE drives available to dedicate to video capture.


My choices seem to be....


Hauppauge WinTV

Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge

Pinnacle Studio AV 7

ATI AIW

NVidia Personal Cinema


Is there anything else out there for consumer-grade equipment?

 

[Hugh Magoo]

go to compusa and see if they still have any iomagic pc pvr packages in stock. They cost around 40.00, offer good clean picture quality and include power vcr ii software, which you may or may not find suitable for your use.


There is a compusa up on Colorado Blvd, north of Dave & Buster's and south of Hooter's. Although there is probably one down by you as well.

 

[weldon]

Thanks for the tip on the I/O Magic board. I tried to find one but no one seems to carry them. I can buy them direct from I/O Magic but thought I'd follow up here first.


After doing some more research today, it looks like the following cards are supported under XP.


The Pinnacle Studio AV v7

Hauppauge WinTV has drivers out now

Dazzle Digital Video Creator II is on the XP HCL


I really want to be able to encode to 720x480/30fps (640x480 would be fine) and it looks like the Dazzle might be the only solution that offers that quality. It's a little more at $299 MSRP but I really want the best capture quality I can get for under $300.

 

[kazushi]

I ordered IOMAGIC PC PVR after reading other threads and received it hours ago.


I can capture 320x240 YUV2 using VirtualDub 1.4.7 on WinXP and Win2k, but no 720x480 or 640x480. From dscaler on Win2k, I can get 720x480. Therefore, I think their driver restricts the resolution up to 320x240. If somebody know any other drivers for PC PVR which allow me 640x480 or 720x480, please let me know. I knew EAS posted several links what I should try, but I got go. So, I just want to know if somebody already tried them.


Bundled Power VCR II, it crashed when I executed. Maybe, because I have AIW128P and its WDM driver in Windows? It may be possible that I can capture 720x480 from Power VCR II, but I don't know.


Anyway, the quality of PC PVR is not so bad. Actually, it's good for $40. AIW128P's RAGE THEATER chip has better quality of details and colors, but differences are small. If I can capture 720x480, the difference of detail quality may be not important. And I think I can adjust color.


I also own Pinnacle DC10+ older version of AV7. I don't remember the quality of the card. DC10+ doesn't have XP or 2k drivers yet. So, I haven't used it more than a year. I remember one problem. It supports only MJPEG, and I was having drop frame problem when I captured video using best quality. I believe it is a hardware MJPEG encoder problem, but I'm not sure. So, I suggest you to buy a card which also has ability to capture through using YUV2 or RGB24. In this case, you can solve drop frame problem by yourself by buying faster processors and disks. But, for MJPEG, there is no way to solve the problem.

 

[jkaiser]

I am not sure what you mean by analog video, but if you are referencing S-Video, then that a look at the modified card by KBK. I Runs about $140-150, it is highly praised here. KBK posts regularly so he shouldn't be too hard to find.

 

[butters]

Get virtualdub!

www.virtualdub.com


It is by far the best capture program out there, and it's free. Works with any capture card.


It also can be used to do all most of the editing work you want. It doesn't have fancy transitions, but has great filters. You can use it for your final production run.


I suggest you also get the Pic Mjpeg Codec, but you can use others, such as divx. The Mjpeg will work with less hardware. Divx capture requires at least PIII 600 and a fast (ATA 100) hard disk.

 

[H2OSkier]

I have the IO Magic card and for the most part it looks pretty good. At times I do see some horizontal but only on some material, usually watching Dish. I'm interested if anyone has compared these two cards and how much of an improvement the KBK card might provide. I don't mind springing for a new card but I'd like to know what kind of improvement I could reasonably expect.


Thanks,


Ken

 

[Dave W]

Quote:

Divx capture requires at least PIII 600 and a fast (ATA 100) hard disk.

Are you saying it's possible to do real-time Divx encoding with no specialized hardware (just fast CPU & hard drive)? Is that full resolution (720x480) at 30 frames/second?


I didn't realize you could do that. I thought you had to stream mjpeg or DV onto your hard drive, and then re-encode the data to Divx off-line. What software Divx codec can you use to do real-time encoding?


Thanks-


Dave

 

[weldon]

I really appreciate all the thoughts here. It turns out that I have a simpler solution available to me. The only analog video that I want to convert is on Sony 8mm tapes. There's a Wolf Camera in town here that will rent a Digital8 camcorder for $35/day. This baby will output the 8mm video over the firewire cable so I can use a plain vanilla 1394 adapter to get the video into a NLE.


I think I'm going to bite on the PYRO Platinum bundle which includes the full release of Adobe Premiere 6. It's only $245 at buy.com. With a good coupon the price is even better. I just got a special offer from Adobe to get Premiere at $350 which seems like a good deal when you look at the retail prices for the software. But why would I do that when I get Premiere (with the printed manuals, mind you) and a 1394 card for $100 less than their sale price?


If I need analog capture in the future, I was leaning towards either the Dazzle DVC II orthe Pinnacle Studio AV v7.

 

[Brett]

I'm a perfectionist, relegating standard commercial cards to the recycling bin when they don't measure up. I was WoWed with the noise-free clarity of KBK's video acquisition card, which is compatible with the great DScaler software used in deinterlacing and scaling analogue sources with an HTPC. Great results and the Bang for the Buck solution, as professional cards equaling it (few and far between) cost several times more.


I'm awaiting a second KBK card, for my bedroom HT, this should in itself attest to its quality.


Cheers,

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

I was at CompUSA out by Park Meadows Mall yesterday and they had a couple of these IOMagic units in stock. Just an FYI.

 

[kazushi]

I solved all software problems, so I can capture now from either AIW128PRO and IOMAGIC PC PVR at 640x480. Both are pretty good and PVR is so cheap. And then, PVR works great with dscaler. Thanks John. I may need to buy one more for second machine.


When I checked really details by multiplying images 6x, AIW128PRO has better details. Often a vertical line appears like E (even and odd lines are shifted one dot although it is still scene) on other cards, but RAGE THEATER makes it straight.


Png file become 538k, so I cannot post them. I post 90% jpg instead. aiw1 and pvr1 are one scene of japanese animation. aiw2 and pvr2 are one scene of commercial. Sorry, the original video quality is not so good. I tried capture some dvd scenes, but macrovision protect them.

http://www.io.com/~kazushi/htpc/


And about KBK's mod board, I saw his post that said he would send mail attaching images from his mod board. I sent a mail him, but I didn't receive any. I'd like to ask him again.


-- Kazushi

 

[KBK]

You won't get any images if you use a 'hotmail' address for met to reply to. Hotmail does not allow for attachments. I will also be upgrading the images I send. I send thrice converted jpg files, not the original tiff format.(1 meg per image). I will be using a new DVD player,and a newer version of dscaler,and the card, and DVD (fifth element). So, the images are great already.. without all that. I wonder how the new shots will turn out...

 

[kazushi]

Ken,


Thank you for the reply. Hmm, I haven't received anything yet. I though my mail address, [email protected] , doesn't bounce anything, but... Is it possible to ask you to send mail directly to [email protected] instead? Thanks a lot.


I've learned how to use dscaler to capture image at 720x480. So, now I can capture some images from DVD. Wao. I still don't know how to capture scaled image like 1920x1080, though.

 

[HofstraJet]

Quote:

Originally posted by weldon I think I'm going to bite on the PYRO Platinum bundle which includes the full release of Adobe Premiere 6. It's only $245 at buy.com. With a good coupon the price is even better. I just got a special offer from Adobe to get Premiere at $350 which seems like a good deal when you look at the retail prices for the software. But why would I do that when I get Premiere (with the printed manuals, mind you) and a 1394 card for $100 less than their sale price?

Has anybody purchased this bundle? Is the Premiere the full version with a valid serial# for upgrades? If so, who on Earth would I not buy this instead of standalone Premiere? Even if I didn't need the card, I could sell it on ebay. Just want to make sure this isn't too good to be true (getting Premiere for so little). Thanks.

 

[Jon S]

I have tried the Dazzle and did not like it at all. PQ was not that great and had dropouts. I also tried the Pinnacle Studio 8. While the program itself is very well designed for ease of use, the stability of the program leaves a lot to be desired. also, there are synch issues with most if not all of these units . when your start capturing, the sound and picture is synched okay, but as it progresses, the sound gets out of synch from the video. I have ordered a Canopus ADVC1394 card ($250) which locks the audio and video so it eliminates the synch problem. I also understand that it is considered one of the best capture cards out there. There is a hitch, it apparently has problems with VIA-based motherboards (mosttly AMD systems). In that case, you would be better off getting the ADVC100 external capture box which would plug into a firewire port.

 

[Scotty L]

Quote:

Originally posted by HofstraJet Even if I didn't need the card, I could sell it on ebay. Just want to make sure this isn't too good to be true (getting Premiere for so little). Thanks.

Hofstra- I did this very same thing. I bought the exact bundle on buy.com for $242 or so shipped, didn't need Premiere as I already had it, and sold it on eBay for $315. One thing I noticed after doing this auction is others doing the same thing but selling the firewire card also, so they were getting around $350-$380 back.


Not sure if the prices/demand for Premiere is still the same. But that bundle is a great buy since Premiere is th FULL version with its own seperate serial # and free upgradibility. This thread is old so make sure you go for Premiere 6.5 over 6.0.

 

[HofstraJet]

Very cool Scotty L - thanks.