Nubee Help?

[kalbo]

Hey folks-

I was just wondering if I can receive some friendly advice regarding purchasing a video card. I'm looking for a video card that will handle tranferring my videos from my camcorder into the the pc and eventually burning them into a DVD? I've looked at the Gainward Ultra 650 XP with VIVO, but was wondering if the card that I choose have to have VIVO? I read somewhere that if a digital camcorder was being used, a simple firewire adapter can be used (how) instead of buying a card with VIVO? Also I'm on a budget and $170 is probably absolutely the most that I can spend on a card. Any help would be apprecaited! Thanks!

-MA

 

[BoomAM]

Welcome to the Anandtech Forums,

The firewire options depends on if your digital camcorder support firewire as an output option.
Depending on your pcs components, you might already have firewire ports. On your motherboard or sometimes on your sound card(mainly creative labs audigy baced cards)
If you camcorder only does the standard S-Video/composite inputs, then another card will be required.

My advice to you would be to find a card called an ATI Radeon9000PRO All-In-Wonder. You should be able to find one for your budget. Several manufacturers make them, so it might be called Hercules 3D Prophet9000PRO all-in-wonder for example.

Its about £180 in the UK, so thats about $200 dollers, but shop around and you should be able to find on for under $180.

The All-In-Wonder range of cards have allways been the best VIVO cards availble to a PC user. The All-In-Wonder cards, ALLWAYS comes with every single pieces of software that you could ever need to use all of the connections on the card.

Heres a cut&paste job from my local shops website.
Overclockers UK

Hercules 3D Prophet All-In-Wonder 9000 Pro 64MB (AGP) - Retail (GX-013-HE)
The 3D Prophet All-In-Wonder 9000 Pro offers exceptional 2D/3D quality with the added benefit of built in Stereo TV Tuner with digital VCR and up to 125 channels and Teletext. It also has the ability to capture and edit video (Video Capture in MPEG-2 format at up to 25fps in 720 X 576 (PAL) without image quality loss). Featuring - ATI's Radeon 9000 Pro VPU, Smartshader & Truform, Stereo TV Tuner (PAL B/G/D/K/I), 64Mb of 128Bit DDR Memory, Composite video & stereo audio input, S-Video (S-VHS) Input, Composite video & stereo audio output, S-Video (S-VHS) output, DVI-I to VGA Adapter, Wireless remote control.

Hope this helps you.