TV Capture card or new vid card with vivo?

[blackhawk]

I'm looking at putting some homemade vhs tapes of the kids on disk and from what I've found out it looks like a tv capture or tuner card would be easiest to input the vcr signal to one of my computers for burning to disk.

These tapes aren't of high quality but are of great sentimental value.

Are any of the hauppage or other tuner or tv capture cards right for what I want to do? Am I missing anything?

I'm happy with both of my video cards right now and not looking to upgrade.

 

[rbV5]

You're on the right track. Hauppage and ATI(amoungst others) make tuner/capture cards that will work for you. Go here for some great info on VCD/SVCD creation. VHS is fairly low resolution, so a moderately fast/large hardrive will be fine for AVI capture if you are going to do any editing, if you are going to just capture and burn, your Duron will be fine for a compliant VCD mpeg-1 capture. I use Nero, and with the internal mpeg compressor, I've had good results just dropping AVI and mpeg-1 files right into Nero and burning.

 

[blackhawk]

i use nero as well and have two computers so the time isn't a factor

i'm going to get a 40gb hd shortly as the 20's on each computer are about 3/4's full now

i'll start watching for a card and i guess a benefit is that the tv tuner card will allow tv watching as well?

 

[rbV5]

<< i guess a benefit is that the tv tuner card will allow tv watching as well? >>



Yes, but you can use a VCR hooked into your Video-in and simply use its tuner and remote like I'm currently doing with my Radeon VIVO. The tuner on the card does have some benefits however. With my AIW Radeo, I could timeshift TV(pause) my VIVO, I can't use the ATI Digital VCR, but maybe showshifter could work? The guide plus software is nice for recording shows and checking listings and I believe I got slightly better captures off of broadcast strait off the cards tuner, but I haven't done alot of captures with my VIVO yet, just enough to know the features work, and I can get decent mpeg-2 and full uncompressed AVI capture resolutions without droppping frames.