Video Capture Card

[wayliff]

I need help with a video capture card.

I am pretty new on this subject.
My purpose is to possibly connect my VCR and/or video camera and record video to burn on DVDs.

I dont mind paying a little bit more but not too much. $120 is top.

Suggestions and comments appreciated.

Thanks

 

[uOpt]

Any $50 PCI card will do, the only thing some cards screw up is high-quality audio when using the TV tuner. But if you record from VCR or camera even that doesn't matter.

These cards do the video encoding in software. For me, I record in two steps, one very high-volume quick compression in real time for recording, fillings tens of gigabytes, and then a second pass doing long and boring high-ratio compression.

The alternative is to get a IIRC $170 card which is doing MPEG2 compression in hardware which is fine if you do DVDs but not overly useful if you want mpeg4 (smaller files) in the end.

 

[wayliff]

Do you you have brand that you prefer over the others?
I would like to be able to use the TV tuner and record as well but that is not the main purpose.

Thanks for your help!

 

[uOpt]

I got 3 Haupauge cards but in all honesty while the hardware works fine their policies stink.

For example, you have no way of telling which ones come with a Bustek chip and which one with the newer (Connectix something) chip. For Linux users that is a big deal.

Furthermore, their Windows drivers for the new chip kick off the drivers fo the other card on installation, for no f<bep>ing reason. If you want a new chip and a bustek chip card in the same machine, you have to use Linux. You can probably manually register the drivers, but what I'm saying is that they are just cheapo crap Windoze weenies.

Not sure what else to recommend, I doubt that other comapanies are much better. The non-encoding cards are cheap enough that you can throw one away if it doesn't work.

 

[yelo333]

Might want to check out this thread over at hot deals...

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...key=y&amp;keyword1=pvr