video capture recommendations?

[davidf]

I'm about to begin building a new system and I'm looking for advice on what video card(s) to select and why. I'm looking for both video capture and 3D gaming capabilities, weighted in importance about 60-70% towards the capture side.

My capture uses will be predominately recording 1 or 2 hour shows from a DirecTV broadcast (good S-video quality) editing out the comercials and burning to CD. I would like to get picture quality at least up to the level of the average VCR, if that's possible without spending an arm and a leg. This will be my first foray into video capture, and I'm prepared to spend the time necessary to figure out all the tricks to making it work, but I don't have much of a feel yet for how good or not good anything is.

I was originally looking towards the Radeon AIW, but am not so sure anymore. I'm very interested in hearing from Radeon AIW users.
The basic system I'll be using: ~1Ghz Athlon (T-bird) with probably 45GB or so of new IDE HDD. Win2k (and NTFS) are possibilities to get around file size limits.

Thanks to anyone with useful comments!

 

[rbV5]

I've had my AIW for about a month or so. I am impressed with the 3D gaming of this card. I am also starting with video capture. So far I haven't had a lot of time to play with it as I'm just learning. So far, I've found that without much trouble, captures through the TV application are excellent,(higher than VCR resolutions) so I would think the same with captures from your satdish(from your converter I guess) would easily beat VCR quality. Editing compressed video(mpeg) is pretty clunky, but just editing comercials should be OK. Taking and compessing into a divx or mp4 and burning to CD should would great. I was able to do a reasonable job with flaskmpg with one of my mpeg2 captures first try, I'm sure done properly, by someone with experience, excellent results could be achieved.

 

[NicColt]

If your counting on doing Webcam stuff like CuSeeme or NetMeeting forget the Radion.
If you want to watch and record TV - Great get the Radeon.
If you want to take advantage of what the Radeon Capture can do you will need some $$$ serious software.
For games and 2D it's sweeet

I have some serious issues with the Radeon but the Good outway the Bad so to say.

 

[letian]

whats wrong with the radeon for netmeeting?
My radeon 64mb vivo is coming is a few days and I was planning on hook my sony camcorder to the video in and do some video conferencing with netmeeting. Is there going to be a problem with this setup?

 

[NicColt]

>and I was planning on hook my sony camcorder to the video in and do some video conferencing
>with netmeeting. Is there going to be a problem with this setup?

I have taken my leave from this issue and trying to put it behind me.

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But make no mistake, according to the official Radeon press release, ATI mislead and lied about supporting NetMeeting and Windows Movie Maker. In the words taken from the ATI website "ATI does not provide a Video for Windows solution" for the Radeon's. It' only supports the DirectShow API, I received an email from ATI confirming this. NetMeeting 3.1 and CuSeeme REQUIRES a direct Video for Windows WDM.

Good Luck with your NetMeeting and I really mean that. If ever you get it to work let me know.

Edit: BTW I forgot to say that NetMeeting 4 will support directshow but that will mean that every VfW supported card won't work with it because they don't want to release it with VfW support. LMAO that's why M$ is having a hard time deciding to release it or not. If they release it ... as is ... they will get a major riot feedback and with the DOJ on their case it won't look good. so they're just not releasing it.

 

[davidf]

<< If you want to take advantage of what the Radeon Capture can do you will need some $$$ serious software. >>



What type of software are we talking about -- Premiere? this Vegas Video I've been hearing so much about? or something else?

David

 

[davidf]

what about the Matrox 4xx series of cards? I know their 3D isn't up to the current level, but how does the video capture compare with Radeon?

 

[NicColt]

I've never used the matrox so I can't comment on it.

You know how much I bitched about the Radeon's problems with VfW, I bitch where bitch is due and give credit where credit is due and Vegas Video is such a product.

Vegas Video was the friggen answer to my Video Editing dreams. There is no doubt in my mind that I will never touch Premiere again after using this product. It has full DirectShow, Ligos MPEG-2, QT, RM, AVI, WMV support and everything else I ever wanted in a video editing package.

Ulead Studio = Pong

Premiere = Wolfenstein

Vegas Video = Quake III

How's that for my review.