which av/dv capture card, and which simple agp card

[hairygit1]

Hi.

Thanx for looking in.

I was looking for ppl opinions on what is the best setup for the following situation.
After reading around the site, I have decided on two cards - one AGP, and the other a capture card, rather than an all in one.

I need to be able to capture video from an analogue camcorder with reasonable quality.
This camcorder will probably be upgraded to a digital one in a few months, so i don't want to have to change capture cards as well.
The amount of capturing I need to do isn't alot, but it is fairly important. The capture has got to be such that I can play it back on a DVD, onto a normal television.

Don't want to spend lots - as my arms are short, and my pockets are deep.

Well, that was the capture card.

What would you recommend for an AGP card -
The usage is not for gaming
occasional vid editing.
occasional picture editing.
watch movies.
17inch monitor
a 32meg or 64 meg?
DDR SDR?
Thanx for the help.

 

[SViscusi]

What are you comfortable spending?

 

[hairygit1]

for the capture card, probably upto £100 [$150]. less if there is an option, a little more if it makes a big difference ;-P

 

[batmanuel]

Do you have a lot of analog footatge sitting around right now that needs to be converted? If not, your best bet might be to just go ahead and put the money you would spend on a capture card towards getting a better digital camcorder, like this nice 3 CCD model from Panasonic with Leica optics. With a digital camcorder, all you need is a basic Firewire port because you're not really "capturing" as much as just simply transferring data between the devices.

Right now there really aren't as many good professional-quality analog capture cards as there used to be, mainly because the majority of people shooting video professionally switched to DV cameras long ago because of the better video quality and the time and money saved by not having to deal with analog capture, which is pretty much a PITA no matter what you use to do it. All I've really seen lately are the Canopus and Matrox products, which are both REALLY expensive ($700-$1600), since they are not only capture cards but also "editing accelerators" that can do many common video effects in realtime.

Personally, if I were in your situation, I'd kill two birds with one stone and just get a Radeon All-in-Wonder 9000. According to ATi's website, it can capture analog video in MPEG-2 format at a resolution up to 720x480 and 30 frames-per-second (full DVD quality). Plus, it has excellent 2D quality and DVD playback, so it should be more than enough to take care of your video card needs as well. Plus, it has a TV tuner as an added bonus.

 

[hairygit1]

Yeah -

unfortunately there is needed footage on analog tape.
I've always been a bit picky about ATI, as i've got a rage fury vivo card installed at the moment, took 6 months to wait for underground drivers to come out and work with the bloody thing.
And gives mediocre footage when it does decide to work.

As needs must -
thank you

 

[batmanuel]

The Rage cards were made during some of Ati's darker days. The Radeon series is worlds better in terms of video quality and driver support/stability.

 

[hairygit1]

you are starting to make me a happy fella.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: batmanuel
The Rage cards were made during some of Ati's darker days. The Radeon series is worlds better in terms of video quality and driver support/stability.

Haha, ALL of ATI's card were junk before the Radeon series.

 

[hairygit1]

don't i know it.

I am almost looking forward to trying out my favourite brand again -
ATI here i cooooooooommmmmmmmmeeee

 

[batmanuel]

One question I have about your rig: since you are running a Rage right now, is the rest of your hardware of a similar vintage? If so you could run into system bottlenecks that could hurt your video capture capabilities. This is especially true for the memory and hard drives - if you don't have at least 256MB of memory and your hard drive isn't 7200 RPM then you could have issues with the analog capture dropping frames. Your processor speed will come into play as well, since the system will be encoding the footage into MPEG-2 and saving it to disk at the same time. DV capture is a lot more forgiving, since the footage is already compressed (I've done it on a 800MHz laptop with a 4200RPM hard drive), but analog capture take a lot out of your machine.

If you do have a system that is a bit older and might have some performance issues, you have another option in WinTV PVR 250, which has analog video capture capability in addition to its PVR capabilities. What makes this card nice for people with older system is that it does the MPEG-2 encoding in hardware, taking a major load off of your CPU. If you don't have at least a gigahertz level machine, this might be a better capture solution than the AIW.

 

[hairygit1]

i've got 7200rpm, 512meg pc2100. 1.2gig AMD
This will be upgraded sooner or later - probably sooner.

I've got a list of possibles, or will have in a few minutes..................................................

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: hairygit1
i've got 7200rpm, 512meg pc2100. 1.2gig AMD
This will be upgraded sooner or later - probably sooner.

I've got a list of possibles, or will have in a few minutes..................................................

I'd say the AIW theoretically should do fine with that config. I haven't personally tried capturing video with one of these cards, so I'm not sure how well it works in practice. Anyone here with an AIW have any feedback they can give on how well the video capture works?

 

[oldfart]

You could jump ahead and just get the DV camcorder. Many DV camcorders have an AV -> DV passthrough feature. The camcorder will convert the analog video into DV, which is then easily captured by a simple firewire port on your PC

Analog camcorder out ==> analog input of DV camcorder ===> DV output ===> PC firewire port.

 

[hairygit1]

Oh no
There is loads of radeon vivo cards.

Sapphire 9000
Sapphire 9200SE
Sapphire 9200
Powercolour 9800SE
Pinnacle av/dv
v-stream pci capture

I've only got half way through a wacking big list that keeps on getting bigger.
Any faves out there?

 

[hairygit1]

wow
radeon 9600xt -

i'm gonna stop boring you all now.

 

[hairygit1]

the av/dv jump through sounds good.

Do all digicamcorders have that function?

Oh no more research is needed

 

[oldfart]

Many do. I know Sony and Canon offer it. Make sure the cam that you pick has it.