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#1
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Video Capture vs Graphics Card
I want to transfer old VHS home video to DVDs and I just ordered a new
3 Ghz Dell but with a "low end" nVidea graphics card (5200). I want to take Dave (and other people's) advice and get a decent video capture card like Canopus (middle of the road, high end too $), but do I also need a high(-ish) end video card like ATI 9700, 9800 Pro or XT? Also, would the All-In-Wonder ATI cards act as both vid cap and graphics? I don't need a TV tuner, but if it did *both* cap and decent graphics, that would save $, wouldn't it? The only thing is that my VCR and cam are both older analog and it seems the All in W cards don't support RCA-in, so would I have to get a analog/DV converter as well? There seems to be a lot to consider before you get into this.... Thanks for any advice. Grampa Tom |
#2
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On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:26:40 GMT, Grampa Tom
wrote: I want to transfer old VHS home video to DVDs and I just ordered a new 3 Ghz Dell but with a "low end" nVidea graphics card (5200). I want to take Dave (and other people's) advice and get a decent video capture card like Canopus (middle of the road, high end too $), but do I also need a high(-ish) end video card like ATI 9700, 9800 Pro or XT? Absolutely not. This is practically zero requirement for video card performance. Any old card will do fine, the 5200 you have is more than adequate. The advice you were given to get an expensive capture card is poor, there will be negligable difference capturing from old VHS tapes (it'll look poor no matter what). You'd likely be best off to capture uncompressed because you might want to filter out some noise, and capturing to a compressed format just means recompressing the whole thing, further quality loss. The other issue with the capture cards is the software... if you want the bundled software it is then a good deal, that software is often a large portion of the cost on a capture card. Also, would the All-In-Wonder ATI cards act as both vid cap and graphics? I don't need a TV tuner, but if it did *both* cap and decent graphics, that would save $, wouldn't it? There is no benefit for your purposes, the All-in-wonder will just limit your options and leave you hoping none of the bugs in ATI's drivers affect you. An AIW is always the worse choice unless someone simply MUST have both features on the same card, in that one single AGP or PCI slot. The only thing is that my VCR and cam are both older analog and it seems the All in W cards don't support RCA-in, so would I have to get a analog/DV converter as well? There seems to be a lot to consider before you get into this.... S-Video is the common analog in port, most any card (unless it's a barebones OEM model) will come with a composite (RCA) to S-Video adapter cable. However you'll need another adapter cable that may not come with the capture card, a composite (dual RCA) to male stereo phono plug, to get sound from VCR RCA jacks to sound card aux-in 'phone jack. |
#3
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On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 20:57:59 GMT, kony wrote:
Thank you VERY much. It is a jungle out there to a relative newbie and I (we, probably) really appreciate that you take all this time to help. GT On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:26:40 GMT, Grampa Tom wrote: I want to transfer old VHS home video to DVDs and I just ordered a new 3 Ghz Dell but with a "low end" nVidea graphics card (5200). I want to take Dave (and other people's) advice and get a decent video capture card like Canopus (middle of the road, high end too $), but do I also need a high(-ish) end video card like ATI 9700, 9800 Pro or XT? Absolutely not. This is practically zero requirement for video card performance. Any old card will do fine, the 5200 you have is more than adequate. The advice you were given to get an expensive capture card is poor, there will be negligable difference capturing from old VHS tapes (it'll look poor no matter what). You'd likely be best off to capture uncompressed because you might want to filter out some noise, and capturing to a compressed format just means recompressing the whole thing, further quality loss. The other issue with the capture cards is the software... if you want the bundled software it is then a good deal, that software is often a large portion of the cost on a capture card. Also, would the All-In-Wonder ATI cards act as both vid cap and graphics? I don't need a TV tuner, but if it did *both* cap and decent graphics, that would save $, wouldn't it? There is no benefit for your purposes, the All-in-wonder will just limit your options and leave you hoping none of the bugs in ATI's drivers affect you. An AIW is always the worse choice unless someone simply MUST have both features on the same card, in that one single AGP or PCI slot. The only thing is that my VCR and cam are both older analog and it seems the All in W cards don't support RCA-in, so would I have to get a analog/DV converter as well? There seems to be a lot to consider before you get into this.... S-Video is the common analog in port, most any card (unless it's a barebones OEM model) will come with a composite (RCA) to S-Video adapter cable. However you'll need another adapter cable that may not come with the capture card, a composite (dual RCA) to male stereo phono plug, to get sound from VCR RCA jacks to sound card aux-in 'phone jack. |
#4
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On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:26:40 GMT, Grampa Tom
wrote: I want to transfer old VHS home video to DVDs and I just ordered a new 3 Ghz Dell but with a "low end" nVidea graphics card (5200). I want to take Dave (and other people's) advice and get a decent video capture card like Canopus (middle of the road, high end too $), but do I also need a high(-ish) end video card like ATI 9700, 9800 Pro or XT? Also, would the All-In-Wonder ATI cards act as both vid cap and graphics? I don't need a TV tuner, but if it did *both* cap and decent graphics, that would save $, wouldn't it? The only thing is that my VCR and cam are both older analog and it seems the All in W cards don't support RCA-in, so would I have to get a analog/DV converter as well? There seems to be a lot to consider before you get into this.... I've used both the original 7200 and 7500 models of the AiW Radeons to capture from video tape, and they both work fine. They have both composite and S-video inputs. I've also used a Hauppauge WinTV card to capture from video tape and the quality of the video is poorer than that with the AiW. Thanks for any advice. Grampa Tom |
#5
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The advice you were given to get an expensive capture card is poor, there
will be negligable difference capturing from old VHS tapes (it'll look poor no matter what). You'd likely be best off to capture uncompressed because you might want to filter out some noise, and capturing to a compressed format just means recompressing the whole thing, further quality loss. I don't want to start a proprietary debate (well, maybe....) but this is exactly what I and probably many others want to do: capture old VHS, filter noise and dress up as much as possible, and put it on a DVD. We *might* want to put menus or titles, but this is secondary, and there are many editing software packages that can do this. We want the best basics first, then the fancy stuff later. So I'll go out on a limb here and say that my research points to the Canopus ACEDVio as my best bet (in theory), unless I want to go over $1,000, which I don't think I want to do. The specs don't say noise reduction, though. The ADVC1394 has a neat looking and convenient 5 1/4" bay, but the card is only one way - I couldn't play back through through a TV, which would be nice to do directly rather than burn each time you wanted to try something. Is it too much to ask for people's opinions on the best vid capture card? I know there's lots choice and lots of variables. In doing all my reading, the problem is in what they *don't* tell you. You could be buying something entirely unsuitable and only find out after you've bought it. So, it would help a lot of people, I'm sure for opinions on the right card for simple vid capture, clean-up treatment, and ready for DVD or SVCD/VCD. Fancy editing software can be obtained separately. This is a hardware issue first. Any views? Grampa Tom |
#6
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On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 05:58:08 GMT, Grampa Tom
wrote: Filtering is done with software. Any basic $30 card with an S-Video port on it is all you need, they're all capable of this simply capturing from S-Video in, from a vcr or camcorder. Spending more will only get you features not applicable to the job you describe, but only you can project into the future, what else you might want to do with it. There may be savings getting software bundled with the card, you ought to be focusing on, researching the software instead of the hardware, and which cards come with that software, since just about any capture card will be fine for what you're wanting to do. |
#7
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On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 07:22:09 GMT, kony wrote:
Thanks again. One confusing thing.... the comparisons say that some cards "capture" MPEG2, MPEG3, etc, and the basic ones "capture" AVI. Does this mean that if you "capture" video from a VHS tape, that it gets saved in one of these formats? Wouldn't it be best to get it in MPEG2 in the first place if you were going to go to a SVCD or DVD? GT On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 05:58:08 GMT, Grampa Tom wrote: Filtering is done with software. Any basic $30 card with an S-Video port on it is all you need, they're all capable of this simply capturing from S-Video in, from a vcr or camcorder. Spending more will only get you features not applicable to the job you describe, but only you can project into the future, what else you might want to do with it. There may be savings getting software bundled with the card, you ought to be focusing on, researching the software instead of the hardware, and which cards come with that software, since just about any capture card will be fine for what you're wanting to do. |
#8
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On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:37:00 GMT, Grampa Tom
wrote: On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 07:22:09 GMT, kony wrote: Thanks again. One confusing thing.... the comparisons say that some cards "capture" MPEG2, MPEG3, etc, and the basic ones "capture" AVI. Does this mean that if you "capture" video from a VHS tape, that it gets saved in one of these formats? Wouldn't it be best to get it in MPEG2 in the first place if you were going to go to a SVCD or DVD? GT You only want to capture to a compressed format if you won't be editing it later, ie- adding titles and noise filtering. If you didn't want to edit later, capuring to MPEG2 would be a good idea. If you only had a small amount of HDD space for captures, capturing to a compressed format would be necessary, since raw video takes up a LOT of space, but IMHO, for your purposes it'd be better to just buy a another/larger hard drive instead of degrading the quality of the output even further. Basically, it just happens that for your specific purposes the cheapest simplest solution happens to be all that you need. Software is where you'll be doing more of the work. There are tutorials on the 'net about different codecs and editing, if you wanted to capture to a lossless compressed format to save some HDD space that would also be better than MPEG, but this is something you'll want to look into after getting the card, getting your feet wet so to speak, when you're ready follow the tutorials and see the results. |
#9
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capturing my 8mm analog tapes on my VIVO video card, I find avi files are
larger than mpeg2 |
#10
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On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 03:09:13 GMT, "Paul L"
wrote: capturing my 8mm analog tapes on my VIVO video card, I find avi files are larger than mpeg2 Exactly, that's what he should be doing, creating the largest files possible by not using high compression, thus eliminating the associated artifacts. However, "AVI" can be any number of codecs set at vastly different bit rates too. It can easily be much larger OR smaller file than with MPEG2. |
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