any suggest for capture card

[berserk]

Hi all! i have a amd 1900+, 512mb 266, 60+80gb HD, 3 port firewire, sony digicam dc-10, Matrox Marvel g-450 etv, SB Live Platinum 5.1, MSI Motherboard

I want to create semi-professional quality videos, what type of capture card (under 300$) can i use ?

Can i use my marvel at top of performance ? (codec type etc...)

Thank you for patience but i must start !! !

[LvR]

...semi-professional quality videos...

What is that exactly?

[berserk]

dvd-quality, capturing from tv and via firewire w/out frame clipping, i want to store in dvd my vhs and my MiniDV

[Gurm]

Well, you're asking for two different things.

Unless someone makes a combo Firewire/Capture card that's within the realm of a human budget...

Although, not all Firewire is created equal. Any firewire that comes on a motherboard or on a sound card or on a $100-or-under PCI card is relegated by programs like Premiere to "second-string" Firewire. In other words, they prefer pricey 1394 cards from Pinnacle and the like. Bleh. In fact, before Premiere 6 you couldn't even USE a cheap firewire card natively. You needed to buy a separate plugin. Bleh.

- Gurm

[Brian Ellis]

Berserk

I don't understand. You already have both analogue and digital capture hardware. Why do you need something else? The only problem I could foresee is that the Marvel may give 704 pixel width, against 720 for the DV and different sound parameters. This would be a pain for combining analogue and digital into the same file, requiring time-consuming re-rendering.

Can you please be a little more explicit as to what exactlt you are looking for?

[wkulecz]

Gurm, I don't use Premiere 6.0 much anymore, but I didn't have any particular problems with my <$50 ADS Pyro Basic OHCI 1394 card after installing the 6.01 patch.

Yes before Premiere 6 and MSP 6 all DV support was an "add on". Unfortunately, Premiere is so slow that its pretty worthless without rather expensive real-time hardware assistance.

--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by Gurm
Well, you're asking for two different things.

Unless someone makes a combo Firewire/Capture card that's within the realm of a human budget...
- Gurm

Canopus makes their ADVC-1394 card, which is an IEEE-1394 card with integrated analog => DV. They also offer an edit bay for it (fits in a 5.25" drive bay) to put the connectors up-front. It also supports locked audio.

$240 list.

They also offer the ADVC-50, which acts in concert with an existing IEEE-1394 card to provide analog capture

$199 list.

Dr. Mordrid

[berserk]

oh yes, it's right ! I've posted 2 questions at same time end i must fight with my awful english (i'm italian)

So, my precise question is :

My system is :
amd 1900+, 512mb 266, 60+80gb HD, 3 port firewire, sony digicam dc-10, Matrox Marvel g-450 etv, SB Live Platinum 5.1, MSI Motherboard

I want to capture a film from tv and vhs at best quality possible (PAL 25fps) and store it on a dvd, miniDVD or mpeg4 cd

My card hasn't a internal mpeg2 compressor, so :
1 - Any suggest for a lossy codec without clipping and without incredible space required on HD ?
2 - Must i buy another capture card ? and if so, what card can i buy ? (<300$)

Excuse for the confusion

Thanks to all

[Dr Mordrid]

1. PICVideo MJPeg. $18 for non-commercial use;

http://www.pegasusimaging.com/picvideomjpeg.htm

2. With the right drivers the eTV exposes a YUY2 capture mode to programs like AVI_IO or VirtualDUB, two excellent alternative capture tools that can use external compressors. PC-VCR cannot. I prefer AVI_IO because of its ability to keep audio and video in solid synch;

http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/index.html

In these programs, and with YUY2 set as the Format and PICVideo set as the Compression, you can capture at up to 20 differrent compression levels with #19 being equivalent to the Marvel G-200/400's internal MJPeg codec. #20 is near lossless for when you need to add a lot of overlays & effects to a scene.

Dr. Mordrid

[berserk]

thank you, now i'll try !

[Dr Mordrid]

One other tip: you can also capture using DivX5, and if you capture at a Matrox-legal frame size (352 wide works nicely) you can even play it out to a TV using DVDMAX.

Dr. Mordrid

[berserk]

Hi Dr,

I tryed your suggest but the quality is not accettable for me

I see there are expansive cards, like yours (rtx 100 )... so...

if i want to capture tv or vhs at 768x576 in mpeg2 format or compressed AVI, what type of card can i buy (for xmas ) ?

not too expansive, hehe

[Dr Mordrid]

Not many will capture at a full 768x576, but lots will capture at 720x576 which is what most editing systems use anyhow.

The RT.X100 and RT.X10 handle 720x576 in PAL. I would recommend the RT.X100 if you can afford the extra bux because of its stronger feature set; batch mpeg/wmv/realmedia encoder; realtime DV and MPEG-2 export to HDD; realtime IEEE-1394 export etc. and their massive number of realtime effectgs including luma/chroma keys and color correction, but you will have to edit in Premiere....which these cards make using a lot less painful.

One other thing about those cards: forget the VIA chipsets because of their poor PCI to host memory performance. You can't even use a mixed AMD + VIA Southbridge, though pure AMD systems work as do Intel and SiS chipped systems.

Dr. Mordrid

[Elie]

Try the RT.X10, it's a cheaper solution to the RT.X100 and provides awesome tools for the money.

Check this link...

http://www.matrox.com/media/video/rtx10demo/rtx10_intro_hi.wmv

[Flying dutchman]

You might also consider a hardware composite <-> firewire converter. For a few 100 $ you avoid a lot of driver hassle and it works with ANY operating system.