Advice On PCI Video Capture Card

[Debbie]

My ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 9800 is about to die and I am now lookig for a good PCI capture card, that would capture to MPEG 2 full res. 720X576
My PC specs are: P4 3GHz, 2GB DDR RAM, PNY Graphics Card GeForce 6200, Asrock BOBO P4i65G (Intel chipset)

A Happy New Year to all.

[Brian Ellis]

My advice is not to go that road. Get a Canopus ADVC-110 into Firewire. This will give you a highest quality compressed AVI file, that you are then at liberty to edit and then to convert to the MPEG-2 file with settings of your choice.

Adavantages:
Hassle-free
No loss of quality when editing
No dependence on fixed parameters
Wide choice of bitspeeds
No dependence on what the graphics card allows you
DV codec

Disadvantages:
Capital cost may be slightly higher than an entry-level video/graphics card
Capture in real time + DV>MPEG at ± real time

[Debbie]

Thanks Brian. I belive your solution will turn out the best avi quality but it would take considerable time to convert to DVD compliant mpeg 2 with my P4, 3GHz processor.

[traveller]

I have had the same problem a year ago or so.
After a long searching and making comparison I have decided to buy Leadtek WinFast PVR2 which works without any problems.
It is a budget solution anyway I haven't noticed any problems with the quality.
So it can be a recommendation based on some searching and experiences.
Happy NY

[Debbie]

For those that are still on PCI and require a very cost effective capture card. I have just bought the Compro Videomate C-500 risking only € 37 but have been surprised by the very good result. As always the bundled software (OEM Corel VideoStudio 11 SE and Corel DVD MovieFactory 5 SE) just give you somthing to start with. Other more recent versions these software also work. It appears that to use the audio input on the card you will have to use one of the above applicatins. Otherwise the source audio has to be pluged directly to the audio line input of the BOBO or sound card.

[cuddles]

Yep the winfast PVR is v/good lets one select the capture specs, best since AV/IO