Newbie wants to start capturing

[Psymaster]

I'm not new to DVD conversion, only I know next to nothing about capturing. Problem is, not so many good DVDs lie in shops in my neighbourhood, and TV plays some very good ones.

So, I want to get a capture card. Here are some questions:

1) Is the model/manufacturer of the card the most important factor? Unlike with DVD where hardware is unimportant?

2)Will I have two many problems with my Duron 850 Mhz with 256 of RAM and a Matrox G450 card? I also use the sound chip from my mainboard (VIA chipset). There's no point in getting a cap card if I have to change the rest of my system to cap!

3)Is my HDD (18.5 GB with 15 GB or so free) big enough to work with movies and get decent results? How big will a cap of a 2 hour movie be with a good codec?

[bb]

If I were you I'd upgrade my graphics card to an ATI with Video In. You can use a VCR as the TV tuner (better signal than from a TV card). And I experienced big problems with onboard sound (AC97). Be prepared: you might need to upgrade to a dedicated sound card (e.g. SoundBlaster), and deactivate the onboard sound via BIOS setting. The VIA chipset is known to have some PCI issues causing lines in captures. I have VIA chipsets, and I didn't have problems, but others reported some on the forums.

If you prefer to buy a TV card, I guess those with a Brooktree (now Conexant) chip are the least problematic. I have an old Hauppauge WinTV PCI using VfW drivers. Crappy, but ok, I'd say. It works, and you can (or must?) tweak a lot.

Your HDD is pretty small for captures, at least if you want to try Huffyuv (but for that one I'd rather recommend a really fast HDD, too). A 7200rpm drive is recommended; the freaks use RAID1 arrays. If you want to buy a larger HDD, reconfirm that your BIOS supports it. You may get an upgrade on the Web, if you're lucky.

bb

[srsstvs]

See my post here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=38137

bb is right, you need a bigger hard drive, especially if you decided to go with Canopus like I've suggested for its raw avi digital file. I have a D-Link USB TV Tuner card, piece a junk! Go spend around $200 and get the Canopus, no softwares or settings to worry about (except your capturing software), and it does nothing but digital video.

I agree with bb to use your VCR as TV output and connect it to Canopus through composite RCA (or S-video if your VCR has it)connections. Believe me, the picture quality is superb! If you familiar with conversion and encoding then the rest of it is just a piece of cake.

By the way, with Canopus because it's a converter itself you don't have to worry about your graphic card because it captures through firewire card. Just install the Canopus and start capturing in 10 minutes. No adjustments and settings to enable or disable....

[symonjfox]

I used an ATI TV Wonder for long time and it worked well ... good quality, stereo audio and I could capture up to 720x576 @ 25 fps. It gave me a lot of stability matters with my system (using both Win 98 and ME). I tried Win 2k and then XP and system crashed at every startup until I phisically removed the card. Another matter were both the driver stability (sometimes crashes when capturing) and the included software (very poor and stupid). Another nice matter ... the incompatibility with my sound card (Creative Sound Blaster Live 1024).

I changed the card and I bought the Hauppage Win TV Go. Nothing to say: poor quality, monoaural audio. Worked well with Win 98 ME (up to 720x576) and 2K XP (352x288). I had troubles with the Motherboard ASUS A7A-266 (I must download a special driver and configure some settings in the BIOS). Very very stable. Software included ... never worked on my machine (I always use VDub).

Conclusion: Check the system incompatibilities (go to producer websites) and choose a good board. Then I'd say that your hard disk is big enough if you want to create VCDs (352x288 PAL) or small clips but if you want more (like SVCD or DVD) you must buy another one (I have 2 x 60 GB ATA 100). Processing power is another point: at small resolutions your system is OK, but if you want to capture at higher resolutions you need to upgrade both processor and RAM (DDR) (you also speed up a lot the encoding time).