Help finding a good capture card for cartoons (anime)

[dvd_master]

I want to capture anime, from good sources such as LD (and occaisionally VHS) but there's such mixed opinions on most of the capture cards here.

So, can anyone tell me if an All in Wonder card would work well with this sort of thing, or must it be something else.

Preferebly, in the $100-150 price range. (I know it's limited).

Just basically, which have good transfers?

[ride159]

I personally capture a lot of cartoons, I have an all-in-wonder 8500, and I use the MPEG-2 encoding feature of the card to capture MPEG-2 in real time (big feature for me).

I use half d1 resolution (352x480), a 2.51 kbps or so bitrate, and they look great, and as I said, I can do this in real time, I just open the ATI TV program and hit the record button on the ATI remote.

If you are going to capture AVI first, then re-encode using TMPG or CCE, then it probably doesn't matter as much, the hauppage cards will do fine if you don't want a new primary graphics adapter.

If you do get this card, don't use the Ulead studio to capture, the mpeg-2 encoding there is worse than bad, in my experience anyway.

[dvd_master]

Doesn't this cost alot?

Where did you get it.... or know any good stores?

[ride159]

newegg.com sells the all-in-wonder 8500DV for $188 with free fedex shipping. This card is identical to the AIW 8500 except it has 64 mb ram and a firewire port instead of 128 mb ram.

newegg.com also sells the all-in-wonder 7500 for $123, I'd guess that the mpeg-2 capture is identical to the 8500 but I've never tried it.

There are probably other cards in that price range that can capture mpeg-2 in real time, I've been happy with the whole package offered by the AIW, wireless RF remote, connector blocks you can put on your desk, the TV software, and enough graphic power to run my emulators and the occasional game.

The card can also de-interlace as it captures, and seems to do so well, which can be nice if you are watching on a computer and do not have a player that deals nicely with interlaced signals. I've de-interlaced captures before and it is something that you don't really want to be a part of.

[dvd_master]

Thanks very much for the help!

So this All in Wonder would give perfect video transfers if it was in full resolution?

On Newegg, they got a reburbished version of the ones you mentioned, no wires or remotes or anything.

Would this be bad? Does it need a remote and special cables to operate?

Thanks!

[ride159]

I don't think the refurbished card will work without the cables, since the input box has s-video, composite, left & right RCA audio, and it plugs into one port on the back of the card with a cable for your soundcard line-in. The output cable is similar, so I'd stick with OEM to get the cables.

If you do get full version, the remote can be sold on ebay for around $30 if you don't want it, but you probably will once you use it for a while.

If you use full dvd resolution and a high bitrate you will get extremely good captures, perfect is a bold statement :). There are only a couple of scenes when I can tell the difference at a 2.51 bitrate (and only if I am looking for differences), if you jacked this up to 6+ I doubt you'd notice anything.