buying a video capture device

[snowlock]

I'm trying to find a good video capture device. (preferably a pci card as opposed to the usb or integrated video capture / video card) I have a leadtek 2000 tv card. It works. But it isn't really very good at creating a good copy of a video. It pauses and stutters every so often, which you obviously don't want on a master copy of a video stream. I have been looking at lots of cards but the reviews on nearly all of them are diametrically opposed. The same cards all have reviews divided equally between "great card" and "POS-never buy".

I'm going to be converting VHS to DVD so I'm trying to find something that works well but also is somewhat cheaper ($130 or less, preferably less). What do you use and what for? How does the video quality come out? I'm looking for advice on what to get but if possible tell me why it is good.

[_N_]

>>It pauses and stutters every so often

are you sure it's the card that does that, from what I can see, that card is ok and it might be the rest of the computer causing the problems,

what codec are you compressing into when capturing, what sort of CPU do you have, what HDD, how fast?

[snowlock]

It shouldn't be dependant upon my computer. (unless something is slowly dying on the system, which is always possible) Running it on 200GB HD 7200 RPM, p4 2.8 ghz (533), 1 gig ram 3200, I was compressing to Mpeg-2. But the truth is that even when I am not recording / writing and compressing to the drive (i.e. just a straight video stream from the tv tuner) the picture jumps and stutters a bit.

I might try dumping the card into a different rig (amd 64 3000, similar specs otherwise) and see if that makes a difference. Since you say that that card should be fine, I might as well try.

[_N_]

my friend has that card and he never had any problems with it, he's running an AthlonXP 2500+ with windows XP.

[echooff]

That card should work fine on your system
Running it on 200GB HD 7200 RPM, p4 2.8 ghz (533), 1 gig ram 3200
My computer matches yours except I have less memory and it works fine. Something in your system is causing the problem or your card is bad.

[snowlock]

I have considered that something is dying. Or possibly I am overtaxing my system (and causing it to die). I need to ask a hardcore hardware tech if there is a total max throughput on the motherboard that I might be maxing out. (4 internal HD (ide + raid) 3 external usb HD, 2 dvd burners, 1 cd burner, floppy, zip, and running as a dhcp / net sharing server for approx. 7 other computers, all connected through file sharing to mine. And every single PCI is full that can be. (and this isn't even counting the spiderweb of USB devices attached) I recently had to upgrade my power supply b/c I had too big a draw and fried my last one. Up to 500W and using it all. Mmmm... power.

Thus... maybe I am underpowered for (all of) what I am doing. Not sure but possible considering this and other recent problems. I think I'm going to have to try distributing the load to another computer as well.

[sarahjh69]

I tried to do this for 5 years
various capture cards, Hauppage, ATI, etc
raid, SCSI, etc

It never worked properly no matter what I did
even tho I spent $100s upgrading my PC. Inferior
quality video, dropped frames, sound out of sync.......
This
year I went out and bought a Philips DVDR75
standalone dvd recorder. Perfect results
1st time and everytime...............

[snowlock]

there is no real point to a standalone player though. It is so specific for what you can actually do with it that you end up spending $500 on a bulky set top monster which you never use. (I used to work somewhere that sold them and got to play around with them... I never did understand why people bought them instead of an internal dvd burner. considering that you can buy a computer and dvd burner for less than the standalone set top burners)