Anyone using a laptop for video captures?

[sumptor]

Hi,

I'm considering using my laptop for video captures. My goal is to be able to capture to an avi file using PicVideo's MJPEG codec at 720x480 resolution and 44.1 kHz PCM audio for post conversion to a DVD. Therefore, the external device doesn't have to do any conversion. Here are the hardware specs on the laptop:

Compaq Evo N620C
Penitum-M @ 1.6 GHz
ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 video card
30-gig 5400-rpm drive
Available USB 2.0 and PCMCIA ports

I did a little research online and it looks like there are external capture boxes that can connect to either the USB or PCMCIA ports.

Is there a preference of one over the other?

Can anyone recommend a capture box they've have good expereince with for their captures?

Any general tips you can pass along?

Thanks.

[GrofLuigi]

Any general tips you can pass along?

1. Capture audio in 48 kHz and make your life easier.

2. Consider a larger/faster hard drive.

I think your configuration could be adequate for capturing, but you have to choose the device carefully. Sorry I don't have experience with any speciffic model.

GL

[JohnnyMalaria]

Do you already have a camera? Depending on its format, you may have different options.

[sumptor]

I am trying to create DVDs out of old VHS tapes so I planned on using the composite out of the vcr to connect to the composite inputs of either a USB or PCMCIA capture device for the laptop.

All these types of capture devices I've seen so far do their own conversion to MPEG format before writting to the hard drive. I was looking for something where I could run VirtualVCR or another capture program with this external device and save the file as an AVI onto the drive. Therefore, the external device isn't doing any conversion, just simply feeding the composite video signal into the laptop.

[Gavino]

An alternative to a capture device is a DV camera with 'analogue pass-through' capability. (Hence, I think, JohnnyMalaria's question.)

If you have such a camera, and your laptop has a Firewire (IEEE 1394) input (most do these days), you can capture as an AVI file in DV format. This isn't lossless, but is much less compressed than MPEG (13Gb/hr), with every frame a keyframe.

[olyteddy]

Most USB capture devices encode because there isn't enough bandwidth on the USB bus to capture uncompressed AVI. I use a Hauppauge that compresses to MPEG2, but I believe ADS has a line of capture boxes that do DV AVI. There's a list of capture cards at http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.