Internal or USB external

[peanuts]

Which is best ?
It has come to my attention that PCI option is better than USB 2.
I have the Compro Stereo USB 2.TV is great.Video tape is disapointing.
Full screen forget it.
:confused:

[acrespo]

I have a Compro Videomate Gold+ (PCI TV card). The quality is amazing.
The problem with USB devices is almost all support MPEG2 hardware encoder and can't disable to uncompress. If you don't need to edit your video after capture, MPEG2 hardware encoder is good, because your computer will not load so much and you can create your DVD or SVCD with the final output (without conversions).
But for edit I like uncompress method to compress with MJPEG or Huff during capture.

Edit = trim + deinterlace (if needed) + noise reduction + resize.

[peanuts]

:angry:
I expected better than this.Sorry to bother you.I will delete it in 5 days.

[jggimi]

No need to get riled, peanuts. Please, calm down. Asking "what's best" regarding anything often produces opinion rather than fact, which, in and of itself, is often divisive.

In the area of video processing, a viewer's subjective experience has as much weight, if not more, than any metric of inherent quality, such as PSNR. This makes "what's best" questions often more problematic.

Our membership has been conditioned not to ask or answer "what's best" questions, since Rule #12 (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm) suggests they be avoided.

Our membership also has had experience with such threads devolving into snits, huffiness, name calling, and flamewars. This has particularly been the case in the Capture forum, where we have had a number of threads turn to nothing but dissention and discord.

There have been many prior threads that have discussed the merits of different capture devices. Here are just a few:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68160
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=67526
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52841

As I write this, there are 4 votes and one textual response. In order to render an opinion, a member would have to have experience with all types of devices. For example, I didn't respond or vote, as I do not.

[peanuts]

Originally posted by jggimi
No need to get riled, peanuts. Please, calm down. Asking "what's best" regarding anything often produces opinion rather than fact, which, in and of itself, is often divisive.

In the area of video processing, a viewer's subjective experience has as much weight, if not more, than any metric of inherent quality, such as PSNR. This makes "what's best" questions often more problematic.

Our membership has been conditioned not to ask or answer "what's best" questions, since Rule #12 (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm) suggests they be avoided.

Our membership also has had experience with such threads devolving into snits, huffiness, name calling, and flamewars. This has particularly been the case in the Capture forum, where we have had a number of threads turn to nothing but dissention and discord.

There have been many prior threads that have discussed the merits of different capture devices. Here are just a few:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68160
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=67526
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52841

As I write this, there are 4 votes and one textual response. In order to render an opinion, a member would have to have experience with all types of devices. For example, I didn't respond or vote, as I do not.

Nobody got it.As you say this forum has lots on this,so i figured the choice of Internal or External would not require me to read everything ever posted.My poll is for conclussions from those who have.
So nobody has ??? Oh my GOD.
:) :)

[Arachnotron]

Here is a simple answer: it does not matter. PCI and USB both are merely ways of connecting devices. It depends on the device you are connecting with it. For instance, Philips SAA7113 chips can both be found in external USB devices and on cards (mostly as add-on on VIVO AGP cards, but you get the point.)

So the question is a bit pointless.

To immediatly contradict myself: my personal impression is that if you have little money to spend, your chances of success are larger with a cheap TV card than with a cheap USB device. But in general: it depends on the device, not the interface.

[Sergei_Esenin]

This is simple. Do you want highest quality or just a quick-and-dirty MPEG or MPEG2 stream? If you want highest quality you must have the unrecompressed raw video stream, which only a PCI card will give you. AFAICT all external devices compress the video to MPEG (awful half-res), MPEG2 (decent full-res or awful half-res depending on device and driver settings), or DV (only on "DV bridge" devices; can be slightly better or worse than direct-to-MPEG2, depending).

You seem to want quick easy answers. If you want best quality without much research just buy a Leadtek Expert or Lifeview FlyTV internal PCI card, to get a widely available and well-supported card with the great recent Conexant or Philips chipsets. View using Dscaler if you are just viewing and not capturing (recording), because it will give you high quality cadence-deinterlaced viewing. If you are capturing (recording), use the free VirtualVCR--it supports both the CX and Philips cards and is better and more tweakable than bulky, high-overhead, few-optioned apps bundled with cards. Cap to Huffyuv, MJPEG, or even ffvfw, and compress to desired final format (MPEG2, MPEG4, whatever you want) later.

If you have no interest at all in installing a PCI card, learning the driver settings, learning the options in an app like VirtualVCR, capping to lossless or near-lossless before recompression, etc., you will never get better quality than you have now. The choice and learning curve are yours.

[peanuts]

Originally posted by Sergei_Esenin
This is simple. Do you want highest quality or just a quick-and-dirty MPEG or MPEG2 stream? If you want highest quality you must have the unrecompressed raw video stream, which only a PCI card will give you. AFAICT all external devices compress the video to MPEG (awful half-res), MPEG2 (decent full-res or awful half-res depending on device and driver settings), or DV (only on "DV bridge" devices; can be slightly better or worse than direct-to-MPEG2, depending).

You seem to want quick easy answers. If you want best quality without much research just buy a Leadtek Expert or Lifeview FlyTV internal PCI card, to get a widely available and well-supported card with the great recent Conexant or Philips chipsets. View using Dscaler if you are just viewing and not capturing (recording), because it will give you high quality cadence-deinterlaced viewing. If you are capturing (recording), use the free VirtualVCR--it supports both the CX and Philips cards and is better and more tweakable than bulky, high-overhead, few-optioned apps bundled with cards. Cap to Huffyuv, MJPEG, or even ffvfw, and compress to desired final format (MPEG2, MPEG4, whatever you want) later.

If you have no interest at all in installing a PCI card, learning the driver settings, learning the options in an app like VirtualVCR, capping to lossless or near-lossless before recompression, etc., you will never get better quality than you have now. The choice and learning curve are yours.
Thats kind of what i wanted confirmed.I'v only been at this a couple of months.I'm stuck with Compro usb2 though.I have mpeg 4 installed.
But my old Beta tapes don't record or playback too well.
Fullscreen,forget it.I will upgrade my pc in the spring,any advice except capture device will be appreciated.