Capture card

dendence wrote on 12/22/2005, 5:17 AM

I need to capture from VHS. I made the mistake of buying a Pinnacle capture card and Studio 10. What garbage. Crashes constantly. I cant get Vegas to use the Pinnacle capture card. I have uninstalled Studio 10 and it still won't work. Any suggestions ? Do I need to buy another PCI Capture card ? If so What do you recommend ? . Thanks

Comments

jrazz wrote on 12/22/2005, 6:33 AM

I had problems with Pinnacle7 when I first started out and that is why I moved to Vegas, but my problems were with editing and rendering, not capturing. If you are not having problems with the capture, I would suggest using Pinnacle to capture and then save as avi. Once you capture, close out of Pinnacle and edit and render in Vegas.
j razz

jetdv wrote on 12/22/2005, 6:50 AM

Capture via standard firewire. Convert the VHS signal to firewire using one of several options: Pass-thru on a DV Camera, a convertor such as the Canopus ADVC series, a deck which provides pass-thru.

dendence wrote on 12/22/2005, 7:05 AM

The problem with capturing with the pinnacle studio 10 program is that is freezes up constantly. I then have to shut the program and reopen it and sometimes reboot.I have a pentium dual core proccessor 3.0 ghz with 2 gigs of ram. Its not the PC. Its Pinnacle junk. So I would like to just capture with Vegas.If I do save it as avi. with Studio 10 will it be good enough quality to make a DVD with Vegas ? Thanks

dendence wrote on 12/22/2005, 7:07 AM

Thanks for the suggestion,Canopus ADVC series, but I did a search and it looks like its way over what I want to spend. Anything you know of around $ 100 ? thanks

Chienworks wrote on 12/22/2005, 7:15 AM

Check ebay for Hauppauge WinTV cards. You should be able to find something under $40 if you look around. Download the latest software for it from hauppauge.com. You can capture uncompressed 720x480 AVI, which will be about 107GB/hour, or you can try using some of the YUV codecs that their capture software includes. What i usually did when using this card was to capture half an hour or so uncompressed then render it in Vegas to DV, then delete the captured file. Repeat until you've got the whole video.

I've heard people mention Osprey in here from time to time. They're probably better than Hauppauge. I think i've seen them in the $90 range.

Harold Brown wrote on 12/22/2005, 7:21 AM

I was in Best Buy 2 days ago and they had at least 2 dozen Pinnacle software boxes on the shelf and 1 MovieStudio and it was not the Platinum version. Sad.
I use the Canopus 100 to capture VHS plus it also gives you the feature to output to a monitor/TV. I use the output feature more than the capture feature.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/22/2005, 8:42 AM

> Its Pinnacle junk.

No truer words have ever been spoken. I ditched my Pinnacle junk and bought an ADS Tech A/V Link and have been capturing VHS with Vegas every since. Cut your losses and get an A/V Link or Canopus ADVC 110. Either one will capture flawlessly in Vegas. I personally think the colors from the A/V Link are a little truer which is why I bought that one.

> Anything you know of around $ 100 ?

No. Read my lips. “You get what you pay for!!!”. Do you want to capture VHS tapes? ...or fiddle with hardware and software lockups and poor quality? The choice is yours: Good, Fast, Cheap, pick any two! ;-)

~jr

dendence wrote on 12/23/2005, 9:46 AM

Thank-you

jaydeeee wrote on 1/2/2006, 11:27 AM

>>>> Anything you know of around $ 100 ?

No. Read my lips. “You get what you pay for!!!”. Do you want to capture VHS tapes? ...or fiddle with hardware and software lockups and poor quality? The choice is yours: Good, Fast, Cheap, pick any two! ;-)<<<

Not 100% true. Try and find the Canopus ADVC-50 (similar to the 100 but it's a card, which can also be set in an ext box and connected via firewire). It's prob found for nearing $50+ or so (no longer made).
Has all the same features of the 100 (and excell a/v solid sync). Defeating macrovision with the 50 is set by removing a jumper on the card (# 6 i believe).

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/2/2006, 1:04 PM

> It's prob found for nearing $50+ or so (no longer made).

If that’s true, that’s a good deal. Unfortunately the ADVC-50 is $189+ every place I’ve looked that’s had them. Not worth it for that price but for $50 sure.

~jr

Chanimal wrote on 1/2/2006, 6:12 PM

I've tried several cards/boxes, including the Pinacle DV500 (I still have it but don't use it). I found for VHS quality that my ATI All In Wonder 9700 works great. I can capture with multiple codecs and it comes out very clean. The AIW 9600 (with dual monitors) can be found OEM (at Fry's) for $99 on sale.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/3/2006, 7:36 AM

OH! I almost forgot. You might want to try Scenalyzer Live with the Pinnacle card. I don’t know if it supports the card that comes with Studio 10 but I have a Pinnacle Deluxe card that I got with Studio 7 (Analog/DV) and it worked great. That would be your cheapest solution since you already have an analog capture card.

~jr

FuTz wrote on 1/9/2006, 10:40 AM

In terms of performance for previewing and converting (capture) analog Hi8 to DV, anyone knows if the ADVC110 and ACEDViO are roughly the same ? Can I just use the s-video/composite output from the card (ACEDViO) and plug it into a monitor to get preview ?

John10Yes wrote on 1/10/2006, 1:27 PM

Okay, I read this posting and bought the ADS card to capture some footage off a S-VHS tape. I have the footage and did some editing for length but am obviously doing something wrong. When I get all done and put it on a DVD the quality (some color and pixilation) is just not as good as on the tape. What am I doing wrong? What are the proper steps that I should be following?

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/11/2006, 8:54 AM

Analog tape has a lot of noise and MPEG compression can’t handle noise very well. I run all my analog tapes through VirtualDub with the Noise Reduction filter. I also crop with black in VirtualDub to remove the noise at the top/bottom of the frame. There is no sense wasting bits encoding that noise since it never gets shown.

Here are some links to this discussion that we’ve had before:

Converting from vhs
Capture in MPEG format?
Smoothing Technique ?

~jr