Capture cards

kameronj wrote on 12/12/2003, 2:20 PM

What do you mean analog and digital capture card?

nodak wrote on 12/12/2003, 4:43 PM

Well, being new at this, I'm probably using the wrong terminology. I want to capture digital from a digital camcorder, and analog from VHS tapes.

beerandchips wrote on 12/12/2003, 5:17 PM

Any firewire pci card will do for the digital part. I use the ADVC-100 from Canopus for any analog to digital conversion. The box will do the conversion and that plugs into the firewire port on the above mentioned pci card. This box runs about 250 to 300 dollars but is worth the price. I highly recommend looking up the ADVC and reading the specs. Do your research before you buy.
Good Luck.

rebel44 wrote on 12/12/2003, 6:17 PM

For analog capture I use ATI card, for digital-firewire.Look on specs on any capture device(box,card). If they do not capture ntsc dv then forget it.
ATI capture inNTSC DV and have more advance codec for mpeg that any others.You can capture avi too in 720X480. Do not settle for less.

JackW wrote on 12/12/2003, 9:48 PM

Rebel44 -- which ATI card are you using. I've got the 8500DV, which I like a great deal but which is no longer available. I'm about to upgrade two computers and would like to put another AVI card in if possible. We do quite a bit of PowerPoint to tape conversion, so we need a card that will handle the computer output, like the 8500DV does.

rebel44 wrote on 12/13/2003, 5:49 AM

I had older ati and upgrade to 8500 with tv tuner.My doughter have 8500.
It does very good job. Analog standard capture 720x480 what is standard ntsc dv.I have no droping frames and a/v sync perfect. The new ati have new .vcr capture format what compress the clip better that mpeg, but to import to vegas you will have to convert to mpeg and I notice some lose quality. I capture in avi. It take more space, but better for editing. If you have cable you can capture clip from bradcast tv. With s-video in and out I get good clips capture from vcr. I like it. It does good job.

amendegw wrote on 12/13/2003, 6:04 AM

Check out Canopus ACEDVio (it's how I got my copy of Vegas):

http://www.canopus.com/US/products/ACEDVio/pt_ACEDVio.asp

JackW wrote on 12/13/2003, 2:55 PM

The Canopus card sounds great. One question though: will it allow me to play a PowerPoint presentation or display a graphic on the computer and output it to tape like the ATI cards will?

Apollo25 wrote on 12/13/2003, 3:27 PM

Gentlemen,

I am waiting for Vegas to bundle its software with Matrox Capture Cards. I lhave been using Vegas since 1.0 and prefer it over Adobe Premiere and other editing platforms. Lately I have been looking at ways to improve my productivity. One bottleneck is render times and the inability to preview edits and 3-D effects in realtime. Matrox has a bundle, the Xtreme 100, that has awsome functionality and productivity. It includes Adobe Premiere 7.0, Adobe DVD Autthoring Appl. and Adobe Audition. It also comes with a capture card that enables you to capture in real-time either .avi or MPEG and it gives you the ability to preview your project in REAL-TIME. Even the output to your TV monitor is Full Speed, Hi-Res. You can burn a DVD directly from your time line! I have asked Vegas, by phone and through there suggestion process to consider bundling their software with matrox hardware. What an awsome combination that would be! In the meantime, I will probably invest in the Adobe/Matrox Bundle in order to reach satisfactory productivity levels. Check out the matrox website for more information.

farss wrote on 12/13/2003, 3:57 PM

If you need to capture from VHS and don't mind the cost I would highly recommend the ADVC-300. It works beautifully with Vegas.
I can tweak all the parameters during capture and apply 2D/3D noise reduction. Even within VV I don't have the 3D noise reduction capability so for me this is an awesome piece of gear.

It really depends on what the quality of the VHS material is like. If it's good clean VHS then the ADVC-100 will do. If the VHS tapes are old or noisy the extra money on the ADVC-300 is money well spent. I also use a SVHS deck for retrieving VHS. Maybe I'm deluding myself but I prefer having the S-Video feed from the deck.

I've had several clients comment that their video looks much better off the DVDs I've made for them than it did off their tapes so I think I can confidently say the money spent on the gear was worth it.

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/13/2003, 10:02 PM

If you want both on one card, you'll likely want the Canopus ADVC 1394 PCI card. It's the only card I'm aware of with GREAT analog conversion and a firewire I/O on it as well. As mentioned in most of these posts, a standard 1394/OHCI card will turn the trick when coupled with a good converter. The higher end ADVC boxes and the Laird box provide superior quality, the ADS DV Link is a good box, and then there are the rest of the tools out there.

farss wrote on 12/13/2003, 10:44 PM

I just found the time to do a little more testing with the ADVC-300.
Pretty neat box all round. I can come out of the VCR, through the box and back into my monitor to see what effect the changes are having at the same time as capturing in VV. I know I could also monitor on the capture monitor within VidCap but using the ADVC to drive my external monitor is much more convenient.

So what you really get for your dollar is a TBC, a Proc Amp, Noise Reduction filter and a hardware codec. You can even use this box between two VCRs when copying VHS (heaven forbid!) if you wanted to tweak things a bit on the way through.

Now what I need is a vectorscope or better still a hardware histogram display. Unfortunately these don't seem to come cheap. We've got a Hamlet at work that no one uses....

Just one critisism, it has a YUV output on a D Terminal connector. Canopus promised they'd have a cable available by the time the units shipped but todate none has appeared. The only thing that I can find that might be suitable are cables for PS2 games consoles. I'll have to import thm from Japan though with no guarantee that they're the right thing.