Capture Question

Galeng wrote on 1/18/2005, 2:00 PM
To capture from VHS tapes I use the pass thru feature of my video camera and it works great and saves to an avi file.

I have a friend that is interested in capturing VHS tapes, but no video camera. What inexpensive device is out there to capture to her computer from a tape deck? And, without saving it to MPEG, but to avi.

Thanks for your help.

Galen

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 1/18/2005, 2:29 PM
The Canopus series of A/D converters. I just got their model 300 which adds hardware filtering and noise reduction. Haven't done enough with it yet to judge the improvement value or if its worth its rather steep price tag. Around $450 street. Lessor models will convert, but lack the filtering, noise removal features.

Any A/D converter (converts from analog to digital and back again) should work OK.

The idea behind removing noise and filtering with hardware has to do with how the signal is coming into your computer. As most already know composite connections (yellow RCA plug) is a single wire, S viedo is step up while component is the top of the line for analog.

Since the luminance and chrominance singal is already split out on S video and componet, passing it through the A/D converter doesn't help it. However if you bring in a composite signal then the hardware in the Canopus splits the luminance and chrominace signal and makes it possible to adjust them which in theory anyway should give much tigher control over what's possible with software methods to adjust luminance, chrominance and reduce video noise which can be a problem for VHS media.
scifly2 wrote on 1/18/2005, 3:44 PM
I just looked at ADS PYRO A/V link $200. CompUS
Its an external device. Converts to AVI. Connects to computer via firewire. Has Firewire, composite,s-video, component and of course audio. All connections in and out. Will convert A/D and D/A with or without computer. Works with Vegas and others. Comes with software that I wont name here.