I have a PIII 650 with 384 meg RAM running WIN 98SE, 30 gig main drive, 60 meg drive dedicated for video only and a Sony DVD burner.

Back in October of 2003, I purchased the Pinnacle DC10plus analog capture card from Best Buy. It cost around $150.00 Canadian, but that also came with Studio 8 software. (If you are not familiar with Studio 8 software, read some of the other posts here and stay away from it.) You may be able to pick up just the card itself at a much lower price. You just plug the card into an empty PCI slot in your computer. The DC10plus captures video only and the sound is captured through your sound card. I have heard that the DC10plus driver has had problems running on anything after WIN 98SE. I use WIN 98SE and have not had problems with the card, although I have encountered some problems with the driver every now and then.

I have read other posts of people who have video cards that have RCA video inputs (e.g. ATI) and can also be used for capturing. Not sure what these would cost though.

If you are looking long term and can afford the money, I would think that upgrading to a digital camera that will allow you to pass analog through it would be the better way to go. Again, I am not sure what that would cost.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone had any experience with say Sony Digital 8 versus Mini DV versus the newer DVD camcorders? In Canada, the Mini DV discs are around $40.00 each.

Hope this helps.

Good day eh...
Al

To get a good analog capture device you’ll want to stick with solid products like the Canopus ADVC-100 ($299), AVDC-1394 ($249), or ADVC-50 ($199). What you need to do is decide if that $200-$300 would be better spent toward a miniDV camcorder (which will also allow you to capture your analog tapes via passthru to firewire anyway!).

Only you can make that call, but if it were me, I’d put that money toward a miniDV camcorder.

Whatever you do, stay away from USB capture devices because they just won’t give you good quality and very often have audio sync problems. I would personally never buy another Pinnacle product again either.

~jr

I recently went through this same question myself (capture card vs new cam) I elected to buy the new cam. Can do the capture of my old analog and have a new mini DV cam for only a bit more money. There are DV cams that you can buy for $300 or less if you shop. I bought the very nice and well rated Canon Optura 20 for $520 after agressive shopping. I am happy that I made the choice I did. Gave the old cam to my sons.

I have found this capture/edit/burn DVD prossess very time consuming even with a fairly fast new computer. 2.6Gh with 768mb RAM. I let the computer do many of the long jobs, capture, render, burn while I am sleeping. Have plenty of disk space before you start. I have a 20GB and a 60GB drive and that is none too much if you want to save any avi files on disk to locate them in a specific project. If you have lots of old video make a good plan as to what you are going to put with what in your end projects as it takes lots of time if you want to redue what you have already done.

MiniDV and Digital 8 produce the very same quality of AVIs. In fact, both formats record the same data -- the only difference (advantage?) is that Digital 8 works on any 8 mm tapes (capture an hour on a 2 hour videotape) and many Digital 8 Sonys will also play regular 8 mm tapes, which saves me lots of effort when capturing my old, pre-digital video.

As for the DVD camcorders, they really seem to be a liability for us digital editors. The format the data is saved in does not easily input to your computer for editing.

MicroDV also has some liabilities in this category, although I've had no personal experience with it.

MiniDV and Digital 8 are both great consumer formats, and you can't go wrong with either.

Thanks for the info on MiniDV vs. Digital 8. Sony Digial 8 camcorders have come down considerably in price here in Canada (well London, Ontario anyway). And with the cost of the tapes vs. MiniDV discs, I will most likely go Digital 8 for my next upgrade. I am still using my old Kyocera 8mm camcorder which is around 13+ years old now and it is starting to give up the ghost.

Al

I like Digital 8 a lot. The only disadvantage is that only a few camcorders can replay it, so it's not quite as universal as MiniDV.

When you buy your Digital 8, make sure it can also play regular 8mm. (A few of the cheaper models do not.) Since you've got a library of old 8mm tapes and your old cam is about to go, it's nice to be able to play your tapes on your new one.

Also, should you want to edit your old tapes, your Digital 8 cam can easily "digitize" even regular 8 mm tapes through your firewire -- a real advantage!