Why do video capture cards vary so much in price?

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Why do these cards vary so much in price? I want to capture my VHS
onto my HD. Can I do this for under $100?, under $50?
 
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> Why do these cards vary so much in price? I want to capture my VHS
> onto my HD. Can I do this for under $100?, under $50?

Sure, you can pick up Hauppauge WinTV, or a similar card, for around $30-50.
They do a very good job for the price. The expensive cards usually have
hardware encoding, which won't give you very good quality anyway, they are
just very easy to work with. You need a decent CPU and plenty of HD space to
use a card with no hardware compression, though, but the results will be
worth it.
 
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"Adam H" <dfghjkl@fghjkl.ur> wrote in message news:<c9glgu$igm$1@sparta.btinternet.com>...
> > Why do these cards vary so much in price? I want to capture my VHS
> > onto my HD. Can I do this for under $100?, under $50?
>
> Sure, you can pick up Hauppauge WinTV, or a similar card, for around $30-50.
> They do a very good job for the price. The expensive cards usually have
> hardware encoding, which won't give you very good quality anyway, they are
> just very easy to work with. You need a decent CPU and plenty of HD space to
> use a card with no hardware compression, though, but the results will be
> worth it.

A search on ebay turned up a great many of these. All slightly
different. I figure PCI capture (vs. USB)would be faster. Is this so?
What esle should I look for? Any other brands? What do you look for in
these things?

Thanks a lot!
 
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"KizerSosey" wrote ...
> A search on ebay turned up a great many of these. All slightly
> different. I figure PCI capture (vs. USB)would be faster. Is this so?

USB 1.x is simply not fast enough for full-size, full-speed video.

USB 2.x is supposed to be fast enough, but I have yet to see a good
positive experience posted here from someone using a USB2 video
capture device.

> What esle should I look for? Any other brands?
> What do you look for in these things?

You didn't really give a complete description of what you want
to do with this. Do you need input only and not output? Do you
need high-quality (DV), or can you live with lower-quality (MPEG),
etc. etc.
 
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One of the things I see is that the audio is captured in mono.
Wouldn't stereo be the standard?
 
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> A search on ebay turned up a great many of these. All slightly
> different. I figure PCI capture (vs. USB)would be faster. Is this so?
> What esle should I look for? Any other brands? What do you look for in
> these things?

USB is best avoided. Even USB 2 has caused a lot of people a lot of
problems.

Your best bet is to find a few capture cards in a price range you are happy
with, and then go looking for reviews on the net.

Actually, since there seems to be a lot of compatibility issues with capture
cards in general, you might want to go to a few local stores, pick up a
selection of cards, try them out, and take back the ones that didn't work
:)
 
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> One of the things I see is that the audio is captured in mono.
> Wouldn't stereo be the standard?

Yes, stereo is usually the standard, but many people just bypass the audio
on the card anyway, and plug straight into the PC's soundcard.
 
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"Adam H" wrote ...
> > One of the things I see is that the audio is captured in mono.
> > Wouldn't stereo be the standard?

Yes, stereo is standard. Just use a Y-adapter to plug in the
mono source into both Left and Right channels.

> Yes, stereo is usually the standard, but many people just
> bypass the audio on the card anyway, and plug straight into
> the PC's soundcard.

Using a separate device to capture audio frequently causes
problems keeping the audio and video in sync. You will see
complaints about this on a regular basis in this forum. To be
completely avoided.
 
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On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 04:01:53 +0000 (UTC), "Adam H" <dfghjkl@fghjkl.ur>
wrote:

>> One of the things I see is that the audio is captured in mono.
>> Wouldn't stereo be the standard?
>
>Yes, stereo is usually the standard, but many people just bypass the audio
>on the card anyway, and plug straight into the PC's soundcard.

That's OK if you don't care about keeping video and audio in sync.
 
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On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 17:38:43 +0100, Laurence Payne
<l@laurenceDELETEpayne.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

| On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 04:01:53 +0000 (UTC), "Adam H" <dfghjkl@fghjkl.ur>
| wrote:
|
| >> One of the things I see is that the audio is captured in mono.
| >> Wouldn't stereo be the standard?
| >
| >Yes, stereo is usually the standard, but many people just bypass the audio
| >on the card anyway, and plug straight into the PC's soundcard.
|
| That's OK if you don't care about keeping video and audio in sync.

Audio doesn't work on my Hauppauge PCI Win-TV card, so I get
off-the-air captures using the Hauppauge for video and a VCR stereo
tuner for audio. There's never a sync problem. I can also capture
VHS tapes that way (VCR SVHS out to Hauppauge SVHS in) on the rare
occasion I want to do that.

Using the Hauppauge tuner seems to result in a slightly better video
image than when I've tried using the VCR for video as well as audio.

Larc



§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§
 
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> >Yes, stereo is usually the standard, but many people just bypass the
audio
> >on the card anyway, and plug straight into the PC's soundcard.
>
> That's OK if you don't care about keeping video and audio in sync.

The audio stays in perfect sync on a decent set-up.
 
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On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 03:25:36 +0000 (UTC), "Adam H" <dfghjkl@fghjkl.ur>
wrote:

>USB is best avoided. Even USB 2 has caused a lot of people a lot of
>problems.

Hard to avoid when you use a Notebook PC... :-/
 
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In article <lijbc057cdt9cgc4r4uopc6ggfemc4hmcs@4ax.com>,
daorriss@comcast.nospamforme.net <URL:mailto:me@privacy.net> wrote:

I recently tried a small USB-2 box, (Korea or ???), which sold in
Australia for A$99.00.

This had no sound input, and required sound to be handled by the PC.

The video performance was excellent! But on my Gigabyte m/b the sound
was crackly and somewhat distorted. I suspect the high speed data on
the USB somehow leaked into the on-board sound.

It was definetely NOT caused by incorrect sound levels.
As I did not intend to buy a separate sound card I returned the box.



> On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 03:25:36 +0000 (UTC), "Adam H" <dfghjkl@fghjkl.ur>
> wrote:
>
> >USB is best avoided. Even USB 2 has caused a lot of people a lot of
> >problems.
>
> Hard to avoid when you use a Notebook PC... :-/
>
>
>

Regards,
Max

--

Max Haltermann, Geelong VIC
maxh@pipeline.com.au
 
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