Hi,

Thanks for reading. My retired parents have an nVidia 7900 GS with a
AMD Athlon 3500+ and 2 GB of RAM. I built them the system but didn't
anticipate the following question when I built it.

So, mom wants to record documentaries online, watching them in streaming
video but at the same time capturing that video so that she can record it
to DVD. Then they can take the portable DVD to watch it on a normal TV.

This isn't my area, so I am not sure what software or extra hardware may
be required for video capture.

Thanks a bunch for any help or suggestions!!

Graphics cards can't capture video. Unless we are speaking about the All In one Radeon series which combined a TV Tuner with a graphics card.

Overall you have to buy a TV Tuner card. If the computer has a firewire port or anything they have hardware that can transcode a number of signals to worth with it. Basically it would be a box that has Composite, S-Video, normal television cables..and all that junk into one box...It would then run that signal into firewire 300/800...This way you can capture from any source.

Besides that you can just nab a TV Tunre card. Install it into the pci slot and give it a go. Plug in the composite cables and capture.

for the first solution you need to get your own software to capture. Video editing programs can do this such as premiere and final cut pro. They probably have some free software out there that can do it. The hardware itself will probably come with one also. But most people nab the first feature for editing work.

The TV Tuner will come with software...it will also allow you to watch tv on your computer. So the choice is yours.

eh I dont think the OP meant TV programms but online streaming videos..

There are software that can capture a stream, but I haven't ever used one...
Anyways most of the online video content are usually saved in the 'Temporary Internet Files'-folder upon loading, might want to check there for some 'big' video files. In case of flash video files (.FLV) get FLVPlayer or something to view it on the PC, you'll need somesort of a converterprogram to convert it into a DVD-player supported stuff though

ohh snap...my bad...didn't read it in detail.

when it comes to nabbing files off the net and all that jazz you really just need to learn the software. I've been video editing for 13 years but it can be pretty confusing. It depends where she's getting her video from....youtube videos take longer but the quality is such garbage I don't know why anyone would bother. You just have to end up nabbing software to encode to different formats for you. I do it all manually though...I encode the videos myself so I know I'm maintaining the highest quality possible. They have a few programs out there that do it all for you...quality isn't as good as manually encoding but going for manual would require lots of research and time to understand encoding/formats/codecs.

Google.."software/video capture". There are FREE software programs that you can experiment with.

yeah with encoding it gets quite technicall pretty fast...
But with online streams the first problem is actually getting that stream saved into a file on your hdd, the second part is how to convert/encode it into a format that is supported by the dvd-player...

(I'm going to keep an eye on this thread, hoping to learn something aswell )

Indeed..Just try to nab a all in one software kit..

As an example..Breaking down a video manually from youtube would go like this.

Software base downloader of Youtube files.
Encoding FLV to AVI.
Encoding AVI to Mpg2.
Using a dvd author program to create DVD structure files
Burn DVD Structure files with Nero.

BUT...they do have automated programs...But I don't believe they handle FLV...so your steps might be..

Software download of youtube file
encode FLV to AVI
Run AVI in to DVD burning software that does everything for you.

But this is just for FLV files (Flash Video). If you have an mpeg source of a divx avi or anything like that. You can just run it straight through a program that does it all for you...no need to ripping of encoding.

Bah...I'm trying to make it sound easier but codecs and encoding just gets too hectic...Try to find a automatic route. For a manual route you need to learn MANY programs, Mpeg2, Virtual Dub, FLV = Avi encoders...and that is just the tip of the iceberg. If you get int Avisynth and all this other jazz it'll make your head explode...lol..

But it's easier then it sounds for the automatic solutions. So don't worry ^_^...Roxio and other big cd burning softwares can do this all for you. So it shouldn't be too hard.

I have the MSI NX6600GT VTD128. It has listed in the manual, on the box, and on an included cable, S-Video In. Yet I still can't get it to be recognized as having video coming in. What is the point of the S-Video In then?