Video capture card

[ozzy0627]

Hi guys I'm going to buy my brother a video capture cards for x-mas what card would you guys recommend? He has a good video card so am looking at seperate cards that support svideo in, tv tuner, and composite. I am looking for a card that will give him really good compression for dvd like quality. What do you guys recommend under 120? We have a couple 120gig hd and hes getting a dvd burner also and hes running p1.6a @ p2.4

I seen a couple at newegg you guys have talk about. One is the Pinnacle video card $66
PINNACLE VIDEO CAPTURE MODEL PCTV - RETAIL


TV LEADTEK WINFAST "DELUXE" TV2000XP
61 dollars newegg.

Are these cards any good? What do you guys recommend? Do I want a card that leaves capture raw and then I convert it with other software with mpeg2 compression (thats dvd right?)

[Captain Slug]

My Leadtek card just died and I'm not sure what caused it.

Based on consensus the Hauppage line of TV capture cards provide the best quality and variety of compression methods.

[ozzy0627]

Can you recommend a could place to read about them? Do you know if they can capture uncompressed?

[Captain Slug]

Originally posted by ozzy0627
Can you recommend a could place to read about them? Do you know if they can capture uncompressed?
Most capture devices should be able to capture in uncompressed AVI but that would require MASSIVE amounts of storage. 3 minutes of uncompressed AVI can reach 400mb.

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 give the best image/conversion performance as far as compression is concerned.

[ozzy0627]

I just want something that will capture in uncompressed. I found a haupagge wintv stereo that can do uncrompressed but the recording is only like 300 x 200 ish? Why does it not record at 740 x 420 ish if uncrompressed?

[Captain Slug]

Originally posted by ozzy0627
I just want something that will capture in uncompressed. I found a haupagge wintv stereo that can do uncrompressed but the recording is only like 300 x 200 ish? Why does it not record at 740 x 420 ish if uncrompressed?

Because NTSC video signals are only 352 x 240 pixels in size. Or large televisions you can't tell that well because the image is being run through several hardware filters.

If your card can record at larger uncompressed resolutions it will be resampling the image by filling in the gaps with filters. I have recorded video from 352 x 240 into a very good quality 740 x 420. BUT, it was a little fuzzy, I had to use S-Video, and the file was HUGE.