What hw & sw are non-professionals using for video capture?

[peroxidechicken]

Putting this in Alternative Operating Systems might be a bit cheeky but here goes...  

I'm interested in converting my VHS collection to a compressed digital format.  I'd like a card that can take both analogue video and pre-existing digital movie files and do a hardware format conversion.  I'd also like the same card to do analogue playback as my pc doesn't already do this.  

As far as software goes, I want to be able to introduce my own images (static & animated) and audio and be able to edit various movie files together.  

What are the (barest!) minimum hardware requirements?  

[whabang]

If you're using a PC, then Pinnacle's capture cards might be worth a look.
Depending on how much power you have under the hood, you could always go for one of the BT878-based cards on the market. The quality will suck, however.

[StevenJGore]

I use a Hauppauge WinTV Primio-FM card in my PC. It is a BT881-based PCI board but it doesn't feature hardware encoding. With a medium to high-end PC, you won't need to pay the extra for hardware encoding anyway. The card has S-Video, Composite Video, and aerial inputs. The quality of the picture from any of the inputs is outstanding, but obviously is only as good as the source! For the sound, I bypass the TV card and plug the stereo input directly into my sound card (for quality reasons - less connections!). The spec of my PC is in my sig below.

I use Showshifter 3 to capture live inputs from my VCR and NTL cable box through the Composite Video input into DivX 5.11 video (the video is captured at a resolution of 640x480 at 25 frames per second and is encoded into DivX 5 at 1100kbps with 'light' clean-up of the source). I then edit the video in Virtual Dub to remove adverts and trim the beginning and end.

I have converted a large percentage of my VHS collection and have also recorded hundreds of programmes from digital TV to DiVX AVI files with relative ease. Using the above setup, the quality of the video is outstanding, almost as good as DVD!

Virtual Dub can do most if not all of what you have mentioned and is free, I've never needed to try an alternative such as Adobe Premiere.

Steve.

PS. Having a TV card with a S-Video input also means that you can use the highest quality output available from an Amiga CD32!

[kvasarnomad]

I have a Pinnacle PCTV PRO
And I was a bit disappointed about the quality
I have to plug the antenna cable to a vcr and then from the vcr scart to the TV-card to get a reasonible picture
Is the PCTV Pro really that bad, or even TV-Cards in general?
I have tried to swith the cards places(pci slots)
as I thought it might get interferense from some other card but that did nothing

I have a Athlon 1Ghz, 256Mb 133mhz Ram, Geforce 4 Mx 64Mb

[takemehomegrandma]

I believe my DV video camera has both analogue in and out connectors (I haven't tried it though), so I guess that if you have a digital video camera with such capabilities it's possible to transfer your VHS casettes directly to mini-DV tapes. And if you then want to edit and/or compress the video to various other file formats, then simply connect the camera to your computer through firewire.

Otherwise I would go for a Matrox RT.X10 solution (which is a "slimmed" version of the X100):

http://www.matrox.com/video/home.cfm

[Jeff]

Please do yourself a favor and look at the Canopus line. I own the ADVC-100 and it works perfectly.  It will also defeat Macrovision, although this is NOT an advertised feature :-). It converts analog video to DV avi and is seen by the computer as a firewire device, no drivers needed.

http://www.canopus.com/US/products/advc-100/pm_advc-100.asp

Jeff

[selco]

I use a Draco witch is a very nice machine - does perfectly what it is supposed to do - and is an Amiga. (Runs Os3.9)

It is however not really cheap.

The other possibility:
What about a (standalone) DVD recorder? They have reached a price region where they become a real alternative now.

Here I have seen offers for about 220 Euros. The perfect replacement for the old analogue video tape recorder.

regards selco

[Hammer]

@peroxidechicken

For 'Windows XP Media Center' targeted market, ATI DX9 class "ALL-In-Wonder" cards may do the trick. For NV camp, NVIDIA’s VIVO DX9** class cards may also do the trick. Leadtek (illustrated as an example) usually bundles Ulead Video Studio 6 or 7 (OEM edition) with their cards. One could take a look at Matrox’s based solutions if you’re serious about video transfers(as Takemehomegrandma menstioned earlier).  

**Unlike DX9 class cards, NV DX8 class cards VIVO functions are dependant on off-chip VIVO codecs(e.g. Philip 7108) (i.e. not integrated to GPU), thus their quality can vary.

For software based MPEG2 encoding at TV resolutions; 266FSB (no KT133A stuff) Athlon TBird @ 1.33Ghz would be a minimum(my POV) (I still got away with real time encoding with @1.133Ghz Athlon TBird with KT133A chipset, but it’s bordering in dropping encoding frames rates). A hard disk that can do ~40MB/s in Neroburn’s benchmarks should be sufficient. With 266FSB (with Kt266A/nForce1 chipsets), Mepg2(DVD ;-) ) to DIVX (Flask) encoding the performance almost instantly doubles relative to KT133A.

PS;I have several Athlon XP/VIA KT6xx/nForce2(limited to ASUS and Gigabyte only) boxes for testing...

[Hammer]

Is the PCTV Pro really that bad, or even TV-Cards in general?

I use VisionDTV HDTV (PCI card) for TV capturing (thus the picture is perfect). I also get reasonable analog TV captures from Cable TV (analog) sources (from the mentioned DX9/DX8 cards).

I have a Athlon 1Ghz, 256Mb 133mhz Ram, Geforce 4 Mx 64Mb

I may have to reassemble my 1.xGhz Athlon Tbird test boxes (e.g cheap power bricks blew up) if I’m going to do any testing...

What motherboard and case do you use?