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| Thread ID: 51097 | 2004-11-11 09:04:00 | Video Capture Cards_Opinions please | Stumped Badly (348) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 290625 | 2004-11-11 09:04:00 | Hi Are there any video editing gurus about that could give me some advice on which Capture card to buy. Budget is not unlimited but I don't want anything substandard either, it's got to do the bizzo. I won't be doing it on a professional level, just capturing, editing then writing back to tape/CD/DVD for TV viewing etc for myself & friends Some reading has told me that a dumb card has advantages over smart cards, any opinions? It must be capable of S_video & analogue input as I want to be able to capture from older camcorders as well Firewire doesn't matter too much as a separate PCI card can take care of that, can't it? I'm a bit lost really & some advice would be appreciated. PLEASE, no well intentioned advice or opinions, please only reply if you know what it takes to capture good video & the capture gear I'll need to do it. I don't need to know about PC specs, I've got that covered. I'm running a Matrox 128Mb dualhead so don't want a video/capture combo, I need a dedicated capture card that will give me good results Thanks |
Stumped Badly (348) | ||
| 290626 | 2004-11-11 09:26:00 | Half the battle is what you do with the footage after you have caputred it,The idea being to capture at the highist detail your harddrive can cope with and then encode down to the desired format . In regard to this you need a capture card that can handle any codec (compresser/decompresser) you would like to use,as well as the ability to change all aspects of the codec settings relating to the capture and compresseion . . . this relates to audio as well as video . The best I have used is the leadtek Winfast range,no matter how deep i wanted to delve into the configuration i never came to the point where it wouldn't let me do what i desired . The software is excellent . The downfall of most of these cards is that the sound is fed back into the audio card where its recorded and then joined back up with the video file,Sometimes they can get out of sync and that will ruin the entire project . This happens rarely on modern equipment,but some comps do it with no clearcut way of stopping it . A good quality sound card is a must as well . The next step up is to an external box,these have the advantage of locking the audio and video together and then feeding it into the comp making it impossible to get out of sync errors,or reduced quality due to the comp deciding to run a process and steal resources from your capture . The next step above that is the hardware encoders along the lines of the Storm or Raptor2,These i believe start at over a grand and can be upto 3 grand but they are some of the best gear available . |
metla (154) | ||
| 290627 | 2004-11-11 09:31:00 | if you wanna have good video editing, you gotta have the machine for it, what are your specs, you will need alot of ram, 51mb at least, and a fair bit of hdd space.... | Prescott (11) | ||
| 290628 | 2004-11-11 09:31:00 | > Half the battle is what you do with the footage after Ect >but they are some of the best gear available . Metla, nice, where is version two? I wish to read it . D . |
drb1 (4492) | ||
| 290629 | 2004-11-11 09:33:00 | Interestingly enough, there was a review of the new Sky TV PVR decoder which will be an option next year... looks VERY nice with a whole bunch of outputs for all the home cinema fanatics out there along with (wait for it) a 10/100 network connection... I wonder whether you could rip the data straight from the hard drive, across the Lan onto your PC.... :D Lo. |
Lohsing (219) | ||
| 290630 | 2004-11-11 09:34:00 | V2 of the video card faq? Dunno,Sometimes i think some of the people who frequent this forum don't deserve the wealth of information and advice that is bequeathed them. |
metla (154) | ||
| 290631 | 2004-11-11 09:46:00 | > if you wanna have good video editing, you gotta have > the machine for it, what are your specs, you will > need alot of ram, 51mb at least, and a fair bit of > hdd space.... 512 what? sd, ddr 200, 400, rdram 1066, 800, 700, 600. Raid 0 can provide vast inprovment in performance. If you are half serious a used twin cpu server/Graphics work station with the large ram posibilities is a viable option. Entry level ram should be 1Gb ddr200 rdram800. you can play with less . I stepped from sd133 750. to 1GB ddr200 with the same CPU and AGP card the difference in performance was very obvious. D. |
drb1 (4492) | ||
| 290632 | 2004-11-11 09:49:00 | > V2 of the video card faq? > > Dunno,Sometimes i think some of the people who > frequent this forum don't deserve the wealth of > information and advice that is bequeathed them. Metla, That is not nice, I liked ver 1 and am waiting for V2. Must I suffer because of ill educated, unmannered savages. D. |
drb1 (4492) | ||
| 290633 | 2004-11-11 09:52:00 | > if you wanna have good video editing, you gotta have > the machine for it, what are your specs, you will > need alot of ram, 51mb at least, and a fair bit of > hdd space.... that should have read 512Mb ram, the more the better, but im not too sure on which type... |
Prescott (11) | ||
| 290634 | 2004-11-11 10:04:00 | Prescot, No worries. These days 512 SD133 is almost entry level for the net, it will manipulate some small photo images, but after that it get very slow, if it doesent crash out on an interupt. The MAC G5 can take 8GB ram. ( I think ddr400. that tells you the kind of ram powe required for V/E.) The S/W you can get for it, and the ram you can squeeze in it, make it very popular with V/E Graphic operators. D. |
drb1 (4492) | ||
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